Rescue: The Beagles Review

Rescue: The Beagles is an arcade-like platformer developed by Nenad Jalsovec and published with the help of Whining Girl. I’m gonna be honest, I saw puppies and decided to review it. So uh… I have nothing to say here, so let’s get right into it.

In this game, you play as either Edwin or Nicole (both in co-op) as they rescue puppies from very dastardly scientists who are using them for their sick experiments. Very, very not cool. In order to beat the levels, you’ll need to rescue every beagle and not die in the process. If a single dog leaves the screen, that’s a lost life so you had better have your eyes peeled at all times. You go until you die and get to put your name up on the high-score table.

It isn’t all that easy though, as these levels are dangerous, full of enemies, obstacles, and drops that will definitely kill you. However, you have a few tools to help you out. You have ropes to ascend to levels you can’t reach and parachutes to descend safely because there is fall damage, and you will lose a life. There are medkits, but they’re for healing injured beagles, which means more points. You can also recruit owls to help you deal with enemies. And what I mean by “deal with”, what I mean is “throw owls at them until they explode”. That’s, uh, some weird priorities. Along your mission, you might also find goji berries, and collecting them will make you completely invincible and kill anything in one shot. The challenges you will face will get harder as the game goes on, from more enemies and deadlier landscapes, but you aren’t totally screwed here. Between levels, you can upgrade your character to make them better at their job, such as improving their running speed, being able to attract beagles, or increasing their resistance to toxic sludge. There are a few upgrades that didn’t seem all that useful, such as the aforementioned run speed, but I wouldn’t say they are active detriments.

And that’s everything I can say about the gameplay. It’s fast and requires a lot of on-the-spot thinking, as your resources are limited and these beagles can be tricky to get to before they hit the edge of the screen. It’s fun… but I do have an issue with the fall damage. There are drops that are tricky to judge if they are survivable or not, which can feel unfair. I’ve definitely died plenty of times because it looked like I was one centimetre too high to make it. The parallaxing levels are at least pretty clear enough to navigate without much trouble.

Actually, allow me to talk about the looks and sounds of the game. I liked the art style, although it could’ve been at a slightly higher fidelity, and I think some colour palettes can be very hard on the eyes for extended periods of time. As for the sounds, they are nice, but as far as I can tell there are only two soundtracks.

Rescue: The Beagles is decently fun but in short bursts. It is an arcade game, after all. It’s not bad at all, but I’m just not feeling all that much here. I do prefer more complex games than this, but this is like a nice coffee break instead of a full lunch. And hey, eating together is way more enjoyable than being alone.

You know, I should really eat before I write these reviews…