Nekomancer of Nowhere Preview: The Purr-tel Between Worlds | PAX East 2026

I love cats, they’re just permanent toddlers with enough intelligence to get them into trouble all the time it seems, but they’re always so cute it’s hard to get or even stay mad at them. Let me introduce you to the Nekomancer, a cute black and white cat looking to discover what the Tombstone Tower is hiding. Bringing the dead you meet along the way back to life, in this unique puzzle game. 

Nekomancer of Nowhere is a puzzle game where I have to draw spells to get through the Tower. Each stage requires all ghosts to be brought back to life, drawing the glyphs floating around their incorporeal bodies. There are also two planes of existence available to the Nekomancer who can traverse them by drawing a circle in the air, creating a fun puzzle mechanic of figuring out where to stand in the world of the living to get to the world of the dead or vice versa. The two planes have their own music, the living with an orchestral sound, while the realm of the dead is more techno.

Where this game truly shines and earned one of our Best of PAX 2026 awards was in the accessibility of the drawings.

While Trina was playing the demo I got a chance to speak with Ethan, the director of Nekomancer of Nowhere and co-founder of Standing Cat, the studio behind the game. This is where PAX is unique because if all I did was play the game I would have never known the work that the devs did behind the scenes to make each spell work for each player. Ethan told me each spell has several variations in the database so no matter how someone draws, the game will recognise it, preventing so much frustration of trying to get the glyph just right. This flexibility helps the game keep its pace when dealing with multiple ghosts coming after you never stopping to say I didn’t match the drawing perfectly.

While there wasn’t much narrative shown during the demo, Ethan explained that as the game goes on it may become clear the Nekomancer may not be doing everyone a favor by bringing them back to the land of the living. During the development of the game Ethan and their partner lost their cat Travis, the inspiration for the Nekomancer. The game became a way for the team to process the loss of their kitty, and as someone who’s had to say goodbye to their fur babies before this hit me hard. 

Nekomancer of Nowhere came out on Halloween of 2025 and is now in my library waiting until I’m ready to be in a very emotional state. I hope you add it to yours!