Summary

Release Year: 2018
Genres: Adventure, Indie, Racing, Simulator, Sport
Platforms: PC (Microsoft Windows)
Developers: FastGame
Publishers: FastGame

Who’s a good franchise? Not quite yet, but “Good Boy!” is a promising start. Developed by three-person studio Leafstack Games and published by indie specialists Daedalic, this is a bite-sized stealth-scouting romp that casts you as the world’s cutest double agent: a tail-wagging, face-licking corgi who has to infiltrate a James-Bond-meets-John-Wick criminal underworld. The elevator pitch alone—Metal Gear Solid with belly rubs—was enough to make the reveal trailer rocket up Reddit last winter. After chewing through the full 6-to-8-hour campaign across PC and Steam Deck, I can confirm the premise is every bit as irresistible as it sounds, even if the package around it sometimes feels more like a promising proof of concept than a top-tier contender.

STORY – TAILS OF ESPIONAGE

You are Agent Biscuit, a highly trained therapy dog stolen from a children’s hospital and repurposed by the global spy collective H.A.W.K.S. to infiltrate the villainous feline syndicate C.L.A.W. If that sentence made you roll your eyes, “Good Boy!” probably won’t win you over; the writing leans hard into Saturday-morning cartoon cheese, right down to pun-laden codenames and a boss cat who strokes a hairless hamster instead of a white cat. But it’s self-aware enough to earn laughs rather than groans, and the game is surprisingly restrained with meme humor—no “doge” jokes in sight. Cutscenes are brief 2-D comic panels with full voice work that punches above an indie budget, and the story does just enough to contextualize each infiltration without overstaying its welcome. By the end credits you’ll have learned exactly three pieces of backstory and witnessed exactly one heartfelt twist, but it’s a Saturday cartoon you’ll gladly finish.

GAMEPLAY – BARK & SNEAK

“Good Boy!” plays like a top-down stealth-lite in the vein of “Mark of the Ninja” or “Wildfire” but pared down for pick-up-and-play sessions. Each mission plops you into a diorama-sized compound patrolled by guards with vision cones, security cameras, laser grids, and, because this is a pet-themed fantasy, the occasional vacuum-cleaner boss (dogs hate those). Your core verbs are: bark to distract, sniff to tag enemies through walls, crawl to hide under furniture, and “puppy eyes” to temporarily charm a hostile into lowering their weapon. Controls are blessedly simple—one button for context-sensitive interactions, one for sprint, one for a context kill that knocks out rather than murders. No lethal options keeps the tone light and means you never have to worry about body disposal, but it also removes a layer of tension that stealth aficionados crave.

Level design is refreshingly vertical. Biscuit can clamber onto shelving, air ducts, and the occasional Roomba to access alternate routes, and the game’s best set-piece is a museum heist in which you scamper across dangling paintings like a furry Indiana Jones. Enemy AI is serviceable: guards investigate disturbances in predictable patterns, and their sight cones elongate on harder difficulties. But they’re a tad too willing to forget that their buddy just went missing after hearing a suspicious bark. On the normal setting, I completed most missions by simply sprint-circling enemies and chaining “puppy eyes” stuns. Crank it up to “Goodest Boy” difficulty, however, and the margin for error shrinks dramatically; cameras kill you in two shots and alerted guards call reinforcements. The jump is welcome, though the lack of mid-level saves feels punitive in the longer stages.

Where the gameplay sings is in its gadget system. Between missions you spend collectible bones on toys that double as spy gear: a squeaky grenade that emits a bark chorus, a tennis-ball drone you can manually pilot, and a chew-rope grappling hook that opens ceiling hatches. Each gadget is single-use until you escape, encouraging creative improvisation rather than brute-forcing every room. Leafstack squeezes three or four clever puzzles out of each toy before introducing the next, so the campaign never stagnates. My favorite moment combined the drone with a timed laser grid: I piloted the ball through a vent, knocked a security switch, then sprint-hopped across the temporarily disabled lasers like a caffeinated Super Meat Boy.

PROGRESSION & REPLAY VALUE

There’s no RPG stat grind; instead, replay incentive comes from arcade scoring and optional objectives—finish a level without being spotted, collect every hidden squeaky toy, and escape within six minutes to earn a three-bone rating. Online leaderboards are already populated with speed-runners who exploit roll-canceling to shave seconds off animations, and Leafstack has embraced them, patching in a ghost-mode that lets you race against the current world record. For the rest of us, there are 20 unlockable dog breeds (cosmetic only) and a New Game+ that remixes patrol routes. It’s not a mountain of content, but a perfect “one more mission” game for a lazy Sunday.

GRAPHICS & STYLE

Art direction is the star here. The top-down camera sits just close enough to appreciate Biscuit’s silky ears flutter as he scampers, and just far enough to read guard patrols at a glance. Environments pop with pastel colorways—lavender security lasers, tangerine sunset skylines, neon noodle-shop signage that reflects in puddles. Character animations are fluid, especially Biscuit’s roll, which ends with a tiny butt-wiggle. My only gripe is environmental variety: you’ll infiltrate a casino, a cargo ship, and a skyscraper penthouse, but they reuse tile sets so aggressively that only color palettes distinguish them. Still, on Steam Deck the game runs a locked 60 fps with 6–7 W battery draw, making it an ideal travel companion.

AUDIO – WHO’S A GOOD SOUND DESIGN?

Sound is crucial in stealth, and “Good Boy!” nails the fundamentals. Footsteps, metal grates, and carpeted floors produce distinct audio, and guards vocalize a three-tiered alert system. Bark frequencies occupy a separate audio layer, so you can always tell whether an enemy is investigating your squeak or simply clearing their throat. The score is a bouncy, jazzy affair heavy on brushed drums and muted trumpets, evoking Ocean’s 11 more than Mission Impossible. It dynamically shifts to a tense minor key when spotted, then resolves back to major once you break line of sight. Composer Melos Han-Tani (yes, of “Anodyne” fame) delivers yet another earworm soundtrack you’ll happily throw on Spotify.

PERFORMANCE & POLISH

On launch day I hit exactly one progression-blocking bug: a guard clipped into a doorway and couldn’t be charmed, forcing a checkpoint restart. A patch within 24 hours fixed it, and in six hours on Steam Deck I saw no crashes, no frame drops, and proper 16:10 display scaling. That’s more than I can say for certain AAA releases this year. Load times are sub-two seconds on an NVMe drive, and the game weighs a feather-light 4 GB. Ultrawide support is present but not perfect: comic-panel cutscenes pillarbox, and the field-of-view slider only goes to 100, so 32:9 monitors feel cramped.

LENGTH & PRICING

$19.99 USD nets you the base game; there’s no battle pass, cosmetics shop, or “Deluxe Bark Edition.” Six hours is an honest estimate for a single credits roll, eight if you’re a completionist, 12–15 if you chase three-bone ratings on every map. At roughly three bucks per hour, value hinges on how much you’ll revisit for leaderboard glory. Personally, I squeezed another four hours out of New Game+ and still boot it for a daily speed-run, so I’ve already hit the coveted sub-$1 per entertainment hour threshold.

ACCESSIBILITY

Options are respectable: customizable subtitle size/color, full controller remapping, color-blind friendly vision cones, and an “Assist Mode” that slows enemy reaction times or grants infinite gadget uses. You can’t skip combat entirely, but you can make stealth forgiving enough for younger kids or reflex-limited players, aligning perfectly with the family-friendly vibe.

WHAT’S MISSING

“Good Boy!” feels like the prototype for a bigger, deeper sequel. There’s no cooperative Bark-Ops mode, no level editor, and no cross-save between PC and the upcoming Switch release. Enemy types top out at five variants, so later missions rely on quantity rather than creative new counters. And while the story ends on a sequel-bait cliffhanger, the campaign doesn’t provide a true hub area or any narrative choices that would warrant a second playthrough for story reasons alone.

FINAL VERDICT – SHOULD YOU PET THIS PUP?

“Good Boy!” delivers exactly what it promises on the tin: a charming, low-stakes stealth game that you can finish in a single evening and smile about for weeks. It doesn’t revolutionize the genre, but it smartly distills the dopamine hit of outwitting patrols into digestible 15-minute chunks, then wraps it in production values that belie its three-person team. Hardcore stealth fans will devour the leaderboards and crave more systemic depth, while casual players get a breezy introduction to sneaking without the sadism of “Tenchu” or “Syndicate”-era save scarcity.

If you’re looking for 60 hours of open-world bloat, look elsewhere. If you want a tight, tail-wagging experience that respects your time, wallet, and Steam Deck battery, call off the search. Leafstack’s debut is a very good dog that just needs a little more training to be truly great. Bring on the sequel—preferably with co-op dachshunds and a sausage-link grappling hook—and I’ll happily throw even more bones their way.