As much as I would like to recommend this game, the buggy nature of the game prevents me from doing so. Issues with animations just not working, detection in some areas not working, and getting stuck in some objects prevents me from doing so.

So if you do buy it, make lots of save and be prepared to reload a lot.

Animal Shelter 2: Prologue is a demo for the new release coming soon (Q2 2025) by Games Incubator. It's a simulator game about renovating a warehouse, and running a pet shelter for dogs and cats.

When you get started, you spawn outside the building and you have to clear some rubble. After that you get started with the missions. Taking in a cat or dog to look after. They'll come to you dirty, hungry, sad and thirsty and you have to bring them back to health. Afterwards you take a photo and you can put them up for adoption. Filtering through adopters and their requirements.

The character movement feels fine; you can walk, run, crouch. The graphics look nice. I loved the Autumn setting and the location outside of the animal shelter. Could use more decorations for the cages but I'm sure the full game will include those. Cats should have litter trays. More variety in the posters would be appreciated. There are a lot of repeating designs within viewing distance of each other. Some of the UI designs don't look consistent. The pets look fine. I was told they look more realistic than in the 1st game. The music is okay, but there was a glitch where if you mute it and sleep, the next day it'll still play music. The game interactions are okay. I'd prefer if there was some more resistance with clearing the rubble since it would take you longer than 1 click to clear something. Maybe putting them in bin bags and putting it into a skip. You can throw a ball for dogs and play with a laser pointer for cats. Ball isn't bouncy and feels like throwing a rock. Picking up the pets makes them feel a bit lifeless in your hands. I prefer petting the animals. The game does have replayability because it is fun playing with the pets and getting them ready for adoption. I wish there were more camera effects for taking photos and viewing them full-size afterwards. Also if you put them up for adoption and use those photos, sometimes they'll be gone from the gallery. Usually the Steam screenshots will look better.

The game missions are okay, they seem a tad uninspired. They all follow a similar pattern and it would be nice to have some variety. Such as a good mix of cleaning, renovation and animal care tasks. Not every mission is well explained; I got stuck at the dog grooming task because the shower head wasn't immediately visible at the washing station. The animals could use more variety for different breeds for dogs i.e. Labrador retriever, German / Anatolian shepherd, Great pyrenees, Cocker / Springer spaniel or for cats i.e. Devon rex, Sphynx, British long or shorthair, Maine ♥♥♥♥. I got the same 2 dogs and the same 3 cats in my shelter. I assume there'll be more in the full release. It would be nice if the pets could come in with different ailments. Or if they had different personality types. You could see if they are more timid to come and play or not. There isn't enough variety in toys. The optimisation is poor. It takes a long time to load in and sometimes the game crashes. I tried playing co-op with my friend and he had problems loading in. Had problems voting to sleep. When my friend disconnected, I still couldn't go to sleep because the game thought he was still there. I had to reload the save file. The NPCs are bad. The cat NPCs act very slow and struggle to get up on the cat shelves. Whenever the next day loads, you'll get a different worker model with the same character name. They change model and can be spawned in with an entirely different race. They walk through walls and the pet cages. It would be nice if you could have more dialogue options between the NPCs. There's also an adoption bug where you don't have a say in whether you want the person to adopt them or not. I didn't decide to give them the pet, but then the NPC stands around awkwardly and the next day my pet was gone. I had to reload my save to prevent them.

Overall, this game does have a lot of bugs. I do have faith in the dev team and assume that in the full release these problems will be ironed out. For now, this is just a preview of what's to come. I think it's still cute and nice.

5/10

good