You can't imagine my disappointment at Northgard - Ratatoskr, Clan of the Squirrel not being about actual squirrels, but a clan having squirrels as a totem animal.

The I of the Dragon - You play as a dragon.

Donut County - Although this game involves sucking things into holes that only continue to grow in size, these holes are being created and controlled by a racoon. Most of the NPCs are also animals such that I remember there being only one human in the game.

Tales of the Neon Sea - You spend most of the game playing as a human guy, but there are times where you control a black cat that can get to places the human cannot.

while True: learn() - Although you control a human, your goal in this puzzle game is to build a cat-to-human speech program.


Neverwinter Nights - In the base game, the primary antagonist (Morag) is one of the lizardfolk old ones. While the lizardfolk don't show up immediately, they are significant in terms of the game's plot when they do. The Yuan-ti that make appearances minimally are also another reptilian race. Kobolds are another reptilian race in Neverwinter Nights, which is noteworthy in that the kobold bard Deekin Scalesinger places a significant role in Shadows of Undrentide expansion and can also accompany the player character. He can also join up with the player character in the Hordes of the Underdark expansion. Both of these expansions are included with Enhanced Edition. However outside the base game, the appearance of reptilian races varies. They play no part in Pirates of the Sword Coast, Darkness over Daggerford or Wyvern Crown of Cormyr. They can show up as completely random henchmen or enemies in Infinite Dungeons.

Although these races are not normally available to the player character, there's a character editor on the NWNVault that was made pre-Enhanced Edition that lets you modify a character to be any race you want them to be. I've used it to strip off the Undead subrace tag (from playing Pirates of the Sword Coast) thus can say that it isn't difficult to use.

Thanks for these interesting additions to the list and accurate descriptions. The only game I would exclude to the list is The I of the Dragon, as dragons are completely fictional creatures and we had decided to exclude them. I might consider creating a separate list for games with dragons.

This also makes me think about the inclusion of the various animal fantasy races: so far I've included them because they could be considered anthropomorphized animals, but in fact they are different and peculiar species, with their own history and evolution, compared for example to Donald Duck, who even if he's humanized, is still officially a duck.

Tell me all what you think!

My thought is that when you're looking for games that feature a specific type of animal, you might not care if it is a fantasy race, space alien, anthropomorphized animal or just that animal specifically behaving as it naturally would. You're just looking for more of whatever that animal is. Instead of excluding, I would add categories.

For example - When I'm looking for more games that feature cats, I'm not going to tell myself that the Mrrshan from Master of Orion and Kilrathi from Wing Commander don't count as they're technically cat-based races of space aliens. I'm also not in favor of excluding Lands of Lore on the basis that the Huline are a fantasy race thus technically not cats either. It doesn't bother me that Kitteh in Gibbous has been downgraded from cat awesomeness to a talking abomination such that she might not be an actual cat anymore.
https://masteroforion.fandom.com/wiki/Mrrshan
https://wingcommander.fandom.com/wiki/Kilrathi
https://lands-of-lore.fandom.com/wiki/Huline

Kitty in Divine Divinity makes me happy, even though this is only one of two cats total in the game you can actually interact with because most are just NPCs that do completely normal cat things like running around chasing rats. It's just more cat goodness. Oh and for the dog folks, there's dogs running around doing dog stuff and barking.

Because if the Mrrshan, Kilrathi, Huline and Gibbous's Kitteh are all not cat enough, what does this say about games like Cat Quest, Inspector Waffles, and Kitaria Fables where cats are anthropomorphized to the point of doing all sorts of human stuff and do not behave like cats at all. Are they really cats or just fantasy races that look like cats? (Actually the cats of Cat Quest really are cats still but explaining this is major spoilers but without this info, they may seem like they're cat in appearance only.)

I would include dragons because even though they are a legendary creature, they're still just giant reptilian animals even when they are supernatural enough to be able to communicate with us. It's no different than how wizards (in most fantasy settings) don't stop being human just because they can cast magic missile.

Where I would exclude legendary creatures and non-human races is where they could not be considered properly animal based. Mermaids may be half-fish and live in water, but also look half-human enough to say that they're not based on animals. Likewise if another Master of Orion game was released that takes place exclusively on the Psilon homeworld and didn't feature other races, it wouldn't belong on this list as the Psilon themselves are not animal-based.
https://masteroforion.fandom.com/wiki/Psilon

This is just my opinion though. :)

Niche is a pretty cute and interesting game. Currently cheaper on Steam, but it's on GOG too.
https://gg.deals/game/niche-a-genetics-survival-game/
People behind this game are very sweet and pour their heart and soul into their works. Definitely worth checking out.

Timberborn is a beavers game!
https://www.gog.com/game/timberborn

In Flynn: Son of Crimson, there is a dog-like companion, but I0m not sure if it qualifies for you
https://www.gog.com/game/flynn_son_of_crimson

Thanks! Niche was ruled out because of the animals being alien creatures, but I agree it's a great game.
Thanks for the suggestions! Timberborn is in fact already on the list, while Flynn: Son of Crimson does seem to have a huge dog and other animals, so I'd lean towards including it!

Thank you very much for these insightful observations of yours. I agree on some points, less so on others, but your point of view is still very interesting.

I still haven't had time to decide whether to change some of the rules, partly because it's very difficult to set the right boundaries between a list that's too stringent (e.g. including only scientifically accurate animals, which would include very few games) and one that's too permissive (by including any being vaguely inspired by a land animal I'm afraid the list would become huge, and thus ultimately worthless). Let's see if anyone else wants to comment in the meantime!

Nieche
Spore

Where I would definitely leave games out is when the base game doesn't feature the animal in question in the base game such that it requires either purchasing an expansion or downloading user-created content. For example, there's a Steam list of games featuring cats specifically that includes Plague Inc Evolved, but this appears to be due to a custom scenario called Cat-a-strophe where the goal is to have cats take over the world.

Does Spore count? I don't remember seeing Earth-like creatures in it.

Is this some ********?

[Modded by Sarafan: Please refrain from posting suggestions that may be considered insulting]

We have discussed this and both involve alien life forms, so they are ruled out for now.
Already on the list, thanks!
I don't know, you're the first one to bring up furries, do you have a confession to make, pal?

[Modded by Sarafan: Removed the quoted part]

Rain World - survival of a slug-cat in a harsh environment, gathering food for hybernation period, you can even tame some other creatures by feeding them with small flies/critters. Interesting ecosystem where predators can become a prey as well.