Although the management part is present, it's the pet caring that comes through as the strongest point.
In Pet Vet 3D: Animal Hospital you play as a young female veterinary who has just restored an old farm and turned it into a pet clinic. With limited funds and know-how, you must work on your skills while taking care of people's pets, to increase your reputation, make more money and improve your facilities.
Pet Vet 3D offers a free-form type of game with no specific goals and a scenario-oriented style of gameplay, which is basically the story mode and starts with a tutorial.
The interface is fairly simple and everything is easy to find. On the right side, you find buttons to control the camera (but you can do it with mouse clicks and movements), change game options and save your game. On the left side, you can access what I found the most important parts of management: building and shopping. The building menu shows you what pens you can have and what upgrades are available for each of the pens. It also lets you upgrade your hospital and home, by purchasing new items like an x-ray machine or an operating table, or funrniture for your receiving area and your own room (including a closet that you use to change your character's hair and clothes). The shopping menu is where you purchase instruments, food, books and toys to keep your clinic and your knowledge running smoothly.
You can also access the accounting section (shows your finances, animals treated and other options) your cell phone which receives all kinds of important messages, and a button to find the caretaker if you have hired him.
The middle portion of the interface shows you name, your popularity (in stars), your education, your stats and your skills. You need to pay particular attention to all of these, since they are essential to progress through the game.
Your stats are split in two: energy and fitness. Fitness represents your fatigue; when it approaches red, it's time to sleep. Click on the bed and choose how many hours you would like to rest and the game will fast-forward while you sleep. Pick nighttime hours to sleep, or you might miss a client while napping in the afternoon!
Energy represents your hunger. When you get hungry, click on the fridge and choose the type of meal you want (a snack, a medium meal, or a large meal). If any of these stats get too low, the game will pop an alert, which will show on the right side of the screen.
Your Education goes up according to the books you have read. There are sets of books for each type of animal, and when you read all of them you get a specialist badge for that particular species. To read a book, you select if from a bookcase. Initially, there are only a couple of books available that teach you about the different diagnosis instruments. Other books must be purchased. To read a volume of a book collection, you must first purchase it and read any of the previous volumes (you can't read volume 3 without reading 1 and 2 first). Time stops while the book is open so you can enjoy your reading. You can learn a lot of interesting and useful facts from the books. The more you learn about n animal, the faster you are able to treat it.
There are four skills that you must develop fully to reach "the next level" (so to speak). Healing goes up by curing animals. Cleaning is raised by using the mop and bucket on the animal pens, and you want those pens clean or they might get sick. Play with your animals (you must have toys) to raise the Playing skill. Finally, make sure you pet your animals to raise Stroking. These skills are needed to tend to the animals' needs.
Once you have maxed all four skills for a species, you can unlock to the next species. For example, you start by accepting only bunnies and will only start receiving cats once all the skills are full from petting, playing, curing and cleaning up after the bunnies. Becoming more experienced in all skills means it takes less time for you to do those tasks.
So how does the whole process work? First, I recommend purchasing some instruments for better diagnosis. You don't need to get the premium ones right away, but get a stethoscope, a thermometer and other cheap items that can help you make the right decision regarding a sick animal.
Next, you have to purchase some food. Start with the normal food, since the others are expensive. You will have to feed the animals that stay at the clinic for observation, so buy at least 10 to start.
Finally, you just wait for someone to bring their pet in. When they do, you click on the person and choose "Accept" (the green checkmark), and the animal will be taken to the observation room. Here, a pie menu will appear containing seven of your instruments, along with a list of possible causes for the animal's sickness. Each time you use an instrument, there is a chance the disease meters will change. When one of those disease meters is obviously higher than the others, you have found your diagnostic. Click on the name of the disease, and you will read what you need to do: either it's something the owner can do and in that case the pet goes home and the owner pays the bill, or the pet has to stay in for observation for a few days.
Pets under your care will be taken to the respective pen. You will have to take care of them (feed them, play with them, pet them, clean the pens) and watch their progress. Your cell phone will remind you of your daily rounds for each animal so you don't overlook any patient.
When you start getting a steady amount of money, you can then upgrade your clinic and hire an assistant. The caretaker is another playable character with needs and skills that you must watch over. You can assign him several different tasks or you can assign him to a single pen and he will do all that needs to be done in it (clean it, feed the animals, pet them, etc.).
Another special "character" is the Mother Mare. The Mother Mare can be purchased via the shopping menu, and she helps take care of the foals in your corral. You must feed her and care for her as well, with the advantage of taking her for a ride if you wish.
Pet Vet 3D is a nice-looking game. It's bright and colorful, there are several little details worth looking at and the animations are well done. There are a few glitches with the instruments though. Even though you see your character doing the gestures, the object won't be in her hands which makes everything seem odd. I also experienced some issues with pet owners leaving in the middle of a diagnosis, which would result in my vet still using the invisible instrument on an invisible pet, followed by a game crash.
The voice acting at times is good, but other times it sounds like the actors were extremeley bored. I did like how the vet always spoke very softy and in a reassuring way to the animals though, it was a nice touch.
I would have liked the option to cancel actions freely, since it's not possible to abort playing with an animal to rush to the counter and tend to a new patient. I also think the game needed a better alert sound for a patient being brought in.
Overall, and even if it's particularly aimed at a tween audience (mostly girls, since the pink is everywhere), this is a game that will please animal lovers of all ages, regardless of preferring horses, ponies, pigs, cats, dogs or rabbits. It's very easy to pick up and play, it's entertaining (although at times it may seem slow) and it's very educational. Although the management part is present, it's the pet caring that comes through as the strongest point. So if you want to star teaching your kids about pet responsibility, Pet Vet 3D: Animal Hospital is clearly a great option.
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