Game Concept Devlog

Don't Get Caught By the Cat (Working Title)

Concept Statement:

Don't Get Caught by the Cat is a 2D randomly generated maze game where the player must outrun the humanoid cat Clawdius through the halls of his castle and paths of his gardens. As the player works their way through the mazes they will discover items to aid in their escape and other objects within the castle will begin to pursue the player.

Genre(s):

2D top down, adventure, retro fantasy

Concept Development:

Over the past few years I've developed an interest for retro fantasy and the feeling of unfamiliar nostalgia and adventure that resonates through the music, settings and art used in different medias within the genre. Admittedly, the interest mainly stemmed from AI dark fantasy tiktok videos that use the song Hide - Dorian Concept, this game will aim to capture the feeling of watching these videos and movie titles such as The Labyrinth(1986).

The Labyrinth move poster (The Labyrinth, 1986, http://www.impawards.com/1986/labyrinth_ver3.html)

Using the subtractive design philosophy we can hone in our game concept from a very browed idea down to a smaller goal. As I want focus more on conveying a feeling, features such as combat and leveling up player stats, staples of the fantasy genre wont be implemented. The game will focus on simply being a maze game that uses art and music to convey the genre. Essentially the game can be boiled down to a Pacman clone in a different setting with small areas in between generated mazes.

Audience:

The game will cater towards casual gamers who enjoy retro fantasy and arcade style games such as Pacman that just want to pick up a game for the novelty then move on with their day. For these reasons the game will likely be targeted towards an older audience.

Game Treatment:

Mechanics 

Mechanically the game will be very simple. The player will be controlled using 'W'A'S'D', 'E' will be pressed to pick up an item such as a key and 'Q' will be pressed to use it.

The game will be made of multiple levels consisting of tiles. Each level will be a randomly generated maze with a start, exit and key. The key will be used to unlock the door at the exit. After three mazes the player will enter a safe room where there will possibly be items such as cat food to lure Clawdius to a particular location or candles. Like Pacman the mazes will be imperfect, meaning there will be more than one possible route to get to a point in the map. They will however, be perfect in the sense that all tiles will be reachable and there will be no unused tiles.

Pacman Maze (Free Pacman, https://freepacman.org/)

(note: The annotations demonstrate that there are multiple paths Pacman could take to reach the point marked by the asterisk in the top left corner)

Clawdius will actively be seeking the player as they are in the maze but won't always make the correct turns to find them unless they are within a  certain range where they will be directly chased, similarly to how Blinky chases Pacman in. 

Blinky chasing Pacman (Free Pacman, https://freepacman.org/)

When Clawdius is chasing his speed will increase and animation will change from walking upright to running on all fours.

Key Features

 - Procedurally generated mazes with multiple routs to selected points and no unused tiles.

 - Path following AI that will target the player

- Interesting pixel art that conveys the them of the game (retro fantasy)

Concept Art:

The art and music of the game is very important as it is what will convey the feeling of unfamiliar nostalgia and adventure that I want the game to convey. The art will entirely pixel art as I believe it has a comforting and nostalgic quality. Excluding the player sprite, all of the character designs will be fantasy like animals/creatures heavily inspired by The Labyrinth with the best example being Clawdius himself, a walking talking cat. 

Clawdius - 

Garden Tiles (dirt and grass) - 

All pixel art - Sara Hollingsworth, 2025

References:

Free Pacman, https://freepacman.org/

The Labyrinth, 1986, http://www.impawards.com/1986/labyrinth_ver3.html

Sara Hollingsworth, 2025