National Cat Day is one of the finest and furriest holidays of the year. You can celebrate it by playing co-op kitty titles like Cat Quest III and Cats on Duty, or you can celebrate with the fresh single-player demo for Gori: Cuddly Carnage from Wired Productions. Gori is a surprisingly stylish 3D action game starring a cat on a hoverboard who has to grind rails and slice up lots of cutesy zombies.
The Gori demo features the first level of the full game. It begins with a fully voiced cinematic depicting a disaster on Gori the cat's spaceship. It's the far future, and no humans are left to repair the ship. Thus, Gori is forced to land on the ruined Earth. There, he soon runs afoul of an army of zombie unicorns, a kaiju-sized bird, a scary box crab, and much more.
The futuristic world of Gori is surprisingly colorful and easy on the eyes. Neon-bright billboards and rainbow rails appear all throughout the city where our hero lands. Gori's board needs energy that he can replenish by grinding on those billboards and rails, as well as by defeating cutesy foes. The game is quite bloody by default, but thankfully, there's an option to make the blood pastel-colored instead of red.
I admit that Gori hadn't really been on my radar before trying the demo, but the game's slick visual style (aside from a few ugly enemies) and cool hoverboard-based traversal quickly won me over. Also, you play as an adorable and semi-realistic cat, and that's purrfectly cool.
The free Gori: Cuddly Carnage demo is now available on all platforms. Gori: Cuddly Carnage will launch on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Steam on August 29. It will sell for $21.99.