30
minutes
€23
cost
2-4
players
Game overview
Dog Lover is a set collection game in which you will collect cards to feed your dogs or give them toys.
At the beginning of the game, everyone has 1 starting dog and a trick. This trick tells you in what way you may take cards from the market of 3×3 cards. These cards can be new dogs, but also food or dog toys. Food cards you turn in immediately for the corresponding food cube and may be placed on a dog at any time. Dogs have a certain food request and only score points if they are fully fed and minus points if they are not. It is therefore important to make sure that you do not have too many dogs and too little food.
In addition to feeding dogs, you can also unlock new tricks that allow you to grab more cards. With certain cards you can get dogs from the animal shelter, these dogs give you points in a special way. Finally, you can also collect dog toys for which you get points for each unique toy in your collection.
The game is over when the last round of cards has been picked and everyone has had an equal number of turns. The player with the most points has taken the best care of the dogs and wins the game!
Our thoughts
Are you a cat or dog person? Actually, the answer to that question doesn't matter, because AEG has both the Cat Lady and Dog Lover games. Dog Lover is the successor of Cat Lady. We have Dog Lover in our collection. A card game that reminds us of the time when Nintendogs was all the rage. Take care of cute puppies? You can do that now in Dog Lover!
Dog Lover is a set collection card game with a super cute theme. Personally, we love both dogs and cats, so for us, the version we play doesn't necessarily matter. However, Dog Lover is the version with a little more options. Because the game is made after Cat Lady, Dog Lover contains several improvements. We ourselves have played Cat Lady via the app and we can conclude that Dog Lover is the slightly more advanced version of Cat Lady. We would therefore prefer Dog Lover.
Dog Lover is a fast and light card game that you can also explain to new players within a few minutes. Thanks to the cute theme, the game will also appeal to many people. That's good, because then you'll have a fun game to play anyway! We really like Dog Lover. The changes from Cat Lady make Dog Lover more challenging and playful, without making the game too difficult or elaborate.
Set collection games we often find enjoyable with both 2 and more players. This is also true with Dog Lover. The game plays smoothly and quickly, even with 4 players. It's your turn before you know it. It really is a typical game that after playing you immediately want to do it again because it went by so quickly. The only drawback to this we find is the set up. For a simple game, setting up Dog Lover is still quite a bit of work. You have to pick out a lot of cards and this feels like quite a chore. This is the only reason why we might not play Dog Lover again right away. Other than that, Dog Lover has the potential to be on the table often for us!
If you are a fan of dogs and simple set collection games, then Dog Lover is definitely a game that should not be missing from your collection. Success guaranteed!
Pros and cons
+ Fun theme
+ Easy, simple and fast
+ Plays smoothly even with 4 players
+ Nice modifications compared to Cat Lady
- Set up takes quite some time
