Haunted Paws is simple: sniff out clues, add them to your evidence board, and solve your owner’s mysterious disappearance. Your owner is a reporter who is covering a story about the local dog food factory. As you collect clues, you pin them to your evidence board, unlock places to search, and answer the question: What happened?
Stormy Nights & Spooky Goings-on.
You and your co-op partner wake up as dogs, or a cat in disguise, on a dark, stormy night and find your owner missing. Your mission is to search around the house and sniff out clues that will lead you to your master. Open cupboards, drawers, fridges and laptops to find anything that will help you solve the mystery.
As you explore the house and find clues, you will uncover the damage, strange creatures, and your owners’ belongings lying around, suggesting a struggle.
The Evidence Board
Adding the clues to your evidence board will help you put the mystery together and unlock other areas to search.
What do the clues mean? What is the strange creature in ice? Why is the Chompos’ advisement important? Where should you search next? Your findings will help you trace the steps of your reporter master, whose story may have led to their kidnapping.
Your next stop is clearly the factory, but how will you get there? Explore outside, meet other humans, and keep searching for clues that lead you to your owner. As you meet other humans, they will give you side quests and then help you reach your goal.
Controls & Accessibility
You have audio controls that let you choose between speakers and headphones. I found the music very loud through my headphones, so I immediately turned it down. You can adjust the master, music, and SFX volumes separately so that you can set them to your liking.
The gameplay settings put one important setting front and centre: arachnophobia mode. We left this off, but it is nice that Haunted Paws has made it accessible to those who fear spiders.
Your character controls are basic WSAD and left and right mouse clicks, so nothing new or confusing. There were no controller settings on the PC game, but as it going to be available on Switch and PlayStation in the future, I assume there are slightly different controls on that version. Hopefully, they’ll add full controller support with the full release.
Cosy Horror & Co-op Fun
Haunted Paws’ thunderstorm and nighttime setting give the spooky atmosphere you expect and hope for in a cosy horror. Set in a normal home and city, it can be hard to pull off, but I think they did a great job. Broken furniture and windows, frozen creatures in your fridge and a run-down city all add to the spooky environment.
Furthermore, linking our characters with a distance restriction made it more than just a follow-the-leader co-op. If you stray too far from each other, you find yourself stuck or potentially dead. You must run from the spiders, hide from the monsters and jump over canyons together, or one of you will not make it.
Haunted Paws sets up gameplay so that many tasks must be completed together, with communication as key. Tasks like steering a car or moving objects require teamwork, as they can not be done alone.
Some Bugs, But Worth The Play
We played the Early Access demo, so I expect the full game to have cleared up any bugs, but we did have a few problems.
At one point, one of the dogs got stuck digging, and we had to push and jump to free it. After that, the same player lost proper control of the character but managed to guide it to the door. It fixed itself when we went to the next room, though, so it wasn’t much of a problem. At one point, the monster seemed to sense us and chased us even though there was no reason for it to.
Overall, Haunted Paws played really well with simple controls and nothing too hard to work out. The puzzle aspect came into play a few times, with us having to solve rooms together to move on. Haunted Paws had a good mix of puzzles, side quests, and running from creatures that made the game fun, scary, and co-operative. What more could you want from a cosy horror co-op game?
I look forward to the full release, as it left us wanting more, and the end screen hinted at what is coming in the remaining chapters.
Platforms: PC with planned console release to come
Publishers: LazyFlock
Developers: LazyFlock
Played On: Steam
Key Provided By: Keymailer
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