Nothing DOG

The description is a little vague so to succinctly reiterate, this is not a game. It is neither a tool nor a toy. Interactivity and reactivity is nil. One chinese reviewer described it as a wallpaper, which fits honestly. Upon first launch you will be asked who to bless and your wish. You cannot change these later nor can you view the wish. You get the one and that's it which was a bit disappointing to me as I assumed "wishes" were actually singular tasks you set which you could focus on while enjoying the atmosphere of the program then you could report back to the dog with your success and be allowed to enter another one. But no, this isn't exactly like whispering into the hollow of a tree. As time progresses in the program, the dog will provide text "guidance." This will be some nonsense. Not mindfulness nonsense, not even machine translated nonsense, just nonsense. You can hotswap languages from the settings and nothing the dog ever said made sense in any language I could understand. Elsewhere, the devs say that these things must be read with your heart. Well, my heart doesn't know why the weather is good and if my mom can turn on the oven either. It's difficult to tell if this was some kind of jaded cash grab shovelware thing. This was crowdfunded but it's something you could whip up in UE in less than a day barring the art and music assets. It actually feels like it took a great deal of restraint not to add anything useful, like, say, a nonintrusive session timer, task based wishes, any kind of animation or alternate art of the dog in the center, better environmental stars that aren't one pixel dust particles rendered invisible by most of the color palettes, a better method of seeing the art you've acquired like a stamp book instead of the fiddly TV you get no direction on how to use, etc. I'm recommending this despite everything I've typed because sometimes it's nice to have something just take over my entire monitor and distract me from the distractions. I do find the little dog art you unlock to be cute and the music is nice. If you have steam overlay activated, you can set a timer using that though it's a bit disruptive when it goes off. There's probably an infinite amount of better "relax" applications out there but here we are. Look at that dog.