Doggo Estates

I'll be straight with you: I cover shooters, and someone on the team thought it would be funny to throw this one at me. Fine. Doggo Estates is a third-person competitive party game where you pick one of 10 dog breeds and sprint around a suburban neighborhood marking houses before your opponents do. Your bladder is your resource bar, bones scattered around the map top it up, and the dog who claims the most properties when the timer runs out wins. That is the whole game. No ranked ladder. No weapon loadouts. No movement tech to learn. Just dogs, urine, and traffic hazards trying to ruin your run. The core loop is tighter than it has any right to be. Managing your liquid reserves while prioritizing uncontested houses over already-claimed ones creates a low-key strategic layer, and the traffic mechanic - where cars can wipe you out mid-sprint - adds just enough chaos to make a round feel eventful. Rooms support up to 8 players, and with a full lobby the map gets genuinely frantic. There is also a solo mode added post-launch, which is fine for learning the layout but collapses fast without human opponents to actually race against. Here is where I have to be honest about the problems. Community feedback flags laggy controls and shaky multiplayer support, which are not minor complaints in a game where the entire competitive hook depends on real-time positioning. The player population appears very thin, and thin populations in a lobby-dependent party game is a serious issue - finding strangers to fill a room is not guaranteed. The game spent time in Early Access before its 1.0 release in February 2024, and while the developers added controller support, achievements, and a single-player mode during that window, the fundamentals of netcode and matchmaking seem to have remained undercooked for some players. From my angle, the netcode conversation is the one that matters most. If you are buying this for a private session with friends using the invite system, the lag reports become less of a dealbreaker since you control the lobby. If you are hoping to hop into public matches regularly, the low concurrent user count makes that a gamble. Controller support is fully in - which is the right call for a couch-style party game - and the colorful art direction reads clearly on a monitor at any reasonable resolution. Nothing here taxes your rig. At its price point this is clearly designed as a throwaway multiplayer novelty, the kind of thing that belongs in a group chat alongside a "who wants to play something stupid for 20 minutes" message. Taken on those terms, it mostly delivers. Taken as anything more, it runs out of content faster than your dog runs out of hydration mid-match. Buy it with friends or don't buy it at all. Fred, Scout Team