When video games are created, they may be unique but they also stand on the backs of games that inspired their developers. This is true ofTo The Rescue!, an upcoming indie dog shelter simulator game by Little Rock Games. The game is about caring for a shelter, its dogs, and getting people to adopt. It joins the ranks of manysimulator gameson the market, but there were particular titles that gave Little Rock Games some inspiration.
The games that inspired parts ofTo The Rescue!includeStardew Valley, Prison Architect,andAnimal Crossing, all life-simulator experiences with different mechanics and styles. Game Rant spoke with the couple behind Little Rock Games, Tanner Marshall and Olivia Dunlap, who shared what inspired their game and also what makes it start apart from other simulators.
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Games That Inspired To The Rescue!
From the beginning,To The Rescue!was a game about saving dogs. Dunlap and Marshall began working on the game as an undergrad hobby, and it developed into a more serious project as they discovered its potential. Since it is the first digital game Little Rock Games has created, they looked at other games for ideas. Marshall said, “The biggest one that we always throw out is probablyPrison Architect.” There were a lot of design inspirations in terms of particular ways the inmates have file folders with parts of their backstory like why they’re there.
“There is a fundamental similarity between making sure each entity you’re caring for has a dedicated space and all the resources they need, and managing that as the population grows and hopefully getting people through the facility. That’s probably the closest design inspiration, but we sort of sampled a lot of different things. To The Rescue! is a sim management game, but you’re taking more of a first-person perspective in terms of it being up to you to manage everything on a special scale.”
Dunlap said they also looked at games likeStardew ValleyandAnimal Crossing. She said they’re both really cute games that probably have a lot of audience overlap, but also let players control a specific character - as opposed toPrison Architect, in which players simply look over everything and build structures.
“We really wanted to have that sort of personal interaction cause we really wanted to emphasize you getting to know the dogs, the individual dogs, not just numbers. That was something from Prison Architect we decided to really modify and change, because we liked the way they represented these things but it was completely optional and it was sort of just window-dressing. We wanted it to be an integral part of the game.”
One trait ofTo The Rescue!that set it apart from simulators is some of the difficult topics the game addresses, such as euthanasia. Dunlap and Marshall decided to put euthanasia in their game as a way to respectfully show the sort of difficult decisions real shelters go through (though players have an option to opt-out of this mechanic).
With such a serious topic addressed, they also looked into narrative games that touched upon the subject of death. Dunlap said, “Because we are representing some of the harder things in running a dog shelter, we also looked at some games that address difficult topics in really interesting ways.” One such game that helped inspire them wasA Mortician’s Tale, ashort narrative gamefrom 2017 by Laundry Bear Games that’s about death and working in a funeral home.
To The Rescue!is releasing on November 4 on Mac, PC, and Switch.
