Nintendo just wrapped its latest Indie World showcase, and as is often the case with these presentations, a handful of the games shown had demos launching right after. One of these games is Haunted Paws, a canine co-op game about two dogs heading into a haunted house in search of their owner. I love dogs, and you can play as different breeds in Haunted Paws, so I wanted to download the demo and see if you could play as a yorkie like my late pup who passed away a few years ago (you cannot, unfortunately). But when I searched for the game on the eShop, I didn’t see Haunted Paws; I instead saw something that looked similar, but different.
The game that showed up in my search results was one called Ghostly Whiskers, and for a moment I thought maybe I had somehow misremembered the title of the game I was searching for when I typed it in. Once I clicked through, however, I realized Ghostly Whiskers wasn’t a dog co-op game; instead, it starred two cats seemingly on a very similar mission to find their owner in a haunted house. While Haunted Paws isn’t due out until May of next year, this game had launched back in September. In the time since I started writing this piece, Haunted Paws and its demo have appeared on the eShop, but Ghostly Whiskers is also on the store page. The phrase “haunted paws” doesn’t appear in Ghostly Whiskers’ description, but it comes up in search results anyway.
It was then that I discovered the existence of Ghostly Whiskers had stirred up a bit of controversy back in January. Developer Lazy Flock spoke out about Ghostly Whiskers back then, calling it “an unauthorized copy that steals our concept, visuals, and story, using AI-generated assets.” Ghostly Whiskers is published by Nostra Games which, as GamesRadar notes in its story on the matter, has released several copycat games that lift from the likes of Fallout Shelter, Two Point Hospital, and Crossy Road, among others.
Obviously the cat’s out of the bag at this point, but it was really surprising to find that when you search for Haunted Paws on the eShop, a clone that’s already out and can be bought at full price shows up. If you go looking for Haunted Paws yourself and see a suspiciously similar-looking game that’s out right now, remember: the game you saw in the showcase isn’t available yet.
