Capyverse Odyssey turns the internet’s capybara-versus-cat rivalry into a jetpack co-op war

For the better part of two decades the internet had a house animal. Cats, grumpy or keyboard-playing or loafing across a laptop, were the default currency of online affection, the creature that taught a generation how to share. Then the capybara wandered in: placid, unbothered, soaking in a hot spring with a citrus fruit balanced on its head, and somehow adored by everyone. Capyverse Odyssey, the co-op roguelite from Metazooie Studios, takes that quiet changing of the guard and turns it into a full cosmic grudge.

The premise is the whole joke, and it is a good one. Ophelia, a crowned white cat, rules a kingdom powered by attention and adoration. When capybaras go viral, her audience drifts, and she reacts the way a fading influencer might if she also controlled the fabric of reality: by twisting entire worlds into stranger versions of themselves just to stay relevant. Standing against her are Capy, a wholesome capybara hero, and a small crew of animal companions, every one of them strapped into a jetpack.

Moody the baby hippo, Capy the capybara and Jim the bulldog with jetpacks at a night carnival in Capyverse Odyssey — Image: Metazooie Studios

The crew is where the design starts to argue for itself. Alongside Capy, the demo roster includes Moody, a baby hippo the studio describes as built like a tank and fighting like one, a casting choice that lands neatly in an internet that already crowned Moo Deng, and Jim, a British Bulldog pitched as fast, aggressive and only possibly house-trained. Each hero brings distinct abilities and a different playstyle, so a squad of up to four players is meant to be composed rather than merely assembled.

Mechanically, the idea is perpetual motion. The jetpacks are not decoration: the game is built around staying airborne and attacking from whatever angle the fight allows, and the announcement warns that lingering too long invites punishment from, among other things, an aggressive suitcase. Runs are chains of objective-based maps, from zone defence and elimination arenas to mini-boss fights, and every cleared map feeds the build with stacking power-ups and wearables until a modest loadout becomes what the studio cheerfully calls complete chaos. It is the roguelite contract recast as a feed that keeps escalating to hold your attention, which happens to be precisely Ophelia’s sin.

A giant grinning clown boss attacks the capybara squad in a nightmare carnival in Capyverse Odyssey — Image: Metazooie Studios

The worlds follow the same logic. There is an oversized casino where playing cards turn hostile and the ATMs hit back, a nightmare carnival ruled by a giant clown who hurls bumper cars, haunted slot machines and killer clowns, corrupted wastelands and exploding luggage. The tone is cartoon surrealism, closer to a fever dream built from the internet’s own iconography than to any single genre template.

Capyverse Odyssey is coming to PC via Steam, where a free demo is available now ahead of a full release that Metazooie Studios places in the fourth quarter of 2026. The game supports solo play and full online co-op for one to four players, and the announcement mentions no other platforms for now.

For a game about a cat who cannot bear to lose the spotlight, its sharpest idea may be its honesty: the stakes are attention, plain and simple, and it asks four friends to fly straight at them.

Tags: co-op games, roguelite games, capybaras, Capyverse Odyssey, Metazooie Studios