Gori: Cuddly Carnage Preview – Mixing Cute With Chaos

From Swedish developers Angry Demon Studio and the U.K. publishers Wired Productions ( Martha is Dead , Those Who Remain ), Gori: Cuddly Carnage invited so much nonsense, chaos and foul-mouthed action. This third-person cyberpunk-horror hack-and-slash cat game could not be bound to one genre, which worked as a double-edged sword. This hands-on preview allowed me to explore and dive as deep as possible into the general gameplay and captured what made this half-cute, half-gore-fest-satisfying action-sports game mashup special.

Immediately,  this gave me Professor Genki from Saints Row the Third vibes, commingled with the vibrancy of colours and zaniness from SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab and Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Gori: Cuddly Carnage immediately began with some dialogue between the wise-cracking sentient hoverboard, F.R.A.N.K, and morose AI companion, CH1-P. They are essentially the two voices that complement Gori, who is a cat, purrs in an adorable way, and does not talk. A cat not talking is probably the most grounded thing about this game!

Based on the early game narrative, we learned that Gori was one of the last synthetic pets, smuggled out of Cool-Toyz Inc. before destruction. raised by someone called “Professor Y.” Without giving too much away, the Professor seemed to be someone who raised Gori to do what he does throughout the game—like decapitating unicorn enemies with his trusty, bad-mouthed hoverboard.

“Gori: Cuddly Carnage invited so much nonsense, chaos and foul-mouthed action.”

Simply put, humanity has perished, and only these deadly “Ultra Pets” are left to fight it out. Gori must fight through the Adorable Army and its generals and rescue Professor Y. It took me about two to two and a half hours to beat through the available first three areas for this preview. While this game could be stated as Stray on drugs, the colour wheel of lights was like The Weeknd’s song “Blinding Lights” meets OK Go’s “Obsession”—very much experiencing the light life of Cyberpunk 2077 cranked to 1000%. There was an epilepsy warning at the beginning of the game, so those with sensitivity to flashing lights, beware!

Once you have figured out if you can handle or adjust to the popping colours, the thrill of the kills begins. The equivalent of Halo’s Grunts were the Unicorns in Gori: Cuddly Carnage; they are so weak a simple single-hit attack can kill one—offering some immediate dopamine release with some quick and easy, bloody kills to reel you into the game. However, Gori: Cuddly Carnage quickly introduced stronger ones called Slicey-corns (ones with blades as hands). Then, immediately, it introduced shielded ones equipped with bubble shields, which could be killed with what most games would call a heavy attack.

The sports elements came with the skateboarding tricks (and stylistic killing). Gori and his razor-sharp hoverboard F.R.A.N.K require energy to speed around and boost attacks. In order to refill this energy meter, the player has to either do some wall rides, rail grinds, spin and consistently get kills to fill the combo meter too. There are also breakable cars to get quick energy back. I felt like the tricks got stale throughout the beginning stage, but I realized the grinds were a good way to maneuver mobs better or jump in and out of danger in a more dynamic way.

“Gori: Cuddly Carnage was a great arcade hack-and-slash game that relieved a lot of stress for me.”

While I had a lot of praise for this game that seemed to be practically finished development, there were a couple of things I thought could be improved. Not to directly compare the experiences I had in Rollerdrome , but the general tricks and rail grinds felt more satisfying in that game. I think what made it work was that performing tricks did not slow down the gameplay, rather it sped it up. Riding the rails in Gori: Cuddly Carnage might need a speed boost or something on the rails.

On top of the tricks, the general feeling of moving around and navigating through the various stages and locations felt too airy. What I mean by that is that I felt like I was slipping and sliding across the map, whether I played with a controller or keyboard. At least for controller gameplay, I think having some haptic feedback could help. When you play adventure games with parkouring or running on walls like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor or the latest Tomb Raider games, they have some haptic feedback to ground the weight of their movements—although those are AAA titles.

The soundtrack was also so upbeat, and if you love wub-wub sounds this game has got some good wub-wub sound balance. For a game with high-octane, Mad-Max: Fury Road -adjacent nonstop action, it also had the cutest protagonist. I really thought they would go the Rachet & Clank or Sonic the Hedgehog route, but it was cute that Gori was more like Pikachu—adorable and can only make animal sounds.

At the end of the day, Gori: Cuddly Carnage was a great arcade hack-and-slash game that relieved a lot of stress for me. It was one of those games that could be played casually and had some nonsensical storytelling, but it was ultimately fun. Based on the first couple hours of gameplay, there is a promising, well-structured narrative with enough evolving game mechanics to keep me constantly entertained. This could be a great game for those looking for a casual way of slashing some enemies down by putting them through a hoverboard blender and looking for some quick chuckles.