Fictionally interactive

Catch That Cat

Game cover depicting a cartoon cat entering a dark room through a door that lights everything from behind.

Catch That Cat is a small, easy text adventure that tries to have some retro sensibilities while doing away with the typical old-school annoyances. It's also one of those rare games that take place in the real world and the present day: just an urban slice of life about ordinary people.

For the record, the apartment in the game is not mine, though it's based on a couple of real ones. The cat’s by and large fictional.

Cover art by Paula Istrate.

Download

Screenshot from a text adventure running in a small window with typical GUI elements.

Catch That Cat started life as the demo game for the Jaiffa library, and can still be played in that edition. Since then however I made three more ports:

All three editions are open source under the MIT License. Consider it a comparative study of authoring systems.

Events

A Russian translation was entered (with permission) in Kontigr-2020, a new interactive fiction competition, where it took 9th place out of 12, and apparently a special prize for best (only?) parser game. People found it funny, but broken; also, some were disappointed that it's not some grand adventure or mystery. But I guess a Russian audience can relate very well to a slice of life in an East European city. Many thanks to everyone involved.

Links


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