Paws of Coal is a cozy, slow-paced detective adventure with gameplay influenced by the scientific method – quests are solved by connecting evidence. If you get it right, the mystery is solved. If you get it wrong, everyone could be in danger. So, tread carefully. In the game, you play as Charles, a scholar on a mission sent by His Majesty (the lion king Lav) to help the critters of The Burrows where the outbreak is on the rise. Is it dangerous, or just a mere nuisance? It is up to Charles to find out what is going on. But there would be problems on his path, both scientific and social. The Burrows is a mining town, and miners are on a strike There is no cure for the outbreak, and productivity is suffering. The miners won't tolerate the current scenario and are on strike. The problem? The foreman of The Burrows isn't having any of it and wants to shut down the strike. Unless Charles finds a creative solution. Paws of Coal is a short, stand-alone game set in the larger Trip the Ark Fantastic universe that is currently in development in Gamechuck. Paws of Coal offers around 3 to 4 hours of gameplay (depending on your play style), and even multiple endings. The investigation is solved by talking to each resident of The Burrows, finding the clues in the environment, making a lot of notes, and connecting the dots (literally) using the interface in Charles' journal. When you're sure you got it right - submit the report, and... hope for the best. Good luck!
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Content Warning : Mentions of Cholera and its transmission, including discussion of faecal transmission.
Never is it more obvious that mere ideas are worthless than in game development. When Paws of Coal appeared in my steam discovery queue I was simultaneously giddy and upset: "They beat me to it!" I thought. I had always been mulling over the idea of a medical based detective game, its really quite the obvious connection as the similarities between the two professions (or at least their imagined process in popular culture) lend themselves to the combo. House for e.g was just a detective show but involving medical diagnoses. The trouble of course is that you cannot rely on laypeople to be able to correctly diagnose illnesses without knowledge or training, so thankfully Paws of Coal goes for the route of Epidemiology; an even more detective-esque discipline.
Paws of Coal's setup made me think of John Snow. No, not the fictional character from game of thrones, nor the famous British TV presenter, I am talking about John Snow, the famous doctor and epidemiologist who arguably invented the latter discipline as we know it today. You control a hedgehog botanist named Charles, tasked with finding out the cause of an outbreak amongst the rabbit population of your town(burrow). To do this you must talk to those who were with the sick prior to the outbreak (the mysterious illness causes delusions and sore throat, so you cannot interview the sick) and try to find the common link to all of them. There are a lot of Red Herrings of course, and you will also need to navigate the political and social structure of the fictional animal communities with hierarchies, miner strikes, political intrigue, gossipy badgers etc. The art style is reminiscent of traditional animation, like Winnie the Pooh, Watership Down or even Bambi, its appealing to look at and the animation to move faster is hysterical
John Snow is most famous for his work on Cholera, mainly composed of the "broad street pump" incident and the later outbreak involving two water companies. At the time of the mid 19th century, the miasma theory of disease was still dominant: many scientists who advised government policy believed that cholera and many other illnesses were carried in "bad air" , foul smelling air near mines or latrines and other such things[1]. John Snow however had the idea that cholera was in fact transmitted through contaminated drinking water. When he got the local authorities to remove the pump handle from the Broad Street water pump the outbreak ended, as this well was in fact contaminated through leeking from a nearby pit which had human waste in it.
The latter incident, the 1849 cholera outbreak allowed John Snow to attempt to prove his hypothesis. After mapping the outbreak house by house he determined that those who had their water supplied by the Southwark & Vauxhall water company (which took its water from a section of the Thames downriver from where the waste water was disposed of) were the main group getting the disease[2].
In Paws of Coal thankfully you are restricted to a small town with limited rooms, NPCs etc to have to keep track of and thankfully your journal takes care of most of it until you are ready to make your conclusion. It does certainly resemble the process of John Snow : you go door to door obtaining as much information about the outbreak, who ate what, who worked in the mines, who bought what defective product from the company store, etc. There is always a new string to pull and the game is very short (2-3 hours) so the pace is kept up. Sometimes you need to help someone or convince them to let you do something which is where a certain ethical dimension is introduced.
Paws of Coal really shines in its writing : its funny whilst not unserious, its rich in world building without being lost in just writing lore instead of a story and it deals in realistic issues without being preachy. You are left to make your own impression of it all whilst still characterising Charles by his range of responses. One major plot point involves a miner's strike and how you choose to work around it, as you need information both from the strike organizers and the mining company. I find this necessity of dealing with the structures of the time quite appropriate both gameplay wise and real life to how this usually goes (lest we forget about COVID and just how politicized it became), being a doctor is inherently political at times.
Joseph Goldberger was another physician and epidemiologist, who was concerned with the disease known as Pellagra in the early 20th century. After several experiments he seemed to show Pellagra was not in fact caused by a germ but rather poor diet, driven mainly by poverty. He of course advocated for social and land reform to address the issue but was rebuffed. Eventually the south was forced to diversify its crops due to unrelated causes and the problem was seemingly solved[3].
In my playthrough, the striking workers and especially their more militant organizers came off as slightly opportunistic, but watching a streamer do a different playthrough they found a much more noble side to them where they came off as more earnest, so perhaps it is a matter of the semi branching nature of the game. The mining company and especially the middle manager aldwyn was also a somewhat nuanced character through various interactions. Navigating the various political issues and conflicting interests was pretty compelling. Class is another issue inseparable from epidemiology, as John Snow himself mentioned when he was working out the causes of cholera transmission in his famous paper : "I allude to the spreading of cholera in the crowded habitations of the poor, who cook, eat, and nurse the sick in the same room, and pay little attention to cleanliness, and to its not spreading in the houses of the well-to-do ; also to the escape of the medical and clerical visitors, who do not eat or drink in the room of a poor cholera patient, and who carefully wash the hands when required, whilst the social visitor who comes to see the patient, or to attend his funeral, often suffers"
Paws of Coal was a really lovely surprise and the sequel hook leaves me hopeful this small studio will get to realize its ambitions in the future. Which is why it breaks my little heart to report that its mired in technical issues, (not so terrible I couldnt proceed with a little patience but enough to be off putting to many). Many bugs, quests that malfunctioned at times, and taking a screenshot causes a multisecond frame drop. If you can excuse all that (its like 5 euro also) then you might have a lovely time in this Disney looking medical mystery.
Citations :
1 Lancet Article : https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60830-2/fulltext?amp
2 JohnSnow : https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/mapping-disease-john-snow-and-cholera/
3 Pellagra, Goldberger and Land Reform:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738081X02002687?via%3Dihub
4 On the Mode and Communication of Cholera :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5307547/pdf/edinbmedj73529-0094a.pdf
Never is it more obvious that mere ideas are worthless than in game development. When Paws of Coal appeared in my steam discovery queue I was simultaneously giddy and upset: "They beat me to it!" I thought. I had always been mulling over the idea of a medical based detective game, its really quite the obvious connection as the similarities between the two professions (or at least their imagined process in popular culture) lend themselves to the combo. House for e.g was just a detective show but involving medical diagnoses. The trouble of course is that you cannot rely on laypeople to be able to correctly diagnose illnesses without knowledge or training, so thankfully Paws of Coal goes for the route of Epidemiology; an even more detective-esque discipline.
Paws of Coal's setup made me think of John Snow. No, not the fictional character from game of thrones, nor the famous British TV presenter, I am talking about John Snow, the famous doctor and epidemiologist who arguably invented the latter discipline as we know it today. You control a hedgehog botanist named Charles, tasked with finding out the cause of an outbreak amongst the rabbit population of your town(burrow). To do this you must talk to those who were with the sick prior to the outbreak (the mysterious illness causes delusions and sore throat, so you cannot interview the sick) and try to find the common link to all of them. There are a lot of Red Herrings of course, and you will also need to navigate the political and social structure of the fictional animal communities with hierarchies, miner strikes, political intrigue, gossipy badgers etc. The art style is reminiscent of traditional animation, like Winnie the Pooh, Watership Down or even Bambi, its appealing to look at and the animation to move faster is hysterical
John Snow is most famous for his work on Cholera, mainly composed of the "broad street pump" incident and the later outbreak involving two water companies. At the time of the mid 19th century, the miasma theory of disease was still dominant: many scientists who advised government policy believed that cholera and many other illnesses were carried in "bad air" , foul smelling air near mines or latrines and other such things[1]. John Snow however had the idea that cholera was in fact transmitted through contaminated drinking water. When he got the local authorities to remove the pump handle from the Broad Street water pump the outbreak ended, as this well was in fact contaminated through leeking from a nearby pit which had human waste in it.
The latter incident, the 1849 cholera outbreak allowed John Snow to attempt to prove his hypothesis. After mapping the outbreak house by house he determined that those who had their water supplied by the Southwark & Vauxhall water company (which took its water from a section of the Thames downriver from where the waste water was disposed of) were the main group getting the disease[2].
In Paws of Coal thankfully you are restricted to a small town with limited rooms, NPCs etc to have to keep track of and thankfully your journal takes care of most of it until you are ready to make your conclusion. It does certainly resemble the process of John Snow : you go door to door obtaining as much information about the outbreak, who ate what, who worked in the mines, who bought what defective product from the company store, etc. There is always a new string to pull and the game is very short (2-3 hours) so the pace is kept up. Sometimes you need to help someone or convince them to let you do something which is where a certain ethical dimension is introduced.
Paws of Coal really shines in its writing : its funny whilst not unserious, its rich in world building without being lost in just writing lore instead of a story and it deals in realistic issues without being preachy. You are left to make your own impression of it all whilst still characterising Charles by his range of responses. One major plot point involves a miner's strike and how you choose to work around it, as you need information both from the strike organizers and the mining company. I find this necessity of dealing with the structures of the time quite appropriate both gameplay wise and real life to how this usually goes (lest we forget about COVID and just how politicized it became), being a doctor is inherently political at times.
Joseph Goldberger was another physician and epidemiologist, who was concerned with the disease known as Pellagra in the early 20th century. After several experiments he seemed to show Pellagra was not in fact caused by a germ but rather poor diet, driven mainly by poverty. He of course advocated for social and land reform to address the issue but was rebuffed. Eventually the south was forced to diversify its crops due to unrelated causes and the problem was seemingly solved[3].
In my playthrough, the striking workers and especially their more militant organizers came off as slightly opportunistic, but watching a streamer do a different playthrough they found a much more noble side to them where they came off as more earnest, so perhaps it is a matter of the semi branching nature of the game. The mining company and especially the middle manager aldwyn was also a somewhat nuanced character through various interactions. Navigating the various political issues and conflicting interests was pretty compelling. Class is another issue inseparable from epidemiology, as John Snow himself mentioned when he was working out the causes of cholera transmission in his famous paper : "I allude to the spreading of cholera in the crowded habitations of the poor, who cook, eat, and nurse the sick in the same room, and pay little attention to cleanliness, and to its not spreading in the houses of the well-to-do ; also to the escape of the medical and clerical visitors, who do not eat or drink in the room of a poor cholera patient, and who carefully wash the hands when required, whilst the social visitor who comes to see the patient, or to attend his funeral, often suffers"
Paws of Coal was a really lovely surprise and the sequel hook leaves me hopeful this small studio will get to realize its ambitions in the future. Which is why it breaks my little heart to report that its mired in technical issues, (not so terrible I couldnt proceed with a little patience but enough to be off putting to many). Many bugs, quests that malfunctioned at times, and taking a screenshot causes a multisecond frame drop. If you can excuse all that (its like 5 euro also) then you might have a lovely time in this Disney looking medical mystery.
Citations :
1 Lancet Article : https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60830-2/fulltext?amp
2 JohnSnow : https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/mapping-disease-john-snow-and-cholera/
3 Pellagra, Goldberger and Land Reform:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738081X02002687?via%3Dihub
4 On the Mode and Communication of Cholera :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5307547/pdf/edinbmedj73529-0094a.pdf