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Hello again! It's officially been... Uhm -- whoops... it's definitely been a little bit since our last posting; sorry about that! We figured you were due some insight into what's been going on here with the Catpanion team!

So for today we have a few things we wanted to share with you:

• A preview of the complete rework we are doing on our cat art and animations
• Some discussion on our a new system we call "CatPhone"
• Insight into our plans for NPC shop characters
• Our progress on integrating supporting applications
• A future ALPHA test

• A little update on us here at Catpanion

 

All new cat designs!
Those of you who have been with us since the beginning of Catpanion know that we started as a quick 2 day project for a Global Game Jam, our initial cat designs and animations were only meant for the event -- But as you all know we have decided to take on an official route and make this into something long term as we care about this project idea! Some of you may remember from our previous posting, we mentioned that we were getting some new artwork for our little catpanions; and we wanted to showcase some of them in action to give you a glimpse into what's to come! So today we will be showcasing the our conceptual design of the 'Angel Cat', along with the Joe cat (white cat) and a small preview of some of the new animations for sitting, walking, and sleeping!

[VIDEO HERE]

In terms of progress we are currently about 40% done with all of the planned catpanion animations, and as soon as they become ready and polished -- we will share them with you in another update posting!

Catphone System!
Up next we have the new Catphone system we plan to introduce! We have some future plans we needed to account for, and we didn't want to throw a ton of different menus at you for every feature we add. So what if -- we combined all these menus into one localized area? Well... a phone is naturally designed that way for you!
(Please note some of the artwork is still placeholder and the phone size is also maximized for viewing purposes)

In this new phone, we currently have 8 apps planned for creation.

• Cat Information (View any information about your cats)
• Messages (View messages related to quests/story/updates)
• Maps (Travel to different locations, such as our shops)
• Bank (See your recent purchases and how much you've earned)
• Tasks (See quests/tasks you can do to earn rewards)
• Games (Play small games to pass time and earn currency)
• Socials (More details to come at a later date )
• Settings (Adjust any settings related to the game)

 

    

 

We would love to hear some feedback and ideas on small time passing game ideas you would enjoy to play within Catpanion! We have a few planned ourselves, but before we decide on all the ones to make we would love to hear your thoughts! Please share in the supporter-feedback channel on discord!
 

NPC Shop Characters!
So this will be more of a reading section rather than an artwork showcase, since we are currently still adjusting all the designs for the planned characters -- But that's okay! We haven't really explained what these NPC characters are for and what to expect from them, so we wanted to get a jump start on that.

We currently have plans for 3 main NPC characters. Now we wont tell you too much on who they are... cough… but what we will say is that these 3 characters are going to be our focus on all shop based interactions! We wanted to give our little app a bit more life to it, and so you will get to interact with these new NPC characters to get any of your supplies (such as food, water, clothing, etc).

We wanted to add these characters to give the experience a bit more meaning; so all 3 characters are going to have their own unique personalities and interactions -- and who knows.. Maybe you might see them in your other adventures... nudge nudge

    
 

Application Integrations!
For starters, we have improved our saving system. Now, why does this matter? Well let me tell you! So originally with catpanion, any update we had would result in you having to restart your entire progress file if we did any changes to what is stored related to the game. This was... Not good. So we have completely reworked the system so that ANY previous versions of Catpanion's save data will now be transferable into the new update and any future updates!

 

We also looked at the steam implementations, and thought about it... Why not also add support for discord! We have now implemented the features of "Playing Activity" to our app, so it can now be proudly displayed on discord, this will alternate between showing your current in-app activity, your progress on achievements, the number of catpanions you have, and other small details!


 

Alpha Test?!?!
Yeah you heard me! We are also planning and preparing for an early stage alpha test, and wanted to inform you that all Early Supporters will be granted access to this test! Now we don't have an exact date for this, but we slowly wanted to roll out some alpha testing stages to you guys, so we can get feedback and ensure that everything is running as intended! More details will come soon!

Closing Statement
Thank you for reading all of this, I know this was a very lengthy post with a big delay between the last one -- but we wanted to share a lot with you guys on what's been going on in our production. Our small team's schedules have been getting stirred up with other responsibilities (Y'know, like being able to buy kibble) but we intend to continue doing our best to keep things running smoothly and bring you an amazing game soon!

We hope to continue hearing your suggestions and having your support! If there is anything you wish to share with us feel free to contact us via the ⁠supporter-feedback channels on discord! Thanks again for reading and have a purrfect day!

- Catpanion Team