There’s a moment in the very first stage of Gori: Cuddly Carnage when you get your first weapon upgrade, and your talking hoverboard, Frank, chimes in: “Yeah! A new weapon! Let’s try it on those little shits!”
The “little shits” Frank is referring to are undead unicorns, cute little bad guys who squeak and hop but will murder feline protagonist Gori if he doesn’t kill them first.
And that’s what Gori: Cuddly Carnage is about: killing enemies, and doing it in the most stylish way possible, with satisfyingly-animated moves that involve spinning, smashing and slashing the bad guys with your hoverboard as you zoom through neon-lit levels at a frenetic pace. All of this is set to a grinding metal soundtrack, with high-sustain solos and singers extolling the awesomeness of Gori.
Gori himself is a cute orange tabby cat who happily meows as he executes rail slides and jumps, but this is not a game for children. Developers Wired Productions and CouchPlay have aimed this at cat lovers with a dark sense of humor and gamers who enjoy the nonstop war dance of games like Ghostrunner and the modern Doom franchise, which reward you for an improvisational and fast-paced approach to challenges.
The more quickly you complete levels, the more acrobatic your approach, the higher your score.
The game gives you four difficulty choices, from Indoor Cat (“Easily slay enemies left and right in between naps!”) to Cuddly Carnage, the most difficult setting that promises aggressive enemies who hit hard. I’m terrible at games that involve heavy wall-running and constant speed, so I chose the second-easiest difficulty, although the difficulty level seems to have less to do with pace than it does the challenge posed by enemies. Next time I’ll kick it up a notch.
If there’s a story here, it’s almost incidental and serves only to introduce the comically absurd setting. Gori’s spaceship is destroyed, and he’s landed on the ruin of a planet abandoned by its human settlers to find a new ship. Why does he need a ship? To find yums and toys, of course.
The early game looks a bit like the third installment of Borderlands and plays like a faster version of Jet Grind Radio with the aforementioned elements of balletic violence. Hilariously, the first level is littered with what look like abandoned Tesla Cybertrucks, which you can slash in half with your hoverboard to collect resources.
Cuddly Carnage eases you in, showing you how to execute moves and how to navigate the levels by rail grinding. The idea is to stay airborne as long as possible, using your feline agility and Frank’s boost abilities, descending only to unleash whoopass on your enemies.
While Gori: Cuddly Carnage represents another welcome “play as a cat” game, it’s a completely different beast than 2022’s slow-paced, thoughtful Stray or this year’s playful Little Kitty, Big City.
We played the PC version via Steam, but the game is also available on current versions of XBox, Nintendo Switch, and PS4/5. Steam reviews are extremely positive so far, with 97 percent of reviewers recommending taking a spin with the manic meowster.
Pain In The Bud 
The review would be more useful of it had fewer comparisons to other games and more in-universe description.
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Thanks for the feedback, and I’ll take it into consideration for the next review. I’ve covered Stray and Little Kitty, Big City extensively on the blog, so I figured they would be familiar reference points, but I understand if readers aren’t familiar with Ghostrunner (a very popular modern game that is relentlessly fast) and Jet Grind Radio, which came out 24 years ago and basically established the mechanics for the way arcade-style skate games would work in the future.
The narrative in Gori, such as it is, is really basic compared to the way the gameplay feels, which is super fluid and comfortable to pick up. This is definitely one of those games where it’s all about the sensation of speed and freedom of movement.
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This game doesn’t look too bad. Im not really into games that have serious amounts of blood, gore, killing/mutilation, etc. I mean, I’ve played games that you have to kill things. One of my all time favorite games had a helicopter and you’d fly over people and shoot them. I couldn’t tell you the name of it and this was when games were first coming out for computers. It was hilarious to me the way the people popped up and screamed when you hit them! My all time favorite game was a game called Kamikaze Squirrel. It was really obscure and I’ve never been able to find a copy of it anywhere.
I like the old school games. Sonic (my FIL created a monster in me by getting one of the first Genesis machines and letting me play it), Toe Jam and Earl, Boogerman, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Yoshi, Mario Cart, Kirby, Disney games, etc. Games like that. I’d never heard of the game, Little Kitty, Big City until I read your blog, so I headed on over to YouTube and found a dude that was playing through the whole game. I watched like an hour of it! I was enthralled. That’s a game I’d really love to try. My favorite part was when kitty put on his little hats. So adorable. And tripping people to steal their stuff, that was awesome too!
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I’ve been meaning to get Little Kitty, Big City and do a review. The game’s designers did a fantastic job animating the cat and getting his mannerisms right, and I love how you can swipe things off flat surfaces. I might have to fight Buddy for play time.
I’m not big on gore or violence for the sake of violence either. Lately I’ve gotten back into No Man’s Sky, a game with millions of star systems, planets and moons, and you can land on every one of them. Some are in a deep freeze, some have lush jungles and deep lakes, some are blazing infernos, some are choked by hazardous flora, some are entirely covered in water except for a handful of tiny islands, some have endless forests of bioluminiscent mushrooms and plants.
Some worlds are barren, some have bizarre creatures, some have machine life, and of course there’s a huge variety of ships that you can acquire, upgrade, customize, etc.
You can take bounty contracts and hunt if you want, but it’s possible to play without killing or doing anything violent.
I’ve also become addicted to a game called Mechabellum, but that’s more of a niche game. It’s a strategy game in which you build armies of mechs (giant war robots) and play matches against other people or the AI. Everything from the units you choose, to how you configure them, to where you deploy them and how you support them with other units, makes an impact on the outcome of matches, so it forces you to really think strategically and tactically. It’s like chess on steroids.
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No Man’s Sky sounds fascinating! It must be great fun to explore those worlds and their exotic organisms.
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There’s definitely an allure to not knowing what’s in the next star system, planet or ocean.
It’s relaxing and there’s a ton of stuff to do if you want to take a break from exploring.
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