Early AccessAttract Mode
12 / wfmag.ccEarly AccessAttract Mode
he name might throw you off a
bit – while Cat Lady does indeed
feature a lady who likes cats,
it’s also not some cutesy romp
through... whatever it is you might
expect it to be a romp through. Unless you
expected said romp to be of the cutesy variety
and through a twin-stick shooter/rogue-lite,
then you’d be bang on. You’d probably also be
co-founder of Rose City Games and Cat Lady
director, Will Lewis.
“Myself and our artist, Jake Fleming, started
from the idea of cute-meets-spooky exploring
a domestic household,” he explains. “We both
grew up having close relationships with our
respective grandmas, being at grandma’s house,
being a little creeped out by old estates and
antiques. We also have similar tastes in cute-
meets-weird games. Starting out with some
exploration mechanics, the concepted style
and perspective led to something that felt more
top-down combat in nature, and we went in thatdirection after leaning more into games that the
team members are fans of.”
That direction took on a more rogue-lite
form as progress was made, and with the genre
comes the expectation – founded or unfounded- of the ‘git gud’ mentality. It might look
adorable, but Cat Lady can challenge even the
most hardcore of players – you know, the ones
who actually refer to themselves as ‘hardcore’.
All the same, difficulty has been considered from
day one, and the team is making a big effort
to make sure there’s something for all comers,
even if your hand-eye coordination is on a par
with an actual cat.
“We want to reward players with more
challenging situations, no matter their skill
level,” Lewis says. “In our testing, entry areas are
a great place to explore and learn the ropes,
but can also feel really rewarding to blast right
through if you’re a skilled rogue-lite player. As
the game continues on, we want to really ramp
up that challenge to make sure fans of the genre
are challenged, while players who are new to the
genre can have access to lots of upgrades that
enable them to choose how they progress and
how they want to approach tougher situations.”
There have been other changes in
development too, as you might expect, with
earlier plans factoring in an increased sense
of exploration, for example. But the vision was
whittled down to a far purer, less broad form:
the twin-stick shooter. A twin-stick shooter in
which you take control of Ally and harness the
magical powers of a selection of different kitties,
in order to take down an army of ghosts which
have invaded your grandma’s mansion, across a
T
GENRE
Twin-stick shooter /
Rogue-lite
FORMAT
PC
DEVELOPER
Rose City Games
PUBLISHER
VIZ Media
RELEASE
Out now (Early Access)Info
Would cats be this co-operative
and helpful if they could talk?Raiding the kitty
Feline like we should use more puns with Cat Lady