To the Rescue!: A Dog Shelter Simulator
is a Simulation Game developed by Little Rock Games and published by Freedom Games. It was released on Steam and the Epic Games Store on November 2, 2021. The player is put in charge of managing a dog shelter, and their tasks include caring for the dogs, getting them adopted, teaching them tricks, treating diseases, and euthanising them. Part of the game's profits are donated to real dog shelters.
On August 26, 2024, development was transferred to indie.io to "pick up where Little Rock Games left off and continue making improvements".
This game contains examples of:
- Adjustable Censorship: This game shows the difficulties of running a shelter by having the player euthanize rescue dogs if they can't take care of them until they get adopted. However, this can be replaced with sending the dog away to another shelter.
- All Dogs Are Purebred: While the different breeds featured are based on popular dog breeds, the majority of the dogs that arrive at your shelter are implied to be mixed-breed unless "Purebred" is one of their traits.
- Bland-Name Product: You can advertise your dog shelter by making Barkbook (Facebook) and LeashedIn (LinkedIn) accounts starting on Week 2 in Story Mode.
- Canine Companion: Besides the various dogs that arrive at your shelter, you have your pet dog that stays in your office.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The four dog food brands are given different colors, and you have to give your dogs the correct ones or else they'll poop more often. The four vaccines for infections are also color-coded, with the fifth euthanizing vaccine being black and stored in a separate cabinet.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You can name your character, their dog, and the shelter anything.
- Informed Deformity: You can check your dogs' health conditions (which are not to be confused with infections, which are cured with vaccines) in their folders. Some of them have deformities such as being three-legged, but they'll always look healthy unless they get infected.
- Modular Difficulty: You can adjust the game's difficulty by modifying the speed of the In-Universe Game Clock and rate at which diseases spread between dogs, among others.
- Personality Mechanic: Each dog has several traits listed in their profile, and customers ask for specific types when looking for dogs to adopt. Some traits make dogs aggressive and fight each other when they're placed in the same kennel.
- Real-Time Weapon Change: You can cycle between your various dog care tools that you can pick up in your shelter, which can be upgraded in order to carry more.
- Sidequest: You can accept sidequests called Grants, which you complete by accomplishing tasks such as vaccinating your dogs and making sure the overall welfare is above a certain percentage. You have five working days to complete Grants and earn money from them, but you won't be penalized if you fail. You also receive two new Grantsnote to pick one from every five working days.
- Tech Tree: You earn Skill Points at the end of the day by successfully adopting out dogs, which you can spend on four different skill trees to unlock new skills in handling, logistics, public relations, and handiwork. You can also exchange your Reputation for Skill Points.