As you awaken in your humble Australian abode, a soothing melody floats through the air, and the smell of nature infiltrates your nostrils. It's another day in the Outback, living your dream job as a veterinarian for wild animals, and you breathe a heavy sigh of relief; your job is everything you dreamed it would be, and life is perfect. This is the atmosphere Raylight Studios tried to create with Outback Pet Rescue 3D, but did they manage to hit the mark?

In short, the answer is that Outback Pet Rescue 3D is so far off the mark of being a good game that it feels like its terribleness almost has to be intentional. The game is far from anything you would want to willingly play, and will undoubtedly frustrate the younger audience it is aimed at, due to its simply horrible execution and design.

As you begin your first day, you get to read some incredibly boring text about acquiring a new job, as a Veterinarian in the Outback—  something you can easily deduce from the title of the game. As you approach your guide for the first time, a floating head whose shape and colors do not even come close to matching his picture, you learn of the wonders of the Outback, or so you would assume. In actuality, he sends you off to the 'computer' straight out of the 90s located in the back of the hut, to buy a book on Kangaroos.


The book promises to teach you all about Kangaroos and the Outback itself, and after its purchase, immediately appears on your bookshelf to be read, if you can manage to find it. The bookshelf isn't located close by, no, it is all the way across the house, tucked into a corner, basically hidden from sight.

As your character slowly lumbers over to the bookshelf, you'd be hard not to notice the extremely slow pace at which your character walks. Not only do you need to pointlessly navigate a terribly designed house, but you do so slower than a snail; getting caught in corners, plants and even walls as you attempt to simply cross a room. The walking mechanic is, to say the least, poorly done to such a point that a menu is a welcome option.

As you actually head out to find your first animal, a Kangaroo, you learn that you'll be driving the Jeep. There's a glimmer of hope given at this moment, a glimpse at the outback may be all you need to start almost enjoying this game.

Sadly, you'll find that the Jeep is actually just a crude drawing of one, on a map, controlled by your stylus. Kangaroos and other animals are no more than exclamation points or medical plusses dotted along this very map. Not to mention that this pointless map controls worse than you could make it if you tried, with the hit detection being seemingly random. Your Jeep will get stuck very often, to the point where the map became our least favorite part of the game, by far.


If you somehow manage to reach an animal after furiously swiping the stylus for a bit, you'll find the reward to be unsatisfactory, to say the least, as the animals are just about as pixelated and stiff as a 3D model can be. To diagnose the sick animal, you tap tools, such as a magnifying glass, and then the animals different body parts. You'll eventually find where the animal is injured, sick or hurting, and can then heal it by repeating the process with medicine.

This close up with the animals is one of the only two times there is a 3D effect present in the game; odd for a title with the word 3D in the name. The only other time you'll be treated to the simplistic 3D layering is when you are forced to rescue an animal, and raise it back to health at the hut.

The Outback Pet Rescue portion of the name doesn't have much to live up to when compared to the poor 3D execution, but it manages to do worse than you can even imagine. Rescuing basically requires you to rub the touch screen to fill the animal's Carrot, Heart and other bars. This seemingly simple task is, like most of the game, pointlessly frustrating and dragged out to comsume more time than it should, for no obvious reason other than to annoy you. When the bars are all full, the animal is cured and can thankfully be released. However, when you begin to have multiple sick animals a day to treat, this becomes such a major pain that its difficult to see why it was even included.

After a few rather boring and annoying hours of healing animals, your adventure is completed. Sure, you can continue to heal animals... but surely almost nobody would want to play such an infuriating game. With its poor controls, graphics, execution and the outrageously high price, Outback Pet Rescue 3D is not just a game to be merely tossed aside, but one to be thrown as far away as possible.


Review copy provided by TREVA Entertainment