Almost two months ago a little cat appeared in my home, all hungry and thin. We have adopted him, and now he is healthy. He was with me the whole time of making the game - on my lap, or feet, quietly sitting near the monitor or trying to pull all my USB cables. He was the inspiration for making the game.

After I Rented a Boat, I wanted a game where you were able to look freely and smoothly, so a good time went into speeding things up. This was possible because Crimson Wizard improved the flexibility and performance of Overlays in AGS. Additionally, Khris's math from AGS Kart made the camera here possible. I early on decided the game would be locked in a forest with a home at the center as a return point between tasks. This small scope allowed me to polish the forest geometry to work best with the renderer. In total, Haloa, Morgan, Heltenjon, Newwaveburritos, and Jon Paul Sapsford tested fourteen different versions of the game and kept me motivated!

In an initial sketch of the game scope, it was about photographing ghosts to show your owner why you were meowing, but I had a hard time scripting it. Haloa suggested guiding the ghosts home instead. This lead to the dialogues, which prevented an information dump at the start.

A lot of details arose from conversations with Morgan and Heltenjon, like the smoke in the house to help to find it and scratching things as breadcrumbs, navigation nudges in the forest with the flowers, plaque, and dandelions, and improving the dialogues so that the ghosts ask to be brought home. Newwaveburritos, who asked about adding fireflies, understood my vision of a game more about the atmosphere than the objectives and motivated me to improve the forest sounds.

During the middle of development, I listened to various music assets and couldn't find anything that sounded like it fit the game. Years ago, I worked with Jon Paul Sapsford on the soundtrack for Tea for Two, and the last thing he told me was to reach out if I was making a new game. So I did! He was lovely and quickly figured out what would work with the game. The final music was made before the game had an ending, so that scene's mood and timing are from it.

I wanted to do technical-oriented write-up, with some design too, but this will have to wait a bit now! Also, to whoever sent me the 2 USD in the game itch page, it made my night! Thank you!