Now you can become a puppy trainer on your 3DS! Feed, walk, clean, and teach tricks to all sorts of puppies with My Pet Puppy 3D. First, pick a breed and name your own puppy. After you pass the first test set of tricks to teach your own pup, you’ll be an official puppy trainer and can take on clients and help them teach their puppies and make everyone happy!

The kennel is the main area of the game. Here you can interact with your puppy or any of your clients’ dogs. Tap icons on the bottom screen to teach your puppy tricks, feed them, give them a bath, play with dog toys, go for a walk, or dress them up with accessories. Most of the activities here are automatic after you tap them, so there is less interactivity between you and your dog via the touch screen and stylus.

Teaching your doggie tricks is a little different in this game, too. For a dog to learn a command, you must play a mini-game where you press the L and R buttons in time with the music, like a little rhythm game. Not sure how this correlates into teaching puppies to sit, shake, and roll over, but at least you won’t look like a goof yelling into your 3DS.

When you are ready, hop over to the Puppy Kindergarten to take a test, where you must perform a bunch of tricks in succession. Meaning, you must play some of the rhythm game songs right in a row. If you pass, you’ll rise up the ranks of puppy trainers and can take on clients’ dogs to train and earn “Woofs,” the currency in the game.

At Puppy Kindergarten, you can take care of clients’ dogs. They’ll ask you to perform a certain task, like raise their puppies’ happiness, cleanliness, or obedience levels (represented by numbers), or you might have to teach them certain tricks. Once you fulfill a client’s request, you’ll return the puppy and earn Woofs.

Another way to earn Woofs is to take your main puppy for walks. Just select the ‘walk’ icon in the kennel, close your 3DS so it goes into sleep mode, and walk around with your 3DS. When you are done, the game will count how many steps you take and give you a certain amount of Woofs in correspondence.

You can spend these Woofs at the shop in the game. Buy accessories to dress up your dog, and also purchase toys, food, and shampoo. You only have to buy consumable items like food and shampoo once, and then it becomes permanently available in the kennel.

Kid Factor:

Reading skill and number recognition is helpful for the in-game text instructions, but most everything has picture cues, so it’s pretty easy to figure out. Most of the rhythm games are easy, too, but younger players might get frustrated at the difficulty of later ‘tricks.’ Even worse, your puppy can have mastered all available tricks, but still fail a test if its concentration and obedience levels are low. Even I didn’t quite understand how that part of the game worked. But keeping your dog happy, well-fed, and clean helps. While this game offers less interactivity than Nintendogs + Cats, younger gamers may be able to figure out this game quicker because of its simplicity. And since you don’t need the microphone to play, it’s a better type of game for ‘quiet time.’ While the activities are limited, your child won’t get bored for a long while what with all the different puppies to train and take care of. If your kids have mastered Nintendogs and can’t get enough of these virtual pet games, they may enjoy My Pet Puppy 3D as well, which is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews