Thank you QUByte Interactive for providing us with review code!

It seems most retro platformers want to be Mega Man without realizing that you can have entertaining and challenging experiences without being unfairly frustrating. Dogurai harkens back to the Game Boy era of platformers (even having an initial 1-bit color scheme) and features a serviceable experience for $4.99. While it’s not going to win any awards, it’s still a decently entertaining experience for what it’s worth.

Dogurai’s story isn’t detailed in the game, which is most likely due to the homage of the 8-bit platformer. You control Bones, an anthropomorphic samurai dog that rebels against the robotic uprising in a series of 8 different stages. Like most of the Mega Man games, you’ll be up against an introductory stage, of which you’ll pick from 4 to advance; afterwards, you’ll make a linear progression to the endgame stages. Every area has an end of stage boss that you must destroy in order to proceed to the next. While the game stages are mostly linear, each of the four regular stages have a hidden floppy disk you can grab, and getting all four of them will unlock the good ending as well as another character for the second playthrough (though it only really changes the main attack, so this reward is only if you really want to play again).

Controls are simple enough here, with Bones only having one sword attack, with a double jump and a sliding dodge (or Doge, heheh). These moves work surprisingly well, but I wish there was more move variety; as it stands, each proceeding stage feels like the last with no real progression or incentive to explore other than the hidden floppy disks (which as aforementioned only exist in the four selectable stages). The stages look alright, but the color scheme (which changes palettes depending on the stage, but can be modified) can look rather garish and annoying with the brighter colors. It takes time to get used to, but the dedication to the retro graphics is both a blessing and a curse.

Stage design is good enough, and I did have fun zipping around with the sliding dodge move. Enemy fire wasn’t overwhelming but still frequent enough to be challenging. There were some parts of stages that felt pretty cheap (there’s a motorcycle segment in a desert level that took me countless tries to complete, which doesn’t help due to the finicky physics from jumping while on said vehicle). That said, the bosses here are the highlight of the stages, and come with some difficult patterns to distinguish. Part of the difficulty comes from the fact you only have a close-range sword attack at your disposal, but there’s enough variety to not feel boring.

Morally, there isn’t much to be shocked about. There is some violence, and Bones will need to use his sword in order to defeat his foes. Enemies will be eviscerated onscreen in half but will quickly disappear afterwards; most enemies are robotic, but can be mistaken for humanoid. Likewise, blood that is shed is most likely oil or robotic fluids; other than that, everything else is rather family-friendly.

The biggest fault Dogurai has is that there’s not really anything to entice a repeat playthrough. While you can unlock Bones’ friend, there’s really nothing to explore after your first two-hour playthrough. There is a harder difficulty that caps your attempts with a lives system (the normal mode gives you unlimited lives), but other than that… let’s just say that the $4.99 price tag is appropriate here.