My Talking Hank is more than a virtual-pet distraction to idle your thumbs on the commute; it's a spring break in your pocket, an animated world that animates itself at the velocity of your own curiosity. Now Hank the puppy isn't marooned in a single static scene, but able to roam, chase, photograph and nap across an expanding chain of storybook islands. But when the title screen dissolves into hand-painted panoramas of turquoise shallows and swaying palms, the game's dreamy aimlessness feels like it's whispering that its goals are not just wider, its colors not merely deeper, but its heart, on the whole, more so.

You appear on the scene as Hank's invisible mate, touching down on an initial island with not much more than a hand-me-down camera, several haggard suitcases and the promise that somewhere beyond the tide line, a complete bestiary of outlandish pets is waiting to be discovered by you. The controls are intentionally weightless: swipe to pan the horizon, tap to send Hank scampering toward a hermit crab, long-press to aim the lens at a convenient wildlife-postcard-friendly spot. But within this simplicity, the designers have layered in mild strategic play. Each has its own secret schedule: flamingos across the mudflats at dawn, raccoons sift through the picnic grove at dusk, a pod of fluorescent jellyfish drift past the moonlit pier only when the real world's clock strikes midnight. Filming the diverse species thus becomes a relaxed exercise in observation rather than brute collection, one through which patience is granted the same kind of gifts as a good nature documentary offers for stillness.

The creator, Outfit7, maintains its signature slapstick humor, but rounds the edges with a mellow, Caribbean-infusion of a soundtrack and a day-night cycle that dyes the sky in sherbet gradients. Hank himself has aged from the one-note comic relief of those earlier games into an amiable travel vlogger who hums to himself, scribbles captions in his scrapbook and sometimes dozes off with a starfish stuck to his snout. Seeing him dream — these little thought-bubble islands floating above his head — is a reminder that the game's true currency is neither the gem nor the timer, but the unhurried pleasure of company.

Of course there are micro-transactions, but they are woven, as guilty pleasures go, with unusual restraint into the dream. Real money purchases you “instant film” to develop snapshots instantly, or a cooler of pineapple smoothies that sends Hank sprinting in turbo-charged super-speed. Fast-forward through the commercials and you might miss the off-key seagull chorus that calls to flight with every sunset, the way Hank's ears twitch when a rare red panda is glimpsed in the underbrush. The game subtly suggests that the worthiest times of life are the times you can't fast-forward through.

Ultimately, the game's cleverest trick is to recollect what childhood play was like before the culture of achievement began oozing into the sandbox: the hour spent digging for shell fragments at the beach, not because they had any purpose beyond the cool feeling of the sand against bare knees, or the flashlight safari in the backyard because the real jungle was a little too far away. By transplanting that feeling into the glowing rectangle that we all carry everywhere, Outfit7 has provided the adult with the permission to dawdle and the child with the license to look closely.

By Jerry | Copyright © Character100 - All Rights Reserved