A new Toronto video game pays tribute to the escaped High Park capybaras
Including shout-outs to Honest Ed’s, the El Mocambo and Fran’s Restaurant
A small Toronto game developer is making a whimsical tribute to the city, and it all revolves around one lost capybara.
Titled Capy Castaway, the game is still in development, but screenshots by developer Kitten Cup Studio reveal a colorful world jam-packed with references to Toronto. There’s the player character themself, Capy, a capybara who washes up on a strange island following a flood, inspired by High Park’s infamous jailbreaking zoo animals. Capy soon meets Corvi, a fast-talking crow, and the two team up to explore the flooded island.
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As they do so, they encounter city bike poles and garbage bins jumbled up with Tim Hortons cups and Muskoka chairs. There’s also the arch of the Queen Street East bridge, but with slightly altered lettering, reading “The Soup I Stir Is Not the Soup I Sip.” (One demo version of the game involved competing in a soup-making competition, under the watchful, and somewhat ominous, gaze of what appears to be a three-headed goose hydra.)
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Names of other city treasures have been subtly changed as well. A fallen Honest Ed’s marquee has been changed to “Honest Fred’s,” and the Silver Snail comic book shop is now the “Golden Snail.” The El Mocambo’s palm tree sign is shortened to the club’s nickname, “Elmo,” and, fittingly, juts out of a desert island. Fran’s Restaurant becomes “Frons,” and in a wooden castle resembling the Jamie Bell High Park Adventure Playground, one can meet a dashing peacock—another escape-prone denizen of the local zoo.
Alas, the game doesn’t yet have a release date, so it will be a while yet before any of us can role-play our deepest capybara fantasies. For now, regular old Toronto will have to do.
Anthony Milton is a freelance journalist based in Toronto specializing in long-form magazine writing. He previously worked as an assistant editor at Toronto Life, where he launched the Front Row newsletter. He regularly contributes all sorts of stories to the magazine, including deep dives on sports, business and housing as well as short-form commentary on our ever-changing city, from its obsession with cherry blossoms to its maddening NIMBYism. His work has also appeared in Maclean’s, Ricochet, TVO, the Trillium and more.
