Disclaimer

I was sent a free copy of Dog in the Machine to review for my blog. While I am very grateful for the opportunity, I won’t let it sway my opinions. This will be my honest review.

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Table of Contents

What is Dog in the Machine?

Dog in the Machine is a unique turn-based strategy roguelike out now on Steam. It features a unique dystopian narrative and you get to play as a dog. There is a demo available, but it really doesn’t do the game justice. Make sure you check it out, and don’t forget to wishlist!

Hook

Humanity built AI and machines to make their lives better, but AI could only calculate of a future without humanity. Slowly, it began to banish humanity from its city until all that remained there was robot. Those robots still sympathetic to humanity were quickly scrapped, but there are still some that wander the street looking for their masters. You play one of these abandoned robots as you battle through the city as you make your escape. Can you find the last bastion of human civilization, or will you be turned to scrap and refurbished to fit the greater good?

Gameplay

Players take control of a robot dog and use its abilities and the environment to fight their way through each level.

Like all roguelikes, players start each run (after the tutorial) in a central hub where they can buy permanent upgrades, or read up on enemies or abilities they’ve unlocked along the way. The more you play this game, the stronger you become.

Before a run, players can choose their loadout. All players start with the same basic loadout, with more available at later play throughs. Players collect new attacks and abilities throughout a run at random, and the RNG for this game seems pretty fair. In classic roguelike fashion, players can choose from a collection of nodes.

Each node will prompt an event: combat, story, store, healing, and upgrades. Combat can be with basic enemies, minibosses, or the big bad boss at the end of each level. Story events give players the opportunity to learn more about the world while gaining the option to buy an upgrade at the end. A roguelike would not be complete without its store, and this game has a few scattered through the run to help you spend your bones (the currency of this game). Throughout the run, players can also take the time to remove alert levels or upgrade their existing deck. Players can reduce the cost of a card or combine cards to give attacks powerful effects.

Combat

Combat in this game is pretty casual as far as turn-based games go, but require enough strategy to keep things engaging. Players can use the environment to their advantage by setting off traps, pushing objects into enemies, or enemies into hazards. During a turn, players will have a set number of action points to spend. These can be used to move, cast a buff, or make an attack. Unlike other deck builders in the genre, you don’t have to pull from deck of actions. Instead, all abilities are available at the start of the turn, but they can only be used once with a few exceptions. This allows players to build with some constancy without having the added stress of RNGing into a dead hand. I play enough Pokemon TCG to want that in my roguelike.

What makes combat unique in Dog in the Machine is the alarm system that creates player urgency. During each round, enemies will start with an alarm level. This level can be reduced through damage (1 point of damage reduces 1 level of alarm), and any remaining damage is added to the threat level. A high threat level will make it hard to escape, kind of like in GTA but easier to manage. Threat level can also be reduced through healing nodes, or be blocked by the jammer ability or blocks used around the map.

Combat ends when the player beats all of the enemies on a map, or the bosses are defeated.

Does it work on the Steam Deck?

Dog in the Machine works great on the Steam Deck. I was able to boot up the game and play without any additional tweaking which is always a huge plus. It was very responsive with the native controls, although it took some getting used to. If you want a fun and casual roguelike to play on the road, or from the comfort of basically anywhere, this is a solid title to add to your collection.

Review

I love Dog in the Machine for its incredible art, interesting world building, and unique strategy. While the game does start to get repetitive after a while (most roguelikes do), the game keeps things fresh enough to keep playing. Whether I was setting up some crazy environmental builds or trying to make acid damage work, I was fully invested in trying to get my cute little robot dog out of this city. I never did, but I will keep trying.

Aesthetic

You’ve heard me say this time and time again, and it is a trend that will continue. I picked this game because it has cool art, but I stayed because the game is actually fun. I love the cartoonish, vibrant world that houses this dystopian narrative I need to complete. The game is good at crafting chaotic maps full of cool looking machines that make sense, I just wish I was smart enough to make use of the environment a little better. If you like how the game looks, I would say give it a try. It is worth at least a bit of your attention (even if you only try the demo).

Story

The game is pretty cleaver with its world building. Players get a bit of the story during the tutorial before being thrust into the roguelike map. Players can choose to fight their way to the boss without ever collecting any bits of the story, but the node is there for your enjoyment. The story node is often a mysterious robot that players encounter throughout a run. It is sentient enough to remember the olds days and makes sense of the conflict. It is through this node players get the world building, but also get some useful loot. I enjoyed this more than the traditional random encounter that is traditional to the genre because I didn’t have to worry about getting some kind of debuff. Some nodes do repeat, but I am here for it. It is a solid story, one that is good enough to play through once.

Combat

The combat in this game seems pretty strait forward until you start unlocking everything. Each new enemy or hazard adds a new mechanics to work around, and the strategy keeps evolving. RNG seems pretty fair. I was consistently able to get a build that worked with my playstyle. I may not be beating any records or finding the resolution, but I always had a build that was fun. Permanent upgrades didn’t break the run. They were impactful enough to get me farther each run, but I never felt like it made the game too easy. I am sure there is a way to minmax and get through the game faster, but I had fun choosing what I liked and that is more than enough.

All attacks in this game are telegraphed. That means you know what an enemy will do during your turn and can plan accordingly. This mechanic turns the game into a puzzle, and I had a lot of fun trying to solve each new one.While most gamers are probably burnt out on this genre, Dog in the Machine does enough different to keep things interesting.

Conclusion

I absolutely loved my time with Dog in the Machine. This is a very good looking game that runs tight on either PC or on your Steam Deck, and you will certainly get your money’s worth. If you are looking for something casual with a good enough world to invest some time into, it doesn’t get much better than this. Go check it out on Steam!

Trailer