Pupperazzi is a chill game about taking photos of very good dogs

Pupperazzi is a simple concept, and one I am in love with. It's a sandbox game where you get to chill out with some excellent pups and take lots of lovely photos of them. This is essentially what I do whenever I visit my family, so I've truly been training for this game my whole life. Over the weekend, one of the game's developers talked through some of the game's development while playing Pupperazzi during the Media Indie Exchange Game Dev Direct, and it's absolutely wonderful stuff. Just wait until you see Sea Dog.

Developed by Sundae Month (the folks who made Diaries Of A Spaceport Janitor), Pupperazzi looks a lot like what you'd get if Nintendogs merged with Pokémon Snap - a very nice combo indeed. You basically play as a walking camera who's given tasks to take pics of specific pups. Or you can just wander around and play with them if you like. I feel like I'd find it quite easy to forget about the camera part.

The game is singleplayer, but according to Sundae Month co-owner Ryan Huggins, that wasn't always the plan.

"When we started working on Pupperazzi, it was actually a multiplayer couch co-op/competitive dog photography game," he said during a Black Voices In Gaming interview at the Game Dev Direct. "From there we transitioned to the singleplayer experience because we were finding people didn't really wanna compete with each other, they really just wanted to take photos of dogs."

Which, yeah. Sounds about right. Catch the full interview and some gameplay snippets in the Twitch vid below.

One of the tasks they go through here is taking a snap of Sea Dog, a delightful little fella in a rain hat and coat, perched in a chair outside his camera shop. They also throw some sticks to get a load of dogs to play, and just generally have a nice wander. It's all rather peaceful.

An interesting thing Huggins mentions is that you can't actually pet the dogs from the outset, though. A strange choice considering people sure do love petting dogs in video games, however, it's a choice I respect. Perhaps more games should make us earn our dog-petting capabilities.

If you fancy keeping an eye on Pupperazzi, do check out its Steam page. There's no set release date just yet, but there are a bunch of updates with loads of nice pup pics.