If the web loves one factor, it’s cats. Cat memes, cat rescue tales, cat vids. Cats have taken over individuals’s lives, actual and digital, and are quietly dominating the video games house. Absolutely you’ve performed a fantastic cat recreation in recent times, like Stray, Little Kitty, Massive Metropolis, or the Cat Quest trilogy. I’m not a lot of a cat particular person myself, but even I fell in love with Stray and its orange, single-brain-celled feline. Nonetheless, I can’t assist however lament the dearth of video games starring cats’ mortal enemy: canine.
Sadly, canine are ceaselessly featured in video games as enemies destined to be killed by the participant, whether or not we’re speaking navy canine in first-person shooters or Bloodborne’s grotesque hounds. Let’s reverse that pattern.
A canine recreation might be a quite simple factor. Taking inspiration from Little Kitty, Massive Metropolis, we might management a wayward hound looking for a method dwelling. Naturally, hijinks would ensue — simply consider all the difficulty your homebound pup will get into, and picture the injury he might do when loosed on the world. Digging random holes, rolling via mud, peeing on fireplace hydrants. Chaos!
What I’d actually love is a canine recreation pulling narrative inspiration from Stray or the heartbreaking Copycat, which tackles themes like abandonment and loss. Having a canine is an emotional endeavor — they’re not known as “man’s greatest buddy” for nothin’ — and a recreation like Stray succeeds due to the emotion threaded via its six-hour playtime. No motive a “Stray however a canine” recreation couldn’t do the identical.
I want a recreation that lets me chase squirrels, get the zoomies after dropping a deuce, tear up a human’s socks earlier than giving them an cute “I’m sorry (however not likely)” guilt face. I desire a devoted “snuggle” button in my canine video games.
What I’m on the lookout for is a rash of canine video games, a wave of hound-starring adventures starting from “Canine Quest The RPG” to a post-apocalyptic “Stray Pup” to a tear-jerking “From Shelter to Eternally House.” This shit writes itself!
Hopefully, that wave is on the horizon, and perhaps even already begun. Farewell North launched final 12 months and embodies the features of a canine recreation that I would like out of this style; it’s an emotional journey the place you, as a border collie, restore shade to the world. Ikuma sits comfortably on my 2026 radar — mixing the climbing and canine recreation genres, I can’t wait to test it out. And Haunted Paws is an upcoming cozy horror recreation the place you and a buddy every management a pup. Hell yeah. Give it to me now.
Within the meantime, I suppose I’ll have to return to the properly and replay the wonderful Stray just a few extra instances. It’s not a canine recreation, however it offers a fantastic cheat sheet for future canine video games to steal from.