Katzengold

What looks like an accident. A mysterious amulet. A secret. Together they start a big adventure through a dark future, and who knows what it will bring.

Katzengold is a story game with a deeper plot, drawn the way the Nintendo 64 drew its worlds: 240 lines, tiny textures, light painted by hand. The game is under active development. This is the demo: three chapters, about fifteen minutes.

You are Mika, on the way home from your shift through the Kiez. Over the alley glows the advert for the colonies on the moons of Jupiter; your mother says whoever flies up there never comes back. Oma Irma stops you at her door: her cat hasn't eaten in two days. It is a small errand. Then you turn into your own street, and there is smoke.

How it plays

• Walk with WASD or the arrow keys; on a phone, drag anywhere.
• Walk up to someone and the conversation begins by itself, as a little film: black bars, the words on the lower one, the camera cutting from face to face. Space, Enter or a tap reads on.
• The corner of the screen says where to go next. M opens a map of the places Mika knows, and of the people he has already met. I opens his backpack; on a phone, tap the two pictures in the top right corner. There is no arrow pointing the way.
• English and German, on the title, the map and the backpack. Your place in the story is kept.

What is in the demo

• One rainy block of a neon city: a narrow alley full of signs, a market stall, a back alley with the bins, a police line, a police station, an antique shop.
• Seven characters to talk to. One is a cat, one is a courier pigeon.
• Chapter one, Oma Irma's cat, and chapter two, Smoke: a mother's last belongings, an amulet nobody can read, and an old man who sends Mika on, through the south gate, toward a telephone that talks to memories. The demo ends at that gate.

More chapters are being written. If you play it, tell me where you stopped.

Deutsch: Was wie ein Unfall aussieht, ein rätselhaftes Amulett und ein Geheimnis: der Anfang eines großen Abenteuers durch eine dunkle Zukunft. Katzengold ist ein Geschichtenspiel im Stil des Nintendo 64 und wird aktiv weiterentwickelt. Das hier ist die Demo: die ersten zwei Kapitel, etwa fünf Minuten. Mika kommt von der Schicht, füttert für Oma Irma die Katze und biegt dann in die eigene Straße ein, wo Rauch steht. Gespräche laufen wie kleine Filme ab, mit schwarzen Balken und Kamera. Deutsch und Englisch, umschaltbar auf dem Titel, der Karte und im Rucksack. Die Karte (M) zeigt, was Mika kennt; der Rucksack (I), was er trägt. Einen Pfeil zum Ziel gibt es nicht. Die Demo endet am Südtor, auf dem Weg zum Neurozentrum.

Made with generative AI: the textures were drawn with Grok, code and writing are by Claude with the developer. The sounds are synthesized in the game; there are no recordings.