Little Friends: Puppy Island

Introduction

For an entire generation who grew up with a Nintendo DS and a virtual dog to feed, walk and pet through a tiny touchscreen, that specific kind of game has been genuinely hard to find on modern platforms. Little Friends: Puppy Island, released 27 June 2023 by Big Blue Bubble and published by Fireshine Games, sets out to fill exactly that gap — rescuing and caring for stray dogs on a tropical island, building out a puppy sanctuary as you go. It sits Very Positive with English-speaking players, 94.5% across 238 reviews, and reading through more than two years of that sample turns up a rare kind of consistency: genuine, dated nostalgia satisfaction on one side, and an almost unanimous price objection on the other.

Filling a real, specific gap

The praise here isn't generic — it's remarkably specific about what audience this serves and why. One reviewer states plainly the game "filled the hole that Nintendogs left in my heart." Another, who had played the original Little Friends on Switch and found it lacking, specifically credits this sequel with going "all in on the wacky/adventure side of having a dog" in a way the earlier game never managed. The petting system draws repeated, specific comparison to Nintendogs' original touchscreen mechanic, with more than one reviewer noting it translates unexpectedly well to Steam Deck's touch controls specifically because of that shared DNA. Performance across platforms earns consistent praise too — reviewers report smooth performance on both Steam Deck and Linux, unusual consistency for a game this visually detailed.

A price complaint that never really goes away

Set against all of that goodwill, one theme dominates the critical side of this review's sample so thoroughly it's hard to overstate: the price. The most-upvoted review in the entire sample, posted the day after launch, opens by calling the price "way too steep for a game like this" before detailing specific mechanical complaints. That framing repeats, almost word for word, across the following two-plus years: reviewers in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 alike independently arrive at the same conclusion — the experience itself is charming and worth having, but not at NZ$56.99, with recommendations to wait for a sale showing up in a striking share of even the positive reviews. Multiple reviewers who did complete the game report doing so in 10 to 24 hours, a runtime several explicitly weigh against the asking price and find wanting.

Specific limits that compound the price complaint

Beyond the general "too expensive for too little" framing, several reviewers point to specific mechanical choices that make the content feel thinner than it should. The game's own top review identifies a design decision that actively works against the adoption fantasy the game is built on: no matter how many strays you rescue, only the three most recently adopted dogs can actually live in your garden at a time, with no way to choose or rotate which ones stay active — meaning earlier, presumably beloved rescues simply vanish from view. The breed roster, capped at nine dogs with colour variants, draws a remarkably consistent wishlist request across years of reviews rather than fading as a launch-week gripe. And the minigames tied to specific map obstacles are repeatedly singled out as poorly designed busywork, with reviewers specifically wishing for a way to skip them rather than replay the same short sequence at every recurring obstacle.

A minority report on stability

Most of this review's sample treats the game as technically solid, but at least one detailed 2024 review breaks from that consensus meaningfully: describing crashes roughly once per hour and a specific, reproducible soft-lock triggered by opening a menu at the same moment a dog interaction is playing out. That's a minority account rather than a dominant pattern in this sample, but it's specific and detailed enough to flag for anyone particularly sensitive to stability issues, rather than dismiss as an isolated hardware problem.

Not everyone is chasing the same memory

It's worth noting that a small but consistent minority of reviewers arrive expecting a much closer Nintendogs replica and come away disappointed on those specific terms, rather than on price. One reviewer states directly, "this is NOT like Nintendogs to be very clear," pointing to missing competition modes, shallower feeding and bathing systems with no meaningful variation in actions available, and a general feeling that the loop is "running around, unlocking stuff and playing tedious minigames rather than having meaningful interactions with the puppies." That's a genuinely different complaint from the price objection dominating the rest of the sample — it's a question of whether the game delivers the specific depth of care-taking interaction Nintendogs offered, not whether it's worth the money. Buyers whose nostalgia centres specifically on training and competitions, rather than the broader adventure and collection loop this game emphasises instead, should weigh that distinction carefully before buying at any price.

Final Verdict

Little Friends: Puppy Island earns its Very Positive reception by doing something genuinely rare well: reviving a specific, beloved handheld-era genre for players who have been missing it for years, with charm and polish that land as intended for the overwhelming majority of this review's sample. What keeps the score from climbing higher is equally clear and remarkably durable across more than two years of feedback — a premium price that the game's own fans, repeatedly and independently, say the short runtime, limited breed roster and repetitive minigames don't justify. Recommended warmly for anyone missing Nintendogs specifically; just follow the overwhelming advice of this game's own reviewers and wait for a sale rather than paying full price.