Indie devs behind adorable co-op horror game say a "direct copy" with "AI-generated assets" is launching on the PlayStation Store before their game is even finished

Developer Lazy Flock is a two-person studio that's spent the past handful of years promoting an adorable horror game called Haunted Paws, where you and a co-op partner play as a pair of puppies trying to save your human pal from a haunted mansion. With Haunted Paws still without a definite release date, you might imagine the devs were quite surprised to find a game nearly identical in concept – just with kittens instead of pups – scheduled for release on the PlayStation Store later this month.

"THIS IS NOT A HAUNTED PAWS GAME. IT IS A DIRECT COPY," Lazy Flock says on Twitter, sharing an image of the PlayStation Store page for Ghostly Whiskers. "This is an unauthorized copy that steals our concept, visuals, and story, using AI-generated assets, releasing on the PlayStation Store."

The store page describes Ghostly Whiskers as a cute horror game where you and a co-op partner explore a haunted mansion as a pair of kitties in search of a human pal. There are no screenshots or gameplay footage on the store page, but it's impossible to ignore the similarities to Haunted Paws – and the art on the heading of the store page, which certainly resembles AI-generated imagery with its over-sharp animal characters and misshapen pawprints, doesn't help.

Ghostly Whiskers lists Nostra Games as its developer, and if you take a look around the trailers on the studio's YouTube page, you'll see a lot of names, art styles, and concepts that are quite similar to games with long-standing popularity or viral moments in the sun. There's Shelter 78 (Fallout Shelter and Fallout 76), Two Hands Hospital Assistant Simulator (Two Point Hospital), Weed And Greed (Schedule 1), Risky Roads (Crossy Road), and Only Up Rush (Only Up).

Not all of those titles are direct gameplay imitations of their obvious inspirations, but there are some pretty egregious examples. Hole Digging Master is easy to mistake at a glance for A Game About Digging A Hole, the micro-sized excavation game that briefly took over our features editor's life last year. Ultra Bonk Survivors is nigh-shameless in how much it resembles Megabonk, 2025's hit Vampire Survivors-like.

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Most of the Nostra Games catalog has been released on the PlayStation Store, though it does have a handful of games on Steam. That includes an upcoming port of Trading Card Shop Simulator (no prizes for noticing the resemblance to the viral 2024 early access hit, TCG Card Shop Simulator), which does disclose, per Steam's rules, that "in-game art can contain AI generated textures." Those disclosures are not required on the PlayStation Store.

The PlayStation Store has been rife with cheap knock-offs of notable games over the years. There were the Peak clones, the ripoffs of Schedule 1, and even extremely specific riffs on particular GTA Vice City missions.

Here are the upcoming indie games for 2026 and beyond that you need to know about.