My 6-year-old has started to take an interest in gaming and I’ve been on the lookout for suitable games for her to play. Developer Tivola and publisher Nacon have a very cute looking family-friendly game out called Animal Hospital, but did my daughter like it or not?

“Manage a veterinary hospital and take care of your adorable patients in this video game for animal lovers!”

Animal Hospital is certainly a very cute little game. The basic gist is that you play as a newly graduated vet and you inherit an old veterinary clinic from your grandmother. Various animals walk into the clinic and you have to treat them. Let’s say that a dog walks in with fleas, you take a look and move the camera around until you can find the issue. The game auto-selects the correct treatment and you have to apply it. Once done, you send the dog on its way and earn coins for your help.

Some treatments are more complex and may need multiple steps to rectify. Earn coins, and then spend those coins on upgrading and decorating your clinic. Build overnight rooms for animals that need extra care to stay in, a blood testing room, an X-ray and so on. As your clinic grows, the needs of the animals increase. All the while, there’s an unfolding story going on in the background.

It’s all very simple and twee and suits a younger audience. The controls of the treatments feel like they have come from a touchscreen game. In fact, I’m willing to put money on that this was developed as a touchscreen game and was ported over to consoles. As an example, let’s say that you need to apply some cream to a wound, you move the stick around as if your finger were rubbing the cream in. There are even on-screen prompts that show where your fingers (if this was touchscreen) should be.

Animal Hospital, is a very simple game to play and understand and most definitely suits kids of a younger age. My 6 year old was able to play (with a bit of guidance from me) only asking for help a few times. She loved all the ‘cute’ animals and when I asked what she thought of the game, she said:

“The animals are super cute and I like helping them so they feel better. I love the unicorn.”

Animal Hospital is out now for PlayStation, Switch and Xbox with a price of £35. For me, that feels very high for a game like this. As cute as Animal Hospital is, it is very limited and doesn’t offer a great deal of variety all things considered. It’s the kind of game that you can get for free on mobile devices. In fact, my daughter does have a few very similar games on her Amazon Fire tablet. I’ve just done a wee bit of research and this exact same game is available on mobile devices, called; Pet World – My Animal Hospital, it’s free too. So paying £35 for a game that is free on mobile devices does seem rather steep. Now, the free mobile version does have in-app purchases and the console versions does not. Even so, it’s still not a £35 game, £10 maybe.

A fun game for younger players, but still quite limited and the basic gameplay loop can get rather monotonous quite quickly. I think slightly older gamers (10+) will soon get bored. But the continual flow of cute animals (even unicorns) will keep the little gamers interested. Just download the free version on mobile instead.