Indie Game Spotlight: Cat Lady
Get ready to live your ultimate cat lady dreams this week with our latest Indie Game Spotlight. Cat Lady is an action roguelike game where Ally, our cat-loving hero, goes for a nice visit to Grandma’s mansion… only to find that it’s haunted! Grandma’s many cats gain magical abilities and team up with Ally to pound and paw perilous poltergeists in the ever-growing mansion—featuring a cute art style, cats that need rescuing, and tons of upgrades for your weaponized kitties.
We chatted with Will Lewis, co-founder of Rose City Games and director of the game, its artist and animator Jake Fleming, programmer Nic Biondi, and designer Christian Scandariato. Read on!
Which games or movies inspired Cat Lady?
Will: My head jumps around a lot when I think about the inspiration behind Cat Lady. I grew up playing a lot of dungeon crawlers and was always a fan of exploring creepy and dark medieval settings, but never really played roguelikes. Playing a lot of interactive fiction adventures like Dark Castle and King’s Bounty on Mac, or newer indie games like Bernband over the years really kept those interests in my head. After watching the funny, over-the-top scene in Invader Zim in which Dib gets lost in the mall’s parking garage, I started working on an interactive fiction where you needed to find your cat in a series of weird dark places, and I think that was the only thing I ever wrote down that linked cute cats with creepy mansions. This was years before the release of Cat Lady’s gameplay inspirations like Nuclear Throne and Binding of Isaac, but Jake and I explored the general style of something that might come from my original idea and things just kind of came together from there! It’s also been super fun to work with Jake’s character design style to mesh that cute and creepy vibe—he definitely comes up with awesome stuff that I would never think of.
Jake: I’ve always been a fan of limited color palettes, which probably stems from playing a lot of games on NES and Gameboy growing up. With Nintendo being the console I ended up having as a kid, I got very accustomed to cute and quirky characters like the cast of Kirby or even River City Ransom. I remember seeing a Boo for the first time in Super Mario Bros 3, and thinking it was simultaneously adorable and terrifying. From a conceptual perspective, the NES game Stinger had a very profound influence on me in terms of enemies in Cat Lady: There are some very fun and weird inanimate objects that, for some reason, are alive and trying to kill you!
The original concept for Cat Lady was created at a game design jam in 2017. How much has changed from then to now?
Will: Cat Lady has changed a whole lot since then, but thankfully not too much! The art has certainly changed: cats were originally tiny, with tiny eyes and little to no expression. We had a lot more facial details on ghosts, even more so than the main character, Ally. We learned from The World Next Door that people loved the archetypes and being able to level-up their characters, sometimes even more than using them in some cases, so you’ll now see numerous cats with very different facial and body details which gives them much more personality.
We also made a big change in gameplay: Ally used to have a flashlight, which she used to reveal ghosts and mark objects in the environment as safe. Once cats started shooting fireballs and punching everything, we thought there’s probably no need to shine a light on a box if you’ve blown it up with magic, and removed the flashlight mechanism.
What has been the team’s favorite thing to create in the game?
Will: Personally, I really really like writing the backstory and lore. Cat Lady is a way more combat-focused game, but there’s still a reason for why everything exists in the way it does!
Jake: The visual vibe! The relationship between cute, creepy, and weird is something I’m always toying with. I love hearing feedback like, “Oh wow. That is adorable…and gross!” It can get kinda boring if everything is nothing but cute. Take Kirby for example. I think everyone can agree that Kirby is a pink squishy little ball of cuteness. HE ALSO SWALLOWS HIS ENEMIES WHOLE AND CONSUMES THEIR POWER. Cute and weird.
Christian: Levels! Creating the bulk of the content is always a good time. Also Puddles the blobby, watery cat. Puddles is my favorite.
Nic: Cat Lady has been a dream to work on, so it’s hard to pick just one thing as my favorite. If I had to pick something, I think it would probably be the level editor and content tools. I enjoy making systems, and it’s been really fun to see the awesome cats, enemies, items, and levels the team has created using those tools.
If you could have any famous cat appear in the game, who would it be and why?
Will: I would want Scuba to be in the game because she’s the cutest. Or any famous sneezing cat. Or a British Shorthair but that’s not necessarily a famous cat.
Jake: I know this isn’t a real cat, but it’d have to be Garfield. That dude loves lasagna.
Nic: Oh, that’s a hard one! It would either be Keyboard Cat or Grumpy Cat. Grumpy Cat would be rocking a suit and wielding a powerful gavel celebrating her successful “Grumppuccino” litigation. Keyboard Cat would, of course, be driving a motorized baby grand piano around and flattening all who stand in his way.
Ready to get your paws on Cat Lady? You will, of course, be able to purchase it on Steam, where you can also wishlist the game to keep track of announcements like the release date. And their website has a newsletter you can sign up to that will keep you up to date on additional announcements!
Hey. I made this. I work here. I made it.










