Want to play with cats as a magical girl in charge of a cat cafe? Calico’s got you covered

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According to its website, “Whitehorn Digital is a low-stress indie game publisher focusing on approachable, digestible, wholesome games.” That’s the tag for Whitehorn Digital, the publisher handling the upcoming title, Calico, which recently funded on Kickstarter.

A friend of mine is one of the developers, but I hadn’t yet seen her work, so I was delighted to find out Calico was at the PAX West Indie Minibooth. I got hands-on with it and here are some highlights:

• You play as a magical girl in charge of a cat cafe
• There are cats. There are SO MANY CATS. There is just a joyful abundance of cats
• There is also a red panda!!!
• You can pick up and carry the red panda
• You can forget about everything you’re supposed to be doing right now so you can spend time with this adorable red panda, fulfilling a lifelong dream of playing with a red panda, even though this is a digital red panda and not a living, breathing furry creature. It’s nothing and trips to Australia to do this for real are actually really expensive and—
• You can get distracted writing bullet point lists about this game, thinking about red pandas
• You can play with cats with toys like laser pointers and string
• You can make and sell pastries in a zero-stress environment
• There’s no fighting
• You can use magic to make any cat gigantic and thus rideable
• You can explore the cozy, open world to your heart’s content with no time or conflict pressure

I think there are going to be people who will look at Calico and think, “but what am I supposed to do here? What’s my goal?” and that’s fine, but more importantly there will be people who’ll find Calico’s low-stress, wholesome, inclusive environment to be a breath of fresh air.

Calico is coming in Summer 2020 to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Mac.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Acron: Attack of the Squirrel is a great, local multiplayer VR title – PAX West 2019
• GungHo is dropping a handful of games, including Puzzle & Dragons for the Switch – PAX West 2019
• Young Souls is a game that mixes urban fantasy and Saturday morning cartoons beautifully well
• A Fold Apart is a puzzle game about long distance relationships and it’s based on a true story

Jake Vander Ende

Jake is a writer and game designer in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He loves action, exploration, building, filling bars, and turning numbers into bigger numbers. Someday he'll release a video game.