There are approximately one billion games floating around the world wide web that have you hiting, shooting, or throwing an object as far as you possibly can. They’re popular because of their fun simplicity, but at the same time any new game in the genre has its work cut out for it. At first The Flying Dog seems like a game that will consume quite a bit of your time; after all, it’s all about using an elephant’s trunk to smash a dog through the air. Who wouldn’t love that? Unfortunately, its dead simple gameplay, lack of social features, and obtrusive ads make this a game good for little more than a few minutes of fun.
There are approximately one billion games floating around the world wide web that have you hiting, shooting, or throwing an object as far as you possibly can. They’re popular because of their fun simplicity, but at the same time any new game in the genre has its work cut out for it. At first The Flying Dog seems like a game that will consume quite a bit of your time; after all, it’s all about using an elephant’s trunk to smash a dog through the air. Who wouldn’t love that? Unfortunately, its dead simple gameplay, lack of social features, and intrusive ads make this a game good for little more than a few minutes of fun.
Really, there’s only one thing you do in this game. And that’s grab hold of an elephant’s trunk and swing it like a golf club. But instead of a ball, you’re hitting an adorable little puppy complete with an old fashioned aviator helmet. Then, you wait. The goal is to go as far as possible, and the faster you swing the farther you’ll go. Problem is, once you’re in the air there is absolutely nothing to do other than watch. You can’t interact with the dog at all once it’s airborne, and though several power-ups are listed as coming soon, none were available at the time of this writing.
This can get quite boring. At one point, after a pretty successful swing that left my dog flying for what seemed like forever, I decided to get up and make a coffee. When I returned, my dog was still in the air. I managed to drink most of the coffee and even send off a few emails before the dog was finished. That’s simply too long.
To make matters worse, not only does it take forever for a round to complete when you do well, it’s also pretty boring to watch. Most of the time it’s just a flying dog against a plain blue sky. Sometimes you’ll see clouds or trees, and when the dog hurdles towards the ground it’ll often bounce off of frogs that act as trampolines. But watching a dog fly is nowhere near as fun as it sounds, and it doesn’t even sound that fun.
You can, of course, compare high scores with your friends, so there’s a competitive element to the game. There are also regular tournaments, though you’ll need to spend some premium currency to get into them. You’ll also have to deal with pretty intrusive ads that pop up regularly and attempt to disguise themselves as regular Facebook notices.
The core set-up of The Flying Dog is goofy enough to get you interested, but there’s nothing to keep you playing. It’s possible that the inclusion of power-ups in a future update will make it closer to an Apollo 69-style game, which is to say it’ll actually be fun, but right now there simply isn’t enough to do and each session takes far too long to complete. There’s a novelty factor inherent to smacking dogs with elephant trunks, but it wears off very quickly.
