Best Games Where You Play as an Animal

Why it's here: The one everyone thinks of first, and the best place to start. You play a stray cat that falls into a sealed, neon underground city of robots, and the whole game is built around being a cat: squeezing through gaps, knocking things off ledges, scratching furniture and meowing on command, all while a quietly brilliant mystery unfolds around you. It's the highest-profile game on this list at 4.7 from 74,000 PlayStation players, on PS5 and PS4. Short and linear rather than open-ended, but pound for pound the most polished play-as-an-animal experience you can buy.

Why it's here: The funniest game here, full stop. You are a horrible goose, and your only job is to ruin a quiet English village's morning, honking, stealing, dragging rakes into ponds and generally being a menace with a to-do list. It's a stealth-puzzle game wearing a slapstick costume, and the animal fantasy is perfect: every mechanic exists to let you behave like an actual awful goose. Rated 4.5 from 15,000 players, on PS4. It's short and best in one or two sittings (co-op adds a second goose), but few games make people laugh this consistently.

Why it's here: The one that will stay with you. You play the last mother fox in a dying, poisoned world, and every night you leave the den to forage for food and bring it back to your cubs, who grow, learn and depend on what you can find. It's a side-scrolling survival game, but the real mechanic is attachment: the world is bleak, the stakes are your family, and the ending lands hard. Rated 4.5 from 5,500 players, on PS4 and PS5. Go in knowing it's deliberately sad; that's the point, and it earns it.

Why it's here: Pure predator power fantasy. You start as a tiny shark pup and the whole loop is eat, grow, evolve: devour fish, dolphins, and eventually the hunters dumb enough to come after you, across an open Gulf-coast world. It's an open-world action-RPG with a shark instead of a hero, complete with upgrades and evolutions that turn you into an apex monster. Rated 4.4 from 17,000 PlayStation players, on PS4 and PS5. The combat gets repetitive over a long session, but as a "be the terrifying animal" power trip nothing else here competes.

Why it's here: The most demanding animal on the list, and the most rewarding. You're a slugcat, a small creature trying to survive in a hostile, beautifully animated ecosystem where every other creature is hunting, fleeing or ignoring you on its own logic. There's no hand-holding: you learn the food chain by being part of it. Rated 4.4 from 4,900 players, on PS4 and PS5. It's punishing and the survival loop won't suit everyone, but the living-world simulation is unlike anything else, and mastering it as such a fragile animal feels genuinely earned.

Why it's here: A throwback platformer and a great one for younger players. You're Ty, a Tasmanian tiger, bounding through the Australian outback hurling boomerangs at enemies, a bright, breezy 3D platformer in the classic mascot mould. It carries the highest star rating on this list at 4.9, though from a smaller PlayStation audience than the giants above. On PS4. It won't surprise anyone who grew up on collect-a-thon platformers, but that's exactly the appeal: a wholesome, animal-led adventure the whole family can pick up.

Why it's here: The purest chaos on the list. You're a goat, physics is a suggestion, and the entire point is to headbutt, lick and ragdoll your way through an open sandbox doing as much ridiculous damage as possible. Goat Simulator 3 is the biggest and best version, more map, more co-op, more dumb fun, and it's rated 4.7 from 4,600 players, on PS4 and PS5. There's no real goal and that's by design; it's a toybox, not a campaign. If you want the animal fantasy played entirely for laughs with friends, this is it.

Other versions: Goat Simulator: Remastered, Goat Simulator

Why it's here: Goat Simulator's weirder cousin. You play an everyday deer that can, at will, extend its neck and legs to absurd lengths, fling its antlers like weapons and generally trigger escalating physics-driven mayhem across a small town. It's pure absurdist sandbox comedy with almost no rules. Rated 4.2 from 2,400 PlayStation players, on PS4. It's rough around the edges and runs out of things to do faster than Goat Sim, but for sheer "what am I even looking at" animal chaos it's worth a session.

Why it's here: The most unusual pet on the list. Wobbledogs is a breeding-and-raising sim where you hatch wobbly, physics-driven dogs, feed them, and watch their genetics mutate into increasingly strange creatures across generations. You're not really playing as the animal so much as shepherding a whole lineage of them, equal parts cute, gross and hypnotic. Rated 4.2 on PS4. It's a slow, sandbox-y curiosity rather than a goal-driven game, but if you like the idea of an animal terrarium that evolves on its own, nothing else scratches that itch.

Why it's here: The most affecting small game here. Copycat is a narrative adventure where you play a shelter cat adopted into a new home, and then have to find your way back after being separated. It leans into the quiet, dependent reality of being someone's pet, and the story does the heavy lifting. Rated 4.4 on PS5. It's short, linear and story-first rather than mechanically deep, so come for the emotional arc rather than the gameplay. In that lane it's a lovely, low-key companion piece to Stray and Endling.

Why it's here: The smallest animal and one of the most charming games on the list. In Webbed you're a tiny jumping spider who swings, builds and bounces across a hand-drawn world on threads of your own silk, the web-slinging traversal is the whole joy, and it feels great. Rated 4.3 on PS4. It's brief and gentle rather than challenging, with a light puzzle-platformer structure, but as a pick-up-and-smile play-as-an-animal game it punches well above its size.