Pets No More

I went into Pets No More expecting a gimmick dressed up as a sports game, and honestly, that's mostly what I got. The core loop is disc-based air hockey: you pick one of six zombie pet characters, step into an arena, and try to fire a puck into the opposing goal before a best-of-three decides who moves on. Controls are minimal. You run, you dash, you hold the hit button to charge a faster return, and your left stick steers the aim. That's the whole toolkit. There's no ranked ladder, no online matchmaking, no progression system. The closest comparison is early Windjammers, stripped down to its barest skeleton. The six arenas are where the concept at least tries something. Each one has a different shape and some include destructible blocks scattered around the court in a Breakout-style layout, which sounds like it should create tactical positioning. In practice, the puck moves fast enough that those blocks vaporize within the first ten seconds of a round, and then you're left with a plain back-and-forth that plays almost like a pinball machine where neither player has much agency. The special shots each character carries sound like a differentiator on paper, but the trajectory is unpredictable enough that they become own-goal generators more than offensive weapons. The aiming itself feels inconsistent, and the hitbox on your character extends a little past what the sprite suggests, which means you can cheese some of the narrower arenas by parking in the middle and spamming the button. That's not depth, that's a exploit waiting to happen in a couch session. Single player ships with an Arcade mode where you run through the six AI opponents in sequence. It's a short campaign, and the AI is only available there, which is an odd restriction. Versus mode supports up to four players locally in 1v1 or 2v2 configurations, and the 2v2 format is genuinely the best version of this game. When there are four warm bodies on a couch and the rounds are moving at pace, the chaos becomes fun for a round or two. But there is no online play at all, so if your living room isn't stocked with humans, the solo offering runs dry fast. Steam user reviews sit at roughly 52% positive from a very thin sample, which tracks with the community's general shrug. The aesthetic has something going for it. There's a late-90s cartoon energy to the character art, the arenas are colorful, and the original soundtrack fits the arcade vibe. It's a budget-tier title from a small Argentine studio, and for what it costs it's not trying to be anything it isn't. The problem is that the mechanical layer underneath the style isn't deep enough to hold attention past a single session. If Purple Tree had leaned harder into the Breakout elements or added any kind of post-match progression, this could have been a solid ten-dollar party game. As shipped, it's a one-trick couch game with no online component, no achievements, and content that you'll exhaust in under an hour.

Fred · Scout Team

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