When Tyler and Rebekah Thompson decided to come to Kickstarter to raise a mere $3,210 for an open world cat sim, the knee-jerk reaction was that this wouldn’t be nearly enough. Despite what some people might lead you to believe, developing a game isn’t easy or, for that matter, cheap. Fortunately, the Thompsons’ (as Falcon Development) have done an admirable job of keeping the scope of the project within their grasp.
Programmer, Tyler began work on Cattails back in May of 2016. After six months of casual development and tinkering, he decided to flesh out the idea into a solid alpha build. Now, with marketing help from his wife, Rebekah, Falcon Development has already managed to surpass their initial Kickstarter goal, raising over $23K.
Depicted through adorably simple graphics, Cattails puts players in the role of a feral cat. Here, cats roam wild across an expansive open world. It’s not all fun and games though. Cats must work hard to hunt for food, fight off territory usurpers, and climb the echelons of cat society. It’s an unusual premise, that quickly garnered backer support. Apparently, role-playing a cat is higher on people’s bucket lists than you’d expect.
It’s A Cat Pounce Cat World
In addition to its real-time skill based hunting mechanics, Cattails focuses heavily on the social aspects of the cat world. Players can join or do battle with different cat colonies and increase their relationships with individual cats along the way. If you gain enough favor you can even start your own cat family.
Currently, the project has a tentative release date for late 2017. Falcon Development plans to utilize Steam Greenlight to launch the game. Thanks to various stretch goals, Cattails will be available for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux systems.
