Chris InglisAnimal Trainer Simulator is another iteration in the long list of simulation games developed by Games Incubator and published by PlayWay. A free prologue is available to try the game which I have dived into with my daughter. She loved Animal Shelter Simulator and we wanted to see how this game differed. This is a short prologue giving us control of two animals, but it gave us a good taste of the full game to come later this year.
The core gameplay loop feels satisfyingly straightforward. We started by purchasing a doghouse, placing it on a plot on our farmland, and drove to collect the dog from its owner. Our job is to look after it, teach it some tricks, reward it with treats, clean and wash it and then return the dog to its owner.
Driving across the open farmland is standard though it’s easy to lose control over bumps or if you accidentally hit a tree, it can send you sideways. You need to stop at certain marked areas and sometimes it’s not clear whether you just need to park the car at that sport or if you need to hop out and stand in the spot.
We ran into a situation where the game could not progress. We parked the car in the designated spot, and it said to drop off goods to the warehouse, however there was no prompt to open the door. We were able to flip the car, but this then disabled us from entering it to correct its position. We had to start the game over again because you cannot save progress in this prologue. It only autosaves once you finish with the dog section which was frustrating, so hopefully this isn’t the case in the full game.
After teaching the dog some tricks, we moved onto the next building which was an attack training ground. This was an interesting choice of things to train a dog, especially as I had to explain to my daughter what it meant. She chose to go and play something else while I completed this task as she didn’t like the thought of dogs attacking something. When placing the training grounds, we chose to set it next to the wash area and it was a green highlighted position on the overhead map. However once placed, the starting point for the attack ground was halfway into the wash zone. This made it very difficult to take the dog to the starting point without the washing mechanic taking over.
Next, we were tasked with training a horse, and this required us to hook up a horse trailer and drive that over to the horse owner. My daughter had difficulty driving the car and trailer combo, so I took over. Once we had the horse back at the farm, we went through some training exercises and then the prologue was over.
As a prologue, the content in Animal Trainer Simulator Prologue is understandably limited. While this makes sense for an introductory experience, it also left us hungry for more. The brief glimpses of unlockable training equipment and a wider variety of animals piqued my daughter’s interest, so she is quite excited for the full game release later this year. Hopefully some of the kinks can be ironed out before full release but we are looking forward to it. Anyone who enjoys the companionship of animals and the satisfaction of nurturing and training them will get something out of the game.
This review utilised a key provided by Games Incubator and Animal Trainer Simulator is set for release in 2024 on PC.
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