If cats aren’t your thing, and you’ve been looking for an idle game that really speaks to your love of New York City, dogs, and dog costumes, then Game Theory’s Central Bark is everything you’ve been looking for and more.
Like the many other “gardening” idle games that came before it, Central Bark‘s gameplay mostly focuses on you tending to a specific stretch of a city block, including its subway station. As Game Theory’s founder Marguerite Dibble explained to me, whereas Neko Atsume had some cute items to lay out like cat toys and trees, Central Bark will play up its “dog life in the big dog city” theme. “You start on this street, and like with Neko, you have this one basic starting area, and you start with a bunch of different slots where you can put out items and things like baseballs, a 40 [ounce malt liquor], a bench, little blankets, so it’s a mix of ‘New York-y’ stuff and then dog stuff.”
In addition to tending to your little bit of sidewalk, you also get a big lot where you can invite different food trucks to come and sell their tasty vittles (because of course).
The type of truck you get will also play a factor in deciding what kinds of dogs you get to come by your street. There’s also a little section of park you can tend to, where you can also invite your favorite street meat cart. The subway, down below your street, also boasts a little newsstand (appropriately named Serif, which is what I think I’ll call the first dog I ever adopt).
As for the types of dogs you can attract, those range from European backpacking tourist dogs (like you see above) and even–wait for it–a BDSM dog. And, of course, there’s a little visitor’s record showing you who’s visited. But just like Neko Atsume, you have to snap a photo of them hanging around in order to know what they look like, otherwise you’ll just get a silhouette. And of course, like Neko Atsume‘s gold and silver fish “currency,” the primary currency of Central Bark is pigeons, which are left behind when dogs visit.
In the time I got to check out the game, I was pretty impressed by how much personality went into designing and each of the little visitors, and believe me, there are a lot of them. Dibble pointed out that Central Bark differs from Neko Atsume in that with Neko Atsume, many of the cats you see on a regular basis are more or less recolored versions of the same cat, with the exception of those special cats. “In this case, that wasn’t really going to work as well because we had these characters, and we had this people watching personality in the game. Everyone is a different persona, and that was really fun for us.”
Meet Winston, one of the pups that might stop by while you’re hanging out in Central Bark! Learn more about this upcoming game here https://t.co/awTfmsIfoF pic.twitter.com/48KSzkbEfy
— gametheory (@gametheoryco) April 30, 2018
It would perhaps be fair to say that there’s no shortage of games like Neko Atsume, and that comparisons to between that and Central Bark (as you saw here) are inevitable. That’s something Dibble’s aware of, as she explained why she wanted to bring this game into existence. “Games are inspired by other games, you know what I mean? For me, I just love Neko, and I wanted to do something that was inspired by it but also felt a little bit different. I would hope that there are other people out there who loved Neko and had a really good time with that experience but would be excited to try something that’s sort of in the same genre, but that’s a little bit different.”
Central Bark launches for iOS and Android on May 16th.
(images courtesy Game Theory)
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