Pup Champs sees you guiding a crew of adorable canine soccer players through some puzzle-like plays in order to score.
You’re looking to coach a handful of dogs so that they can become a great soccer team. Being so young, though, the pups don’t have a lot of nuance to how they play. Yes, they will follow your instructions on where to go on the field grid, but they each only know one way to boot the ball. The orange dog kicks it up in the air and forward two tiles. The gray dog just fires it four squares ahead of him in an arc whether that’s a good idea or not. The pale brown dog just kicks it as hard as they can in a straight line. You need to figure out how to use their movements and their specific kicks to (hopefully) get the ball in the net.
Just making the proper movements and using each pup’s unique kicks to get a goal is challenging enough, but soon other soccer players and wildlife hazards enter the mix and make things more difficult. Moles can pop up through holes in the field and ruin your play (although you can distract them by walking over other holes). Your ball can get caught in fallen leaves. Other animals will mimic your movements or generally get in the way of your kicks. The game does an excellent job of slowly adding more mechanics as you play, each pushing you to make your team work together. Even so, it’s rarely so overwhelming you want to pull your hair out.
Pup Champs is extremely cute in its presentation and very thoughtful with its soccer puzzle designs. I have no interest in soccer whatsoever, but these adorable players and the simplicity of its puzzles (while still offering some complex problems to solve) quickly got me hooked, though.
Pup Champs is available now on the App Store, Google Play, itch.io, and Steam.
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