Schrödinger’s cat was supposed to be a thought experiment, not an invitation to start shoving innocent animals into dangerous scientific experiments. Unfortunately, the mad scientist in Purranoia appears to have taken the whole thing rather literally. He’s trapped a frightened cat named Mousti inside a laboratory crawling with hostile robots, bizarre inventions, and creatures that seem determined to turn his latest test subject into a scientific discovery.
Thankfully, Mousti has someone looking out for him…You. The only problem is, the cat has absolutely no intention of listening to a word you say.
Developed by Eerie Veery, Purranoia launches today, combining action roguelike gameplay with bullet heaven combat and an unusual approach to keeping your character alive. Rather than controlling Mousti directly, you’ll be operating the scientist’s inventions to protect him from the increasingly dangerous experiments wandering around the laboratory.
The Cat Has Other Plans
Anyone who’s tried to persuade a cat to move away from something dangerous will already have an idea of what they’re getting themselves into.
In the majority of bullet heaven games, staying alive involves weaving between enemies, avoiding incoming attacks, and carefully positioning your character while your weapons deal with the approaching hordes. Purranoia removes that control entirely, leaving Mousti free to wander wherever he pleases.
You could spot a group of enemies approaching from one direction and a perfectly safe route in another, but whether Mousti decides to take that route is entirely out of your hands. Instead, your attention is focused on the inventions protecting him. Choosing which abilities to use, improving their effectiveness, and dealing with enemies before they reach your furry companion becomes essential when you can’t simply move him out of danger.
There are eight enemy types lurking throughout the laboratory, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Learning how to deal with them becomes increasingly important as the experiments grow more dangerous, especially when Mousti decides that the best place to wander is directly toward something trying to kill him.
The Scientist Has Left Behind Some Useful Toys
For someone determined to conduct dangerous experiments on an innocent animal, the scientist has been surprisingly generous with his equipment. There are 25 inventions available in Purranoia, offering plenty of opportunities to turn the laboratory’s own technology against its inhabitants. Collecting upgrades and experimenting with different combinations allows you to create thousands of possible builds, some of which can become extremely powerful.
Certain combinations can make Mousti almost permanently invulnerable, while others unleash enough destruction to wipe every enemy from the screen. Considering how little control you have over the cat’s movements, both sound like great investments.
The challenge comes from finding combinations that work well together while dealing with whatever the laboratory throws at you. A collection of inventions that handles one group of enemies without difficulty might struggle against another, forcing you to reconsider which upgrades are worth taking. With enough experimentation, you might eventually assemble something capable of protecting Mousti from almost anything. Whether it can protect him from his own curiosity is another question.
Twenty-Six Purrks of Surviving a Mad Scientist
The scientist’s experiments may be getting increasingly dangerous, but at least every failed escape attempt gives you something useful to work with. Defeating enemies earns score points that can be spent on permanent upgrades known as Purrks. There are 26 to unlock, improving Mousti’s chances of survival and giving you access to more advanced inventions for future runs.
You can also introduce modifiers that make the game harder in exchange for earning additional points. It’s a useful option for players who want to accelerate their progression, although deliberately making life more difficult for a cat trapped in a laboratory seems a little unfair.
Alongside the upgrade system, Purranoia includes five difficulty settings and three maps, giving you different challenges to tackle as your collection of inventions grows. Achievements and hidden Easter eggs provide further reasons to explore, while the enormous number of possible builds encourages repeated attempts with different combinations.
Eventually, you might have enough upgrades to make Mousti an almost unstoppable force of scientific destruction, which would be quite an achievement for an animal whose main contribution to the operation is wandering around looking frightened.
Somebody Please Let This Cat Go Home
There’s a lot of potential for chaos in a survival game where you can assemble ridiculously powerful combinations of weapons but have absolutely no control over where your character decides to go. That unusual restriction is what makes Purranoia stand out. Instead of relying on quick movement to escape danger, you’re trying to build something powerful enough to keep a wandering cat alive regardless of what he gets himself into.
With 25 inventions, thousands of possible combinations, and a laboratory full of increasingly hostile experiments, Eerie Veery has given players plenty of opportunities to test their own questionable scientific theories.