Dog Door
Every dog can finish the story. Your mix changes the way, never the ending.
What it is
You adopt a dog from the shelter and earn its trust on Birch Street. Each dog is a mix of two breeds, shown at the shelter with a card: its name, its cross (a Beagle × Siberian Husky, say), its size, and its two jobs, one from each parent. Tap Rename to give it a name of your own. Every dog is different, and every dog can finish the story.
Trust is the level-up. It starts on the leash, a walk to the park with Sam. Do what’s asked and trust grows, and it only ever goes up: pulling on the leash is never punished.
Three chapters
On the leash: sit at the curb, walk at heel, and fetch Sam’s dropped glove. Off the leash in the park: find Maya’s red mitten, follow a stranger’s scent and help the neighbours. And the ravine, where a raccoon who has been taking things becomes a friend, and you carry each thing back to its owner.
At 180 trust, Sam cuts the dog a door in the side gate, and the demo ends there. A card says what the full game holds next, and Keep exploring lets you stay on in the park and the ravine.
Your mix changes the way
Twelve parent breeds, six jobs (Track, Herd, Dig, Swim, Pull and Charm) and three sizes. The park has something for every job and every size: a small dog squeezes into the community garden, a large one reaches a kite in a tree, a Track dog finds a lost cat, and a Swim dog fetches a ball from the pond. The main story needs no job and no size.
Birch Street is full of people: Sam and Maya at home, and the neighbours and the kids in the park, who lose things, need help and remember who helped them.
How to play
- Walk and runThe stick, bottom left
- Look aroundDrag anywhere else; two fingers zoom
- ActAct does what the moment wants: sit, pick up, give, hop in
- Follow a scentHold Sniff to show the trails
- Your dog’s jobsThe two job buttons
The map and the journal sit at the top. The map shows where things are; the journal holds sound and detail, and Save to a file. Once you’ve turned the view, a compass by the map faces you north again.
On a desktop, WASD or the arrows move; Space or Enter acts; Shift sniffs; Q and E are the two jobs; M opens the map, J the journal, and N turns the sound on and off. Drag to look and use the wheel to zoom.
With a gamepad, the left stick or the D-pad walks; A acts; hold B to sniff; X and Y are the two jobs; the right stick looks around and the triggers zoom; Start opens the journal and Back the map.
What isn’t settled yet
It is for one player. Your dog lives in the browser it’s played in, so clearing the site’s data starts you over at the shelter; Save to a file in the journal keeps a copy, and the full game can load it. An older phone may struggle in the busiest scenes, like the park with all its neighbours out: the picture steps down by itself after a few seconds of slow frames, and the journal can set it lower. There is no music track, only the dog’s and the street’s sounds. The keys can’t be remapped, and it isn’t playable with a screen reader.
Build Log
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Build 47
Dog Door opened on launchwaygames.com as a demo. Adopt a mixed-breed dog from the shelter, a cross of two breeds with a job from each parent, and earn its trust on Birch Street over three chapters: the leash, the park and the ravine, where a raccoon becomes a friend. Trust is the level-up, and it only goes up: at 180, Sam cuts a dog door in the side gate, and every dog gets there, whatever its mix.
Credits and licences
Built on three.js, used under the MIT licence with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Typefaces are licensed under the SIL Open Font Licence. Cover drawn from the game’s own street, dog and raccoon code.
Dog Door is original work by Launchway Games.