Dog Park

Designer: Lottie Hazell, Jack Hazell
Artist: Kate Avery, Holly Exley, Dann May
Published: 2022
Players: 1-4
Playing Time: 40-80 Mins
BGG Rating: 7.0
BGG Ranking: 1696
Publisher: Birdwood Games
Mechanisms: Area Majority, Auction/Bidding, Set Collection, Track Movement, Victory Points as a Resource
Sleeves: MEV 44x63mm, TCG 63,5x88mm

Game Description:

Welcome to Dog Park, a mid-weight, competitive set-collection and point-to-point movement game in which players take on the role of dog walkers who recruit, walk, and care for their dogs over four rounds.

Players must choose their routes and dogs carefully to earn the best reputation and prove they are the most accomplished walker of them all. At the end of the game, the player with the most reputation wins.

Quick play overview:

Game is played over 4 rounds where players will:

• Auction (with their Victory Points) for new dogs
• Select dogs to take for a walk (spending resources for each dog that they take want to walk)
• Walk through the park to collect new resources, VP, switching dogs (stealing other ppls dogs? Doing the ol' switcharoo?),…
• Home Phase where players will earn VP for dogs that went for a walk and losing points for dogs that were never taken out of the house

The main idea of the game is that at the end of the game players will earn big VP by collecting the right sets of dogs. Each set up of the game will be different, so each breed will give different points in different games (from 8 VP for the best breed to the 2 VP for the one that nobody wants).

Easy you say? Yes… but also no. Because the dogs will come out at random from a big deck of available dogs. So there might be only one dog of the most scoring breed and it came out in the first round.. or there might be many of them and the fight for the points will go on the whole game.

Add to this that each dog has different abilities that can give you bonuses during the SELECTION, WALKING or FINAL SCORING phases. So you some big decisions to make each Auctioning phase.

Don't forget that a dog that you like, might be also the target of one or more opponents which means you will have to spend many VP to get it.. but is it worth it at the end?

Final thoughts:

AUCTION part is nice and very tense. You only have one chance to bid on the dog that you want and if you are the first player to bid, you have to think how much you should bid (hidden info) so that others won't take it from you. If you are later in the turn, and there is already a bid on the dog that you want.. you try to read how much your opponent bid and add +1 to it to get it.

SELECTION part is simple if you prepared the needed resources in the previous turn.. but of course you might have gotten a new dog that needs the resources that you don't have and you have to change 2 resources for 1… expensive but it might be needed.

WALKING in the park is the boring part as on average players will just walk through the park to collect the needed resources for next round. Unless a player managed to set up a nice combo of dogs and the walk can be actually interesting. The trick is that you can take as much time as you want in the park (always moving forward toward the exit), with the caveat that the first player to exit will get points and when the second to last goes out, the last player is also thrown out of the park and loses one VP.

AREA MAJORITY scoring is the mechanism that lowers the final score by A LOT for me. I just don't like the ALL or NOTHING idea behind it. You can spend a lot of time and resources to collect the right dogs only to get 0 points, while other players will get free points on other not so contested breeds. I would like it more if there was some VP awarded also for 2nd spot etc.

So keep this in mind when looking at the final score. If you like this type of points awarding, then the game is great. 

FINAL SCORE:

Gameplay & How often I want to play it: 6/10

Gameplay is good. The auction, selection and walking parts are all fun and lovely...but I don't see my self playing this game a lot because I just get too frustrated by the final scoring.

It's not that I'm butthurt because I lost points... I also feel bad if I win the points and the other players got nothing. It's a mechanism that I don't like at all.

Art & Graphic Design:

The game is a piece of art. Cards, board and tokens are all amazing.

Also the graphic desing is as clear as it can be.

Rules & Complexity:

There are plenty of rules to this game but they all make sense. Once you get through the explanation, you can move all your brain power into making sets and playing the game at your best.

Theme & Mechanism fit:

Auctioning, selecting and walking the dogs is a great mechanism fit for this theme.

Fun & Replayability:

I have fun for 90% of the game and then the final scoring pisses me off.

Each game is set up differently and there are a tons of dogs in the game.. so there is plenty of replayability in this one.