PieRats puts rats in boats, floods a city and equips everybody with pies. Maritime insurance has declined to comment. This Windows brawler supports two to four local players with Xbox controllers, giving a roomful of friends a wonderfully specific dispute: which rodent gets to remain afloat after dessert becomes airborne?
Reasons to look closer
The harpoon makes movement the centre of the argument. Latching onto the environment lets you redirect the boat's momentum and sling yourself around the arena. Planning a route means thinking about where that pull will carry you, not merely where the hook lands. It is an appealing setup for players who enjoy turning a corner with more confidence than clearance.
Combat adds timing to the navigation. Incoming pies can be deflected with your own, so an opponent's attack offers a possible response beyond getting out of its way. The harpoon's aiming preview helps identify a destination before committing. There is a satisfying conceptual overlap here: both movement and defence ask you to judge an incoming or outgoing line through a crowd. You are simultaneously arranging a trip and dealing with hostile catering. Elimination gives that exchange an endpoint, rather than letting the neighbourhood food fight become a permanent municipal service.
Read the flying pastry
Recognisable shapes suit the distant camera, while water is designed to avoid distracting from the action. Decorative waves should not upstage approaching pies.
A separate trajectory cue shows where a thrown pie is headed, while its trail helps track it in flight. That matters when boat movement and projectile movement are both demanding your attention. Aiming blind would give the dessert far too much editorial control over the outcome.
The city's houses, cars, hydrants, street lights, bus stop and dumpster make the arena read as a submerged neighbourhood rather than an empty pool. Familiar roadside objects acquire a ridiculous new context. The bus service appears unlikely to recover, but the rats have found an alternative transport policy.
The neighbourhood bites back
Sea mines add explosive hazards to the route, and a stun effect indicates when a player is temporarily incapacitated. Those signals give opponents information as well as helping the affected captain understand why the boat has stopped cooperating. The surrounding wonky buildings and seaweed lean into the flooded-city setting. It is a cheery-looking place to make a navigational mistake, which is probably exactly how the estate agent described it before the first mine arrived.
Hazards react to players, pies and harpoons, making stray contact consequential. Match music, impact sounds, shark-chase audio and creaking structures give the surrounding trouble an audible presence. Even the scenery gets to sound concerned.
Your boat is smoking
The arena leaves open space for grappling and avoiding hazards, giving movement somewhere to develop freely. The HUD distinguishes current health from remaining lives, so damage and elimination are separate pieces of information. Smoke appears below seventy-five percent health; fire enters around half health, intensifying the boat's visible distress. Those cues make an injured opponent easier to read without staring exclusively at a bar. They also give your own vessel an increasingly theatrical way to suggest that perhaps the next decision should involve caution. A smoking boat is rarely complimenting its captain.
Pie hits push the victim back, adding a positional consequence to the impact. Camera shake reinforces major events, and controller vibration accompanies damage. That combination gives a successful throw several ways to announce itself, including directly through the hands of the person who would prefer to deny it happened. The integrated rats, sharks and crocodiles complete the absurd aquatic cast. This is a place where the cartoon wildlife and the armed confectionery both deserve attention, and where being jostled at the wrong moment can complicate an otherwise respectable escape plan.
One controller, one identifiable rat
The lobby includes a controls overview, and joining produces vibration tied to the player index. Establishing who is who before the mayhem starts is a useful courtesy in a game with so many small boats and so little dignity. Current pie rules remove self-damage and limit a pie to damaging a player once. That keeps the joke aimed at opponents instead of making every short throw a personal pastry-related tragedy. The strongest invitation here is learning together: understand the controls, recognise the consequences, and keep the argument focused on the rats responsible for them.
A public prototype is positively evidenced February 20, 2026. The final version followed May 25, 2026. Windows local competitive play supports two to four players using Xbox controllers; no online mode is established.