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Cattails is a quintessential cat game. You play as a cat, most other characters are cats. You get the full cat experience. It's definitely a cat game.
What seems like a simple premise though, has captured people. The Cattails series has smashed through fundraising goals and the latest release, Cattails: Wildwood Story is experiencing excellent ratings since it's Oct. 20 release.
But why do people care about cat games?
It's a question Falcon Develops aka the developer of the Cattails series gets to in our interview below.
"I do think at the core of it, it gets back to what is a cat game, right? And why do people resonate with cat games? I think they're the same question, because I think people form such strong bonds with cats in the real world"
Gamer Cat Cafe: Can you introduce yourself?
Falcon Develops, Developer of Cattails: I'm Tyler Thompson, I go by @FalconDevelops on Twitter and just about everywhere else. I'm currently making Cattails: Wildwood Story.
It's a game where you play as a cat. You live in the wilderness, hunt critters, form relationships with other cats, and generally build your community of cats. It's the sequel to Cattails, which came out in 2017 on Steam and later on the Nintendo Switch.
Both games were crowdfunded and they're both games by cat lovers for cat lovers.
Cattails is based on or at least inspired by the Warrior Cats series right?
That's one of the major influences for the game for sure. We married some of the ideas from Warrior Cats with game mechanics from Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley and created something new.
I have to admit that I actually had not heard of Warrior Cats until I played Cattails. So your game was the introduction for me. Can you describe what Warrior Cats is to someone who has never heard of it?
FD: It's a series of books. The first ones came out quite a long time ago. Now there are a few of them.
It's about a group of cats that live in the wilderness and they do things cats do like forming shelters, hunting critters, and fighting with other cats. These cats are fairly territorial so that's certainly provided the seed of inspiration for some elements of Cattails.
So why cats?
I had a cat growing up named Coco. Coco is actually in both games and is one of the most important characters, one of the first characters in both games.
I think having a cat growing up for several years and having Coco in my life was sort of the reason that I love cats so much.
GCC: How did it feel to be able to put your cat into a game and have them
immortalized?
It's super cool.
Coco was my childhood cat. Now I have two other cats as well who I've also been able to put in the game. You can see one of them in the first Cattails and they're both in Cattails: Wildwood Story. We only had the one cat when Cattails came out.
That's Elli and that's Buttercup. They're rescues from a local cat cafe. We adopted Elli about midway through the development of the first game and then after the first game came out we adopted Buttercup as well because we love cats so much.
I understand, I have five right now.
It's amazing though, to be able to put a pet of yours into the game like that.
It's really fun to work with the artists and say like, "Hey, we need stylized artwork," but it's this real cat that actually lives in my house.
Then you have to write your cat as well. Stepping into their shoes and trying to embody the temperament and personality of your individual cats is a really fun exercise. It's almost like, if they were human, what would they say?
"Cats have a great way of forming relationships with humans. They're excellent companions and you just can't help but love them."
Why do you think people like to see cats in games in particular?
I'll tell you a little bit of a story that took me by surprise.
I mentioned that both games were crowdfunded. When we crowdfunded the first Cattails game, we had a reward tier that was to help us develop an NPC. You could come up with your own idea for a cat and pick your own [fur] color, dialogue, and name and we would put that cat into the game. Then you could befriend them or you could potentially marry them.
Something that really surprised me is I thought most people were going to come up with original characters. That's not what happened. A lot of people decided that they wanted to use that to memorialize their real cats, either their current living real cat or a past cat that meant a lot to them.
I guess it shouldn't surprise me, shouldn't caught me off guard. But I thought that was really, really sweet.
So in the second game, when we went to go crowdfund, we realized like, oh, this is something that people really care about. They want a way to sort of digitally memorialize their cats and then sort of, you know, allow their legacy to live on in a way because those cats, you know, catch their lives so much.
So we added this hall of statues into the temple in the game, which is a really important area. And people could customize these cat statues and then include a message on the plaque.
People kept leaving all of these sweet, wholesome little messages about real cats and how they touched their lives in such a meaningful way.
I do think that is the core of it. I think that people anybody who's ever lived with a cat, anybody who's ever spent an extended period of time with I think it's almost intuitive that you would understand that.
Cats really do have a great way of forming relationships with humans. They're excellent companions and you just can't help but love them.
With all of that, what does it take to make a cat character? What makes them feel like cats?
A lot of games have cat characters, but they aren't cats, right? They'll be anthropomorphized cats. That usually ends up looking like it's a human character that looks like a cat.
We wanted to get away from that. In some aspects, they are, because they speak English, real cats don't do that. But in other ways, they are 100% cats. And so we lean into that by trying to make them like how the real animals would behave.
We have characters that nap in the middle of the day, like real cats do. We have characters that go out and hunt. They're finding catnip in the wild and all those things. They're inherently cat-like and not human-like.
What makes a cat game?
That is also a great question and I'm not just saying that I honestly think that's a great question. I think there are games that run the gamut from just having a cat character to games that are entirely cats.
I think Cattails falls pretty squarely toward the end of the spectrum in that sense. It's almost entirely cats, there's there's no humans. There's barely human influence in Cattails: Wildwood Story. There are a couple of items, but you don't ever see a human on screen.
I don't know that I have a great answer to that question. I think it requires that either the main character or major characters be cats of some form.
It's kind of an evolving definition right? Because like a game like Animal Crossing is definitely not a cat game, but there are quintessential cats in that game.
I'm scratching my head because I'm coming up with a shortlist.
I don't know if you're familiar with Calico, but in Calico, you were not a cat but you run a cat cafe and it's almost entirely cats aside from you. So that feels pretty strongly like a cat game to me.
I don't know how to how to rigidly define that.
(Pssspsssp We're Making a List of Cat Games Called the Cat-alog. Find that here.)
But that's kind of the beauty of it, right? There isn't a rigid definition.
I was reading up that you're revamping everything. The engines were completely revamped and all of the features are getting boosted. So what was your favorite thing to implement into Wildwood?
When we sat down to create Cattails: Wildwood Story, I knew instantly that I wanted to do something bigger and better. I wanted it to be a true sequel.
In a sense, I wanted it to be like the games that I played growing up. I played a lot of Nintendo games. So to me, it was the difference between, an N64 game and a GameCube game. I wanted the difference to feel that stark. I went into it knowing I was going to start everything from scratch.
I didn't copy and paste any code. Everything is 100 percent bespoke, made just for Wildwood Story. That really gave me a great opportunity to sit down with every feature and every mechanic individually and think, "OK, what makes this work? What elements of this don't work so well and how can it be expanded? How can it be made better and bigger?"
One of the features that I'm very proud of, that is better, is the hunting mechanic. In the first game, hunting is one of the early barriers, one of the early friction points for people. They ended up not playing it very long or not enjoying their time with it if they had trouble figuring out the hunting mechanics. Then that was it. because you just can't play it if you don't figure it out.
For Wildwood Story, I really revamped that. The whole process is pretty different and includes several options for people who don't care for the specific mechanical implementation that we went with as the default.
So if you want your experience to feel more like Cattails one, we have an option for that. You can just switch it in the settings. So I'm very proud of that. I think that came together super well.
The mechanic that I think is going to be the most popular and I'm also super proud of is marriage options. We identified several individual characters that are romanceable characters for Cattails: Wildwood Story.
A lot of players came back [after Cattails one] and said, "Oh, I really wish this character was marriageable." They really found love with that specific character and just because of our arbitrary decisions back then, they weren't marriageable.
For wealth of story, we decided that we were going to make every NPC that's feasibly marriageable be marriageable. Now there's like there's over 20 marriage options for the game. Each of those individually has a boatload of dialogue that we wrote just for those dialogue paths. There are events and there's all of this unique stuff specific to all of those partners as well.
That was a ton of work that was super time-consuming, but I couldn't be prouder with how that turned out.
So then there's also going to be a mechanic, like a buddy system, right?
I love the buddy system. It's a feature that I sort of conceptualized for the first game and then because of time constraints and some other reasons, we ended up not implementing it in the first game.
But I thought, "Man, it would be super fun if you could just approach one of your good friends and decide to take them with you on your adventure." And specifically, like, you know, in the first game, a lot of people wanted to adventure with their spouse, right? We got married to them, we want to spend time with them, so that's a great idea.
For the new game, we made it so that if you become really good friends with any of the cats you can bring them with you on your adventures. They'll help you hunt, they'll help you fight, you can take them mining, they'll gather herbs for you. And if you do that, you're going to gain friendship points with them. So it's beneficial for your relationship.
They're also going to level up. They have a whole XP bar associated with them and can level up and become stronger.
To make them all unique and make it rewarding to have more than one buddy they all have traits as well. There's a mix-and-match system with passive and active traits that give them special abilities, buffs, and modifiers that are sort of unique to those cats.
Giving each cat a little bit of that distinct flavor really helps deepen their personality and gives a functional incentive to be friends with everybody.
Cattails: Wildwood Story is a continuation of the first game. Can you speak a little bit about the story and what's kind of transpired between those two?
When we set out to create Wildwood Story, one of our objectives was we wanted to create a sequel in the sense that it's bigger and better and it is a continuation of the first game. But we also want it to be approachable for players who have never played the first game.
There are going to be people who will find it who just haven't heard the first game or haven't played the first game, and that's totally fine. We want those players to be able to jump in really quickly.
What we did with Wildwood Story is when you start up the game you get a really quick synopsis of Cattails one. You learn that your character is a really important cat. You saved this spirit called the forest guardian, who's this powerful protector of the cats of your area.
Because you did that, all of the cats revere you. They look up to you as a leader. When you start the game, a new crisis begins.
Your old homeland gets destroyed by this supernatural storm. It destroys the temple of the forest guardian and it throws everything into pandemonium.
All of the cats are trying to figure out what to do and they decide that some cats should become leaders. Whoever decides to follow them out into new areas then attempts to create new settlements.
You become the leader of one of these communities of cats, and you take several cats with you out to the Wildwood. Wildwood is this new region of the world that we haven't explored before. And you decide that that's where you're going to set up roots. That's where you begin the story.
All right, so then we have a big cast of characters, right? Who are your top three?
This is the perennial question, it always comes back. I love this question, but I also hate this question. It's like asking a parent who their favorite child is.
I'll give my typical response. I love Krampy, and part of the reason that I love Krampy is the Plague Doctor mask. A very good friend of mine in real life came up with the concept for Krampy and helped write the dialogue for that. I associate Krampy so heavily with a great friend of mine. Krampy is always very close to the top of the list.
For other cats, of course, I have to say, Coco. I have to say Elli, and I have to say Buttercup because they're they were all at various points my cats.
That makes a lot of sense.
With the first game and the second game you ran Kickstarters and you smashed through your goals. Have you been surprised at the support that you've gotten?
Oh my gosh, absolutely.
Both of the times we ran Kickstarters, you'll notice that the goal amount and the actual amount funded are completely out of whack. That's because we genuinely underestimated how many people are going to be as jazzed about this as we are.
Both times we thought, "OK, this is a fun project." I'm excited to work on it, my wife's excited to work on it. We're going to do this because we think it's a cool art project. We put it out there and thought maybe 100 people would want to play. Both times blew us out of the water.
So many people showed up out of nowhere. That was a really cool moment because I genuinely think that cat video games attract a really, really nice crowd of people.
The amount of support, love, and passion for both of the games was overwhelming and it made my job a lot easier.
Why do you think it resonated with so many people?
I do think at the core of it, it gets back to what is a cat game, right? And why do people resonate with cat games? I think they're the same question.
I do think people just form such strong bonds with cats in the real world that it can't help but overspill into projects like this and then love for projects like this.
So this is kind of an unrelated question, but do you think we're in a cat game renaissance?
I like the term Renaissance. I honestly think that we are.
When I was building Cattails back in 2016 there really weren't a lot of cat-related video games. Cat Quest was out and there were a handful of mobile apps. Aside from that, I'm not aware of, at least off the top of my head, any cat video games.
You didn't have Stray or Calico or any of any of the the many, many cat games that we have nowadays. Now if you go on Steam and you search "cats," you will get like 200 games and about 20 of those are amazing games.
I do think it's true. I would say we're in a bit of a cat game renaissance,
What were some of the other influences for the Cattails series?
One of the things that I enjoy talking about is the other half of its influence, which is the Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley elements.
Those games really resonated with me as a kid. They showed me that video games could be more than beat the level, stomp the Goomba, shoot the bad guy.
You were doing other, more meaningful things in those games. You were racing against the clock, harvesting vegetables, forming relationships, and building your house. I really latched on to that. I really loved that.
I think a discussion of Cattails would be incomplete without a discussion of its life sim and farming sim roots.
Cat games from left to right, Cat Quest: Pirates of the Purribean, Calico and Stray.
Photo Credit: To each respective game.
Why do you think those two things kind of go together so well? Cats and cozy farming sims.
I think cats are sort of inherently cozy. They're soft they're furry and they nap 15 hours a day. It's the dream, it's what we all want to do.
I think that just the existence of cats gives off cozy vibes for most people. Except for people who hate cats for some reason. So that pairs very nicely with farming sims.
Speaking of people who don't like cats, how would you try to convince someone who is maybe not a cat person that they should try Cat tails or cat games in general?
Back in the day, this was like 3/2020. We used to do the convention circuit and we'd set up the Cattails demo and solicit people to come and play.
I remember one lady in particular. I thought she seemed interested. I went up and I told her about what the game was about. As soon as I said "You can become friends with cats," she instantly threw up her hands. She walked away and completely disengaged from the conversation.
I'm like "Ohh man, it was a dog person" and that's fine.
I think that my answer to the question is some people just aren't gonna resonate with the core concept of it. They're not cat people or they don't like animals, whatever it is. I'm not making a game for them. So I really don't feel like I need to.
Fair enough. And then I have to ask, top three cat games?
Man, that's hard. Can I include any game that has a cat in it?
Absolutely. This definition can be whatever you want it to be.
I'm gonna have to say Super Cat Tales. It's kind of fun. It was one of the first platformer RPG games. It felt like playing Mario on your mobile device before you could do that. This was way before Super Mario Run. That one's up there for me. Younger me definitely resonated with that.
I'm going to say Stardew Valley because it has a cat. I don't know if that counts. That might be cheating. It's a great game.
There are so many, that's the problem, it's it's a little bit hard to pick just one. So I'm gonna leave it at two.
I'm just gonna say all the cat games are great. Play them all.
The cat from Stardew Valley. Stardew was a big influence on Cattails.
Image Credit: Stardew Valley Wiki
Good answer, very diplomatic. Those are all my questions. Is there anything that you'd like to add, or anything that I missed?
A group of developers took a portion of their revenue and donated to their local cat shelters. I thought that was super cool because my wife Becca, who also helped me with Cattails, used to volunteer at her local animal shelter and that was a great program.
We were inspired by that and so we did a few Steam charity sales. There was the Cat Awareness Sale and another sale was just more generally charity-focused. We decided for both of those that we were going to donate a portion to our local county animal shelter.
So that's what we did. That's a cause that we both care about, local animal shelters and making sure that the cats are able to get the help they need. I think that's super cool.
Cattails: Wildwood Story was released to Steam on October 20. It is heading to Nintendo Switch in Q4 2024.