Pet MatchUp Review

A leisure endeavour with a cute cartoon style, Pet MatchUp is a title meant to relax you. A classic memory game, all of the cards are laid face down and you choose two cards to be flipped face up every turn. If they match, they are removed from the board, and if not, they are flipped face down again. Nothing is added to the formula, and the game plays exactly like any other memory card game, its differentiating characteristics being the pet theme spread across every facet of the game, and the pet fun facts that pop up when you match specific cards.

Including obvious facts, such that cats are lazy

That pet theme manifests itself in more than just the cards’ contents and fun facts -- before each match, you are presented with a choice of pets to represent you in-game, such as a German Shepard, a Siberian Husky, or a Siamese. Those avatars are cosmetic and do not add anything to the gameplay, but they do help give a bit of personality to the matches. The game can be played alone or with someone else, and each player picks a different avatar. The objective in single player is to pair matching cards in the least possible number of turns, while in multiplayer the goal is to match more pairs than your adversary. In both cases, the game ends when the last pair has been picked up.

 Completing a game gives you coins, which you can use to unlock extra avatars. The number of coins received is based on the difficulty level, with easy puzzles rewarding you with less currency than hard puzzles. You can also fulfil “quests” such as “play 3 games” or “complete 10 hard difficulty games” to acquire a few hundred coins in one go, something that helps speed up your progress and unlocks considerably. As is the norm for mobile games nowadays, the title features microtransactions in the form of coin packs.

I played for hours and I still don't know why that cat is hugging a potato

Technically, the game has good production values. The animations are swift, the sound effects serviceable, and the music is enjoyable, with a Sims-like quality to it. I did not have any technical problems with the title, although the game did hang whenever I tried to access the in-game store. The music kept playing, but nothing happened, so I had to restart the game. Besides that, the game runs without a hitch.

Pet MatchUp is an adorable game. A simple mechanic coupled with a lovely art style, it doesn’t aim high -- Pet MatchUp merely wants to be an enjoyable memory game with a very cute Pet theme, and in that it succeeds flawlessly.