Pup Champs Steam Charts & Stats

Have loved all of Afterburn's puzzle games, this one is possibly their best, really well made. Plays great, looks great, smart puzzle design.

I'm a huge fan of Afterburn. As a matter of fact, I've bought, played, and finished all their games (as of today, that is)! Pup Champs here is no exception. Though the game may not be very sophisticated in its' visuals, the beautiful art style and relatively simple yet challenging puzzles had me hooked. I had a blast playing through the game fully, at a time when there wasn't even a guide available for any of the levels (crazy difficult for me to do, but I managed!). The mechanics are simple to get a hold of, but you really have to work to understand how they can interact to help you score a goal as quickly as possible. Also, the trend of having drawings/cutscenes/mini-comics (?) occasionally in between levels continues from the previous two games, which is absolutely wonderful to see! I'd give Pup Champs a score of 9/10: it's not a quick game you can play in its' entirety in an evening, but you'll have a blast playing if you like brain teasers.

This game is ostensibly a turn-based soccer game featuring doggies facing off against other animal friends. In reality, it's a puzzle game where the ball needs to be dribbled or kicked around various obstacles within a limited number of moves to score a goal. Each pup has a unique kick style and distance that has to be used in turn. The opposing players will either move when you move, move when you kick, or create traps of some kind. The field also features various obstacles like leaf piles, mud pits, and traffic cones that obstruct you in different ways. The puzzles vary from very easy to exceptionally difficult. Having to account for each individual dribble and kick for four different players requires some serious brainpower. More than once, I watched a playthrough to at least get the opening few moves down. It's quite a fun challenge. The levels are accompanied by a comic in between stages that tells the story of a doggie dad coaching his kid to play soccer, being joined by his friends and then by other neighborhood kids. I played on my Steam Deck and it worked perfectly. No crashes or bugs.

super solid puzzler, sidesteps one of my most common gripes with the genre by telegraphing, with some thought, what dog is going to score the goal and letting one work backwards from there to iteratively build a solution. it's much more solid than even railbound, which i also liked. these folks just keep improving game on game

the game is very simple and fun, i recommend you all to buy it

It's incredibly fun, I haven't finished quite yet but it has gotten extremely challenging which I love for these games

I'm a huge fan of this dev having played all their games and they're my favourite puzzle-specific game developer and this game absolutely delivers. The puzzles are very well done, although a few I struggled with due to my aphantasia. I think the most remarkable thing with this one is how it solves one problem puzzle games run into in that you can just go "where do I even start with this?" (Railbound - their previous game - had a few levels like that) and that's more or less solved by having different characters with different shot ranges - because you can always go (and after a while I just started with that) "Who can make the scoring shot" and you just look and see and even in the cases where you can't definitively isolate which character it is, you can usually exclude one or two characters, which allows you to start working the puzzle properly. Great stuff. I'll also say, even though you don't play games like this for the narrative it's genuinely good. It's about an old retired football coach seeing some neighborhood kids playing football and deciding to step in and you get to see their journey improving and playing against some other kids. It's genuinely heartwarming. Made me cry actually a few times. Absolutely amazing game.

Afterburn once again shows that it knows how to craft a challenging puzzle game on simple premises.

[b]PROS:[/b] + charming art style + chill music + a lot of levels (168+) + accessibility settings + great on the Steam Deck [b]CONS:[/b] - can feel like trial and error - rival team cloning magic [b]Comment:[/b] The Afterburn recipe works. And so this plays similar to their other titles like Golf Peak or Railbound. If you like those this might be right up your alley. The cute art style follows a simple but likable story of a retired coach helping some pups become champions (of the local park). It is told through a slideshow of pictures with some sound effects. We have 100 basic levels and 68 bonus levels (and maybe an extra one too...?). Along with the sound effects a chill soundtrack accompanies you as you try to solve these puzzles. Bonus levels are tough this time around, definitely took me far longer than the base ones. Tactical play style and even guessing is encouraged, sometimes you don't even need all moves to finish a level. Each pup has a number of times it can move (shown at the bottom of the level) and a special style it kicks with. As always, you get one mechanic and then slowly new ones are added as you progress. The opposing team has some special skills too. As in some levels there are multiple copies of them even though the story follows only three (or four, not sure if Mr. Mole is in or out). But apart from that they are locked into their rules of moving based on what you do. Overall a challenging but quite fun experience. It's nice to look at and enjoy. Grab it in the Afterburn Puzzle Bundle if you own the other games or in the eventual discount if you're not sure yet. Recommended! ------------------------------------------------------------------ [b]If you liked this review you can find more on the [/b][url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/28638055-Subjective-Reviews-Corner/][u]Curator page[/u][/url][b] or in my [/b][url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/srcorner][u]Review Corner[/u][/url][b].[/b]

Excellent, but I might suggest starting with their first game, Golf Peaks. The style and enjoyment is similar, but this one is quite challenging, and Golf Peaks is a bit smoother, but still a good challenge. After that, if you want more, come back to this.