REVIEW | Superfidos

Superfidos review | I’m a cat person but aren’t dogs lovely? I sure love them and in Superfidos we take control of Kenny, Lenny, and Max. Our three friends are a Sheppard, a French bulldog, and a Dachshund dog. This cute trio of furry heroes is humanity’s last hope as an evil warlock has kidnapped those who walk, feed and play with dogs. Superfidos is a platformer similar to the Paw Patrol games on Xbox, so it does have some stiff competition. The indie developer Red Suit Studios mentions ‘modernizing the open world platforming genre’ with their first game and Superfidos being open for all players. I started this review with that in mind. I do want to point out one crucial thing first though, despite its obvious intended audience this game is way too difficult for kids. A disappointing oversight from the developers but more on that in this review… oh and be sure to look up sugar gliders.

What we Liked!

• It has dogs | It is hard to write something positive. That’s not easy to say as someone who respects the developer. Making games isn’t easy but we have the commitment to write fair and honest reviews for our readers. Some crucial mistakes have been made with this game, losing track of the target audience is the biggest crime. More polish would have been welcome too, especially for the awful jump animation experience. At least it has three cute dogs… that makes up a little.

Mixed Feelings

• Decent variety in visual styles | Superfidos is like visiting Burgers’ Zoo in the Netherlands, it has all kinds of visual themes. Going from jungle, snow, ocean, or cave-themed levels. There is enough variation and our trio of dogs looks nice too. This kind of game can easily run on previous generations of consoles too but the love from the developers is pretty clear. It has a large amount of clipping issues though, so objects are overlapping making it a bit weird but I appreciated the effort in the scenery.

• Open world approach | About modernizing the open world platforming genre… that’s a bit of a laughable statement when you take a look at Superfidos. My understanding of an open world is a massive explorable world with secrets and the expectation to discover. In this game you simply go from level to level, separated by medium-sized loading screens. Some doors are locked by gems, I’m sorry but this isn’t even worth calling open world. The Ori games from Moon Studios are a thousand times more open-world than whatever Superfidos wants to be. The way the levels are structured isn’t bad as they require the player to collect gems to open doors to new places. It gives that rewarding feeling to a player and motivates them to continue playing.
  
  
• Type of dog for each difficulty | My first impression was really cool, I thought it was a wonderful idea that the difficulty was decided by which kind of dog you take as a playable character. That first positive impression quickly fades away as even the easy difficulty is still a pretty damn challenging experience for the younger gamers. For adult gamers, it is nice that the game can give a decent challenge, a bit like Paw Patrol on steroids. You have three main modes to pick from, which you decide by picking a dog breed. Kenny has the standard game experience, called Hero Mode. I would compare that difficulty with Rayman legends. Playing as Lenny is the easiest game mode you carry more items, and have more health, and the game balanced some things to make it less challenging. If you want to go Elden Ring style and die a million times you can pick Max, almost everything kills you instantly and boss fights are much more difficult.

What we Disliked

• Target audience and gameplay do not match | Superfidos is supposedly a family-friendly game, at first look that’s definitely the case. It tries to mimic why younger gamers love Paw Patrol so much, Superfidos adds a lot of personality and unique mechanics but by doing so alienates its target audience. Even in the easiest mode, the level design is confusing and the difficulty results in many restarts. It forces the player to replay large sections over and over again, I can’t imagine a kid having fun playing it. Even for an adult like me, I faced a lot of forced restarts as the platforming isn’t controlling great and some of the enemies have unfair attacks or positions. Making platforming mistakes is punished with restarts of the (short) levels, it would have been a better option if the easiest difficulty would have respawned you a few steps back. The biggest issue for younger players will be knowing when you have to travel back and progress to levels you visited before to reach new levels.

• Controls | I’m sorry to say as I don’t want to hurt the feeling of the developers but Superfidos has the worst jumping animations I have ever seen in a game. Jumping is incredibly slow as if Lenny, Kenny, and Max are sugar gliders and not dogs. This makes the entire game unpleasant to play, jumping is a large part of any platformer and especially in this game. It doesn’t help that the game is filled with platforming parts that ask to wait for moving obstacles, making the game even slower to play.
  
  
• Many annoyances while playing | From unskippable cutscenes to hilariously bad sound effects, the list of annoyances is definitely present. As I said before Superfidos plays really slowly, so I was constantly getting that feeling when someone is blocking the left side of the escalator. It isn’t always clear where you have to go either, causing more backtracking than I would have liked.

How long to beat the story | I did not finish the game, but around 8 hours (?)
How long to achieve 1000G | Requires multiple restarts of the game so +/- 25 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | I can’t recommend buying this game.

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