When people think about animation in games, they usually picture humanoid characters.
Two legs, familiar rigs, tons of references from other titles. Barkour didn’t give us that luxury. The moment we decided our main character would be a dog, we knew animation was going to be one of the toughest challenges of the project.
There Aren’t Many References for This
One of the first problems was surprisingly simple: there just aren’t many good references for animating a playable dog in an action game. Animals in games are usually NPCs, scripted sequences, or background flavor. In Barkour, the dog isn’t decoration - the dog is the player. That means fast movement, full control, parkour, combat, stealth… all driven by animation. We couldn’t just copy solutions from other games. For many animations, we had to start almost from scratch. When references were missing, we leaned on two things:
our own imagination,
observation of our own dog friends,
and recordings of real dogs - including K-9 units.
Watching real dogs accelerate, stop, change direction, react, and carry their weight became a core part of our process.
Gameplay First… But Still a Dog
Another big challenge was balancing several goals at once. Animations in Barkour had to:
trigger reliably during gameplay,
stay clear and readable at high speed,
work smoothly with game systems,
support the comedic tone,
and still feel properly dog-like.
Fast parkour demands precision and responsiveness. Comedy needs exaggeration and timing. Authentic dog movement needs weight, posture, and flow. Push any of these too far, and the whole thing falls apart.
Comedy Wasn’t Optional
Barkour lives in a spy-comedy world, so animation couldn’t be purely realistic. The dog needed personality. That meant expressive poses, slightly exaggerated reactions, and movements that support visual jokes - without turning the character into a cartoon blob that breaks immersion during gameplay. Finding that balance took a lot of iteration and testing.
Teamwork Made It Possible
This wasn’t something the Animation team could solve alone.
Animators worked closely with:
Designers, who defined gameplay needs and requirements,
Programmers, who handled technical constraints and animation systems.
The back-and-forth was constant. An animation could look great in isolation but still fail during fast movement or combat. When that happened, it went back for adjustments - sometimes more than once.
Test, Feedback, Repeat:
Animations were tested regularly by the whole team directly in the game. Seeing them in real gameplay conditions often revealed issues that weren’t visible before. That feedback loop helped us fine-tune timing, transitions, and overall feel until everything clicked.
The result:
the dog feels responsive and readable,
movement supports speed, momentum, and parkour,
animations reinforce personality,
and comedy comes through without sacrificing control.
Animating a dog in Barkour was never just about making things look good. It was about making sure you genuinely feel like you’re controlling a Dog Agent, not a human character with a different model. And yeah - it was harder than we expected. But it was absolutely worth it!
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Please note that all visuals shown here come from early development or concept stages. Barkour is still evolving, and the current build may look different.
Thanks for reading and hanging out with us. We’re really glad you’re here.
See you in the next devlog, Agents
