C-Dogs
Platform(s)	MS-DOS, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
Release	28 July 2023; 5 months ago (2023-07-28)[1]
Genre(s)	Action
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

C-Dogs, the sequel to Cyberdogs, is a shoot 'em up video game where players work cooperatively during missions, and against each other in "dogfight" deathmatch mode.

Gameplay

In C-Dogs, players play through a number of campaigns, made of a variable number of missions. Each mission has a selection of weapons, and different objectives, such as killing enemies, collecting items, destroying objects, or rescuing a hostages. The campaigns can be played by a single player or with one cooperative player. Other features include color-coded keys to access locked rooms, friendly characters, and neutral civilians that the players are penalized if attacked.

C-Dogs also includes a 2-player, split-screen deathmatch mode called "dogfight": players attempt to kill each other for a fixed number of rounds, and the player winning the most rounds wins. Players can be controlled by keyboard, joysticks or gamepads.

Compared to Cyberdogs, C-Dogs includes the following enhancements:

• Multiple campaigns - 5 included, with user-created missions available for download online. Missions also include short story-driven briefings.
• Different level layouts
• Deathmatch mode
• More NPC types: friendlies that attack enemies, hostages, and neutral civilians
• Custom campaign editor
• More weapons, including different types of grenades

However, the feature to buy and sell weapons and ammo between levels was removed.

Development

The creator of C-Dogs, Ronny Wester, released the precursor to C-Dogs, Cyberdogs, in 1994. The popularity of Cyberdogs and the limitations of its 16-bit protected mode motivated Wester to write a sequel, which was released between the years 1997 to 2001 as Freeware.^[2] In 2000 Wester released the Borland Pascal 7 source code of Cyberdogs (minus some libraries he had licensed) on his website.^[3]

Open source

In 2002 Wester released the source code of C-Dogs to the public. Following that Jeremy Chin and Lucas Martin-King ported the game to SDL and released their work under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later as "C-Dogs SDL". As of June 2007, Wester no longer maintains a website for C-Dogs but the game continues to live on via the C-Dogs SDL project hosted on GitHub. The open source software port contains a number of enhancements to the original C-Dogs, including high-resolution support, local multiplayer up to four players, enhanced graphics and LAN multiplayer. In October 2015, C-Dogs SDL was updated to SDL2.^[4] In April 2016, Wester released the game assets as CC-BY.^[5]

Ports

With the source code availability and the initial SDL port, the game was ported later for many platforms: Android,^[6] GCW Zero,^[7] GP2X,^[8] Dingoo,^[9] PlayStation Portable,^[10] Dreamcast,^[11] Nintendo DS,^[12] Wii,^[13] Amiga OS,^[14] UIQ3 devices such as SE M600, P1i, P990, and Motorola RIZR Z8.^[15]

Reception

Hardcore Gaming 101 reviewed C-Dogs in May 2017.^[16]