Pup Champs opens with a simple premise - you are a retired football coach (and also, a dog) who dreams of leading a soccer team of cute puppies to become school league champions. After a short but sweet cutscene, your first pup is plonked onto the pitch ready to be shaped into an expert player. You can't help but warm to a cute little puppy wanting to learn how to play.
The movement is pretty straightforward (at least to start with). The pitch is divided into squares, each of which represents one move. Each dog has a specific number of moves each round, and once you're out, you're done. If you haven't kicked the ball into the goal by then you'll have to reset. Dogs can move, dribble, and kick a certain distance.
When it's just one pup involved, the first few levels are easy enough. But word soon starts to spread among the canine community, and other dogs want to learn how to play. Each super adorable dog comes with their own skills. The black and white dog (which I'm presuming is a Border Collie, and is therefore my favourite) can boot the ball for longer distances, while the labrador has a closer range than the others, and is good for sneaking the ball into the goal up close. Soon, the pitch starts to grow in size, and you'll have multiple dogs to manage. Tactical thinking will allow each dog to play to their strengths and allow you to reach the goal within the limited moves available to you.
Where the 'thinky' element starts to kick in (pun intended) is when other obstacles start to emerge. Dogs can't pass each other on the same square, because they'll collide, and you'll need to start again. Long grass poses an obstacle as they can't dribble the ball through (and if you attempt it, they'll just look confused in a really sweet, helpless sort of way). And then other animals start to emerge, like the naughty monkey on the opposite team, who will swoop in and steal the ball away if you get too close to him. I'm not sure what his beef is but the point is, he's annoying, and you have to work around him to get to the goal.
Soon, your brain has to think several steps ahead to succeed. A couple of times I had the intense frustration of thinking I had worked out how to dodge around long grass, the monkey, and multiple dogs, only to find I was exactly one move short of the solution. Even in the demo, the difficulty level ramped up a fair bit, and I could feel my brain starting to stretch a bit trying to grasp the solution.
Pup Champs looks adorable. The characters are simple but cute, the comic-strip cutscenes are just enough to explain the basic premise of the game - dogs want to learn football and that's really enough for me, - and the pups have a slight paper-cut-out look to them, giving the whole game a child-friendly vibe in terms of aesthetics. It's the kind of game my kids will spot me playing, and be intrigued by. I'd say it was child-friendly, but I got stuck a couple of times and really had to think about the solutions. Younger kids might like the look of this, but I don't think they'd be able to manage the difficulty level as the game progressed. It could be a nice game to play alongside slightly older kids (if they can handle a bit of frustration).
I'm unsure if this will be an option in the main game, but the demo allows you to skip levels. I'm not sure how I feel about endless free skips as the ability to skip was way too tempting for me. I'd rather have a graduated hint system, perhaps showing you the first move you need to make, and then the next, and so on. That would make it easier and would help players learn how to use specific pups, without jumping straight for the skip button. Hopefully, the full game will have something like this in place.
I think Pup Champs has the potential to be a lovely little puzzle game that is deceptively tricky, especially in later stages. What potential obstacles or creatures might pop up later remains to be seen, but apparently, you can coach your little team from a humble backyard pitch to a stadium - which is a job I'd love to do, even though I know absolutely nothing about football. I would quite like to see these little pups succeed, actually. I want them to hit the big time. Hopefully, the full game will release soon, as I'm keen to see them through to the final match.
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