Kickstarter to determine fate of Schrodinger’s Catgirl
If a game is announced but hasn't yet received the necessary crowdfunding, does it really exist? This is the existential question facing Schrodinger's Catgirl, an upcoming visual novel-styled point-and-click mystery from Spider Lily Studios, the indie creators of Retrace: Memories of Death.
Long ago, a "rich and particularly eccentric scientist with a fascination for cats and genetics" named Robert Hayes constructed a manor on Winsberg Islet to conduct his "experiments of questionable ethics without anyone to stop him." His ultimate goal: to create a "living, breathing catgirl." Whether he succeeded has remained unknown ever since as Hayes "disappeared shortly after, and his manor was left abandoned to the elements." Now fifty years later, two members of the Luminous Investigation Team have arrived at the island off the American east coast hoping to solve the decades-old mystery. Soon they find themselves swept up in a more immediate matter, however, when a teenager is "mauled horribly by an unknown assailant." In order to find out what happened, the pair must thoroughly explore the run-down Hayes Manor, but "the more they investigate, the more reality itself collapses – there are infinite possibilities for what really happened, with each combination of events leaving its own trail of evidence."
Unlike the developer's previous game, Schrodinger's Catgirl plays out more like a traditional hand-painted visual novel, albeit with a degree of first-person environmental interaction and clue manipulation. Players control Lemi Malloy, the socially awkward, axe-carrying photographer with a passion for cryptids, and with her is Leon Gaspar, whose sixth "spooky-sense" enables him to detect "time shenanigans when they occur." As you collect and combine clues to produce new leads, you'll find that "time itself has fractured" in this place. What's worse is that "danger lurks in the depth of the manor, and the more time distorts, the more likely that Lemi and Leon will find their lives in peril." Fortunately Lemi's camera has the unique ability to "switch between the manor's past and present," and the third "secret" member of L.I.T. named Myrtha, who "got herself stuck in the space between dimensions," is available to provide hints. Player choice matters greatly throughout, as a "very complex web of variables determines the truth behind the attack, depending on what evidence you discover." But if you don't like the direction the case is going, you can always "give Myrtha the evidence to simply toss away – then, it's as if you never discovered it!"
In order to complete production on Schrodinger's Catgirl, the developers have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise £13,500 by September 17th. While the finished game isn't due to be released on Steam until May 2023 for Windows PC, you can already get a taste of what to expect from the downloadable demo available now on itch.io, which includes the first floor of the Hayes Manor and provides about an hour of gameplay.
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