The world is ending and most of the humans have simply given up hope and accepted their fate. In Purr-suit of Happiness you play a courier cat, delivering parcels and delivering hope.
I, personally, am pretty convinced that it’s humanity that’ll end our own time on this planet, we’re mischievous, greedy and far too curious. In Purr-suit of Happiness, however, it’s going to be an inbound asteroid that wipes out the Earth, and the often cited ‘too curious’ instead takes on the role as the protagonist: A courier cat.
You’re not just a courier cat, mind, you’re Oreo, a junior courier cat, and you’re tasked with delivering parcels (and happiness, but mostly happiness) to the residents of a small neighbourhood. It’ll take you along rooftops, through sewers and along windowsills as you create and use shortcuts to get from house to house.
While it starts off with a simple letter delivery, Purr-suit of Happiness quickly descends into clever, emotional writing that also happens to be totally laden with cheesy puns. As you might expect, the residents have grown melancholic, reflective and sentimental with the news that they may only have a few days left to live. However, there’s a really warming neighbourly spirit that begins to break through as you run baking supplies and more between the homes, and soon enough there are brief splutterings of happiness.
It’s not just the writing that’s a delight here though. Purr-suit of Happiness might only occupy a small space, but there are loads of traversal and exploration methods, with you unlocking more shortcuts as you keep playing. There’s a lot of joy to be found in taking the long way around, seeing a street from above rather than simply bounding through it. In the build that I played at Devcom, some areas did need a little bit more work on the camera, however most areas were a delight to explore, even the little dead ends where the camera would fix in place (akin to a PS1-era Survival Horror). I’ve not had this much delight playing as an animal, exploring a vertical feeling space since Pizza Possum.
I don’t really understand where Purr-suit of Happiness will take its story, but there’s a hint at hope as rat scientists work away at some sort of a discovery in the sewers, and the Steam Page eludes to a possibly happier ending for some… or maybe a hard choice for Oreo.
Purr-suit of Happiness is currently in development for Window PCs
