What Is Pappus? The Space Colony Sim Where You Are the AI and They Are Cats
Pappus is a space colony sim where you play the artificial intelligence assigned to keep a colony of cats alive. Here is how it works, what makes it different, and where to play the demo.
Pappus is a space colony sim where the colonists are cats and you are the AI assigned to keep them alive. You do not control the cats. You set conditions, allocate resources, and build the colony, and then a population of autonomous animals with individual personalities decides what to actually do about it.
It is in development at Choost Games. There is a playable demo running in your browser on the Pappus page, and a Steam page open for wishlists.
What do you actually do in Pappus?
You run the infrastructure of a colony you cannot directly operate. You decide what gets built, what gets prioritised, and where resources go. The cats then live inside those decisions, pursuing their own needs on their own schedule, and the colony succeeds or fails based on how well your conditions match their behaviour.
That is the standard colony sim contract, and it is the reason the genre produces stories instead of scores. What Pappus changes is who you are inside it.
Why are you the AI instead of a person?
Because it makes the genre's core relationship literal instead of implied. Every colony sim already puts you at a distance from your colonists: you issue priorities, they interpret them, and the gap between the two is where the interesting failures live. Most games in the genre leave that gap unexplained, or hand you a vague overseer role that the fiction never examines.
Pappus names it. You are a system. The cats are the population you are accountable for. Your relationship to them is administrative, and the game is honest about what that means.
Games that take this perspective seriously are rare enough to be their own small category, covered properly in our guide to games where you play as an AI. The nearest neighbour is Stardeus, which <cite index="32-1">casts you as an immortal AI with robots and drones at your disposal, where every agent has free will and picks its next action based on needs.</cite> Pappus runs the same structural idea with a population considerably less inclined to cooperate.
What are the cats like?
Individual. Each cat has its own personality axes and its own needs, which means two cats in identical circumstances will make different decisions, and the same cat will make different decisions on different days.
This is the design bet the whole game rests on. A colony sim is only as interesting as its agents are unpredictable, and cats are the most honest possible casting for an autonomous agent who has heard your plan and declined to participate. The comedy and the systems are the same thing.
It also means the failures are specific. A colony sim disaster is memorable when it belongs to somebody, and every Pappus problem eventually belongs to a particular cat who made a particular decision.
What are the Planetary Resonances?
Pappus organises its worlds around five Planetary Resonances, which shape the conditions a given colony has to survive inside. They function as the environmental character of a run, so the same colony strategy will not carry cleanly from one resonance to another.
The practical effect is replayability of the kind colony sims live on. RimWorld varies runs through its AI storyteller and biome selection. Oxygen Not Included varies them through asteroid generation. Pappus varies them through resonance, so the question at the start of a run is what this world is going to demand rather than which difficulty slider you moved.
Is there a playable demo?
Yes, and it runs in the browser. The Pappus page hosts a playable demo with nothing to download and no account required. It is the fastest way to see whether the indirect-control loop appeals to you, which is the honest question anyone should ask before wishlisting a colony sim.
Watching it for two minutes usually does the job. The cats begin doing things you did not ask for almost immediately, which is either exactly what you want from the genre or a clear sign it is not for you.
How does Pappus compare to other colony sims?
| Game | You are | The colonists are | Core pressure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pappus | The colony AI | Autonomous cats | Space survival, cat autonomy |
| Stardeus | An immortal AI | Humans and robots | Ship systems and expansion |
| RimWorld | An unnamed overseer | Crash survivors | AI storyteller pacing |
| Oxygen Not Included | An unnamed overseer | Duplicants | Oxygen, heat, thermodynamics |
| Whiskerwood | A colony leader | Mice under cat rule | Taxes and production quotas |
Against the wider field, Pappus is smaller in scope than RimWorld and considerably lighter than Dwarf Fortress. It is aimed at the part of the genre that cares about characters rather than the part that cares about spreadsheet depth. If you want the full landscape first, what is a colony sim explains the genre and best colony sim games covers the field.
For the sci-fi end specifically, best space colony sim games covers the games Pappus sits closest to.
Who makes Pappus?
Pappus is being developed and published by Choost Games, an independent studio also responsible for Granny's Rampage and Granny's Gambit, alongside the Choost Games blog you are currently reading. It is a small-team project built in collaboration rather than a solo effort.
The studio's other work sits mostly in the action and roguelite end of things, which makes Pappus the outlier in the catalogue and the one that took the longest to build, since simulating autonomous agents is a different discipline from tuning a shooting game.
When is Pappus coming out?
There is no announced final release date. The Steam page is live and open for wishlists, and the browser demo is playable now on the Pappus page. Wishlisting is the practical way to hear about it, since Steam notifies wishlisters on launch and on discounts.
If you want to try it before committing to anything, the demo asks for nothing at all.
Is Pappus a cat game or a colony sim?
Both, and it sits in an unusual spot because of it. The cat game category is enormous and mostly consists of adventure games where you play as a single cat, covered in our best cat games roundup. The colony sim category is deep, technical, and dominated by games about humans.
Pappus is one of very few things that belongs to both. If you came from Stray or Little Kitty, Big City expecting to be a cat, this is a different experience: you are on the other side of the glass, responsible for a whole population of them. If you came from RimWorld expecting to manage people, the shift is smaller than it sounds, because a RimWorld pawn and a cat have more in common than either would admit.
The demo settles the question faster than any description does.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Pappus?
Pappus is a space colony simulation game where the colonists are cats and the player is the artificial intelligence assigned to keep them alive. It is in development by Choost Games, with a playable browser demo on the Choost site and a Steam page open for wishlists.
Is there a Pappus demo?
Yes. A playable demo runs directly in your browser on the Pappus page at Choost Games, with nothing to download or install. It is the fastest way to see how the colony behaves before deciding whether to wishlist it.
Do you play as a cat in Pappus?
No. You play as the artificial intelligence overseeing the colony. The cats are the autonomous inhabitants you are responsible for, and they make their own moment-to-moment decisions based on needs and personality rather than following direct orders.
What games is Pappus similar to?
Stardeus is the closest premise match, since it also casts you as an immortal AI running a colony of needs-driven agents. RimWorld is the closest in character-driven emergent storytelling. Oxygen Not Included is the closest in sealed-environment survival pressure.
When does Pappus come out?
Pappus is in development and has not announced a final release date. The Steam page is open for wishlists, and the browser demo on the Choost Games site is playable now.
