Cache Cat
A serious game addressing hoarding and collecting habits of gamers

Our assignment was to make a prototype for a serious game: a game with a purpose that is not solely entertainment. Inspired by games like Neko Atsume, Pokemon, Path of Exile and RPGs in general, my teammate and I started to reflect on hoarding and collecting in games. We found interesting the way most of us gather items in games without ever using them. We want to keep them for the right time, but no moment is ever worth spending them. We also thought about how, in order to fulfill achievements, we often end up doing or gathering things we wouldn't otherwise.

Based on our research, we decided to make a cat gathering game for mobile. It is about rescuing cats and take care of them before they get adopted. The trap is that the game is engineered to encourage players to hoard cats and focus on getting more rather than taking care of the ones they already own. To really surprise players who stop caring and begin to only collect cats, we decided to make the cat quietly die.

For this project, we were only two. My teammate did all the art and I programmed the game. For the various cat breed colors, I used a color swapping shader like in this tutorial.

Note that it was only a prototype and the game is not complete :)