Stray Dog: Nobody Cares is a newly announced soulslike in which the player controls a dog rather than a knight. PC Gamer, citing Kotaku, reports that developer Parry Frames Studio built the game around a question its audience will recognise immediately: what if you played as Great Grey Wolf Sif?
The protagonist is not Sif, but the archetype is unmistakable. As in Dark Souls, the four-legged lead is the faithful companion of a knight-errant in a dark fantasy kingdom. When its master is captured, the hound sets out to track him down and free him.
The structure PC Gamer describes is a familiar one: crumbling ruins, undead enemies, bonfires and boss fights. The hound fights with a sword held in its mouth, and its acrobatic combat recalls Sif’s sweeping, spinning attacks.
What Parry Frames has said about it
Parry Frames says the game will offer multiple combat styles for players to learn, along with parries, backstabs and deathblows in the classic Dark Souls mould. Stealth will play a role as well, though the studio has given little detail on how.
The announcement itself appears to have been unplanned. In a Steam post, the developers explain that the game suddenly became popular on X after the studio posted early test footage to its account. Parry Frames also says it has completed development of the game’s combat framework.
The studio is not new to the genre. Its debut game, the soulslike Crimson Oath, released earlier this year after eight years of development and was partly funded by an Epic Megagrant. Crimson Oath holds a Very Positive rating on Steam, with some players praising its resemblance to FromSoftware’s earlier titles and others comparing it to Sekiro or to Piranha Bytes’ Gothic.
No release date has been announced. PC Gamer notes that with only four months separating Stray Dog’s reveal from Crimson Oath’s launch, the game is unlikely to arrive soon.