Cats and the Other Lives

Cats and the Other Lives sits somewhere between a point-and-click adventure and a piece of interactive fiction. The framing is unusual: Bernard Mason, the family patriarch, has died, and the surviving Masons return one last time to the old manor to settle his affairs. You spend the game as Aspen, the household cat, padding from room to room while the family argues, reconciles and accidentally lets old wounds show in front of you.

The interaction model is built around how a real cat actually behaves rather than the wisecracking-pet trope. Aspen doesn't talk, isn't magical, isn't a hidden detective. She tracks scents through the corridors to find people, knocks things off tables when the mood is tense, curls up on laps when she wants to. Three chapters take her from silent witness to something more active — the cat starts as a quiet observer of the family's decades-spanning grudges, and ends as someone capable of nudging the story in one direction or another.

The house itself is drawn in detailed 2D pixel art with modern cinematic lighting layered over it, which gives every room a slightly painterly weight. A portion of the proceeds funds medical care for street cats — small detail, but it tells you the kind of project this is.