A Cat’s Tale is a narrative-driven 2.5D side-scroller that follows a vulnerable kitten on a bleak journey through a world that is beautiful, indifferent, and quietly cruel. Blending atmospheric exploration with light puzzle-solving and stealth, the game tells an emotional story through visuals, animation, and environmental detail rather than dialogue. As the kitten searches for its lost family, players experience a haunting journey defined by loss, longing, and the fragile hope that keeps the kitten moving forward—even when the world refuses to care.
This game follows the life of a kitten from birth to death across a bleak, hopeless journey defined by loss, environmental indifference, and emotional decay. After its mother dies and its siblings are swept away in a storm, the kitten begins a desperate search to find them. Each discovery reveals another sibling already dead—except for the final one, whose suicide the kitten witnesses moments too late. The story is structured into six acts. The first five conclude with the death of a sibling; the final act ends with the death of the main character. Themes include abandonment, the fragility of innocence, and the quiet cruelty of a world that does not care.
Setting: Raingutter / storm drain
- The kitten is born alongside its mother and siblings.
- The mother remarks that the kitten “looks just like your father.”
- A violent storm causes a sudden flood that sweeps the siblings away.
- The mother sacrifices herself to push the kitten to safety through a grate.
- After the water recedes, the kitten returns to find the mother’s corpse.
Goal: Establish emotional stakes, introduce vulnerability, and push the player into the search for the siblings.
The kitten enters the wider world, beginning a sequence of areas in which each sibling is found dead. These deaths define the tone, reinforce hopelessness, and anchor each act.
- Gutter - Sibling drowned or eaten by rats. Tone-setting introduction to the harsh world.
- Dingy Kitchen - Sibling killed by a cook. Accidental, mondane brutality.
- Park - Sibling killed by cruel children. Human indifference or intentional cruelty.
- Forest - Sibling killed by wild animals. Nature offers no mercy.
- Field - Sibling frozen to death. Slow, quiet, inevitable.
- Road (Optional) - Sibling hit by a car. Possible but not preferred.
- Ocean Cliff Sibling commits suicide. The only sibling the kitten reaches in time to witness the death.
Goal: Build emotional degradation through repeated loss. Each area reinforces the theme that the world is uncaring, not evil.
Setting: Urban outskirts -> rooftops -> inner city
- The kitten navigates through the city in the final attempt to find family.
- The kitten discovers its father alive.
- The father plays along a bit and then betrays the main character, pushing him off the roof to fall into the clutches of animal control in the fathers place. you look very similar, animal control officers assume you are the one they've been hunting
Goal: Deliver the emotional centerpiece of betrayal and shatter the final thread of hope.
Setting: Animal control -> pound -> gas chamber
- The kitten is captured and processed.
- The kitten is placed in the gas chamber.
- The kitten imagines an escape sequence where it reunites with its family, now alive and happy
- Warm colors and comforting visuals contrast the rest of the game.
- The hallucination dissolves violently.
- The kitten never escaped. It died in the chamber.
- The final scene is the kitten drifing in a void, waiting for something that never comes.
Goal: Deliver the ending with emotional clarity and thematic consistency - no miracle, no rescue, only acceptance
- Hopelessness: Every act reinforces the absence of salvation or fairness.
- Innocence in a brutal world: The kitten never understands why these things happen.
- Quiet tragedy: Deaths are understated, not sensationalized.
- Beauty in emptiness: Environments are visually striking but cold and indifferent.
- Hallucinated comfort: The imagined escape highlights the kitten's longing, not reality.
- Atmospheric storytelling over dialogue.
- Environmental melancholy supported by tone, color, and sound.
- Player empathy built through vulnerability and unwinnable struggles.
- No heroism, no victory, only an emotional, introspectivee journey.
You are a newborn kitten thrust alone into a harsh and uncaring world. After a violent storm tears your family apart, you set out to find your missing siblings, clinging to the faint hope that someone—anyone—might still be alive.
Across decaying cities, forgotten forests, storm-soaked fields, and quiet human spaces, you uncover the truth one step at a time: the world is not evil… only indifferent. Each discovery pulls you deeper into a journey where innocence offers no protection, and survival demands more than strength—it demands resilience.
When you finally find the father you once hoped would save you, his betrayal sends you into the darkest chapter of your story. In your final moments, you glimpse a warm, imagined paradise—a place where your family is whole again. But dreams cannot change fate.
A Cat’s Tale is a somber, atmospheric experience about searching for warmth in a world that has none to give. It’s a quiet tragedy, beautifully told. Let yourself feel it.