They say dogs are man’s best friend, but cats are starting to take over. These mischievous animals add cuteness and chaos to most games they appear in, whether it’s as a mascot or main character. Even the indie game Stray, which stars a ginger tabby as its protagonist, received multiple awards and nominations at The Game Awards 2022. However, there are many more games featuring our feline friends in the Epic Games Store. 

Cat games don’t necessarily need to be adventure titles like Stray. They cover a variety of genres, including cozy games, management sims, narrative puzzles, and even fighting games. For example, Cat Cafe Manager and Calico both employ you as a cat cafe manager and challenge you to juggle the different responsibilities and upgrades. In that sense, they straddle the line between job simulator and resource management genres. 

Cat Cafe Manager follows a very Harvest Moon-inspired plotline. You move to Caterwaul Way to take over your grandmother’s cat cafe, even though it’s a rundown, abandoned property that needs some tender loving care. This job sim features many responsibilities you have to juggle, like adopting and catering to the unique needs of your cats, renovating the cafe, hiring staff, and befriending townsfolk. It includes everything you would need to run a successful business and even hides some feline god lore in the background.

In Calico, you’re put in charge of rebuilding the local cat cafe after moving to a town filled with magical girls and other fantastical neighbors. Part of the responsibility is befriending cats and adding them to your party, but that’s not all. You also have to collect cute furniture and decorations, serve delicious food, and house enough cats so that your patrons have cuddly animals to adore. It just so happens that the game has tons of customization options as well.

Bright Paw has less of a rosy premise. It’s a murder mystery puzzle game starring Theo, a newly orphaned white house cat. He investigates the murder of his owners with the help of a mysterious Narrator, who leads him to a company called Bright Paw Industries. There, Theo must uncover the mystery behind the company’s involvement and the killer’s motive in his owners’ deaths. Bright Paw: The Definitive Edition, the latest edition of the murder mystery puzzle game, includes over 100 levels of additional content, more unlockable cosmetics, and a year of free seasonal content. 

While True: learn (), another cat-themed puzzle game, features a title that’s a play on words about coding languages. You play as a machine learning specialist who discovers that your cat is a coding genius. In fact, its code seems to run better than yours. The only problem is translation. Your job as the machine learning specialist is to solve puzzles for cat-to-human translation and cash in on your cat’s project so you both can upgrade your lifestyles. You become the CTO of your own startup, buy new machines and threads, and more in your new role. 

Timelie stars two protagonists: a cat and a girl with precognitive powers. You can foresee the future and change the present based on what you witness. Time is just tape in a media player to you, something you can rewind and fast-forward depending on your needs. That means erasing mistakes and strategizing to circumvent problems that you otherwise wouldn’t know about. You can also control both the cat and the girl at once in a pseudo-co-op way as a single player. 

Fisti-Fluffs, a cat party game where you fight other cats, might be the oddest premise of a cat game on the Epic Games Store yet. Despite the name, it isn’t exactly a cat fighting game. Up to four people can play as cats that are left to their own devices after their owners leave them alone in an apartment. The problem? They’re bored. That’s why you have to compete in one of five game modes to pass the time. There are also six stages that you can destroy in these chaotic minigames.

The Epic Games Store even has a few upcoming cat games like Hidden Cats in London, Cats Hidden in Italy, and Paw Paw Destiny that we can’t wait to get our paws on. 

Hidden Cats in London and Cats Hidden in Italy are the equivalent of Where’s Waldo? but with cartoon cats in European locations. There are two different modes, Normal and Advanced, with over 100 cats to find in each location. You can also unlock a bonus round with even more hidden kittens. There’s an accessibility option for those with visual impairments like color blindness as well.  

Paw Paw Destiny lets you customize your character however you like, including choosing their species. It’s technically a cat game, considering you can choose to play as a cat instead of a dog if you’re more into feline aesthetics than canine ones. This action-adventure story unfolds as you travel the world and learn more about yourself. Like Hidden Cats in London and Cats Hidden in Italy, Paw Paw Destiny isn’t out yet. However, it does have a demo already available in the Epic Games Store. You can judge for yourself if it’s really as funny as the description claims.

Of course, cats aren’t the only animals of importance. There are still games that focus on dogs, like To the Rescue!, a dog shelter simulator that mirrors the gameplay in a job sim like Cat Cafe Manager. Other indies like Tchia, wherein you play as a young girl who can turn into all sorts of animals like birds and sharks, can also arguably fit into the animal protagonist gaming category. Who knows? Maybe the next cat game (or the next weird animal game in general) could be this year’s Game Awards nominee.