Schrodinger's Catgirl is an adventure point-and-click game, inspired by titles such as the Ace Attorney series, Resident Evil, and Until Dawn. Explore different rooms and floors in the manor with Lemi and Leon, finding more clues and evidence to build your case. Time itself has fractured, and using the flash from her camera, Lemi is able to switch rooms between their past and present versions. 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. Finding evidence of a beast that lurks in the shadows makes its presence more solid. Finding evidence that only humans created this tragedy makes the villain more human. There will be consequences for your actions.

[IS THE GIRL IN THE MANOR ALIVE OR DEAD?]

Above (clockwise from top-left): A piece of evidence being collected; a screenshot from an illustrated cutscene; part of the narrative flow diagram.

Schrodinger's Catgirl began as the concept of "a mystery that has multiple solutions, and the truth depends on your decisions". To that end, I designed a more streamlined version of the variable state tracker from Retrace. It tracks the player's actions and decisions and uses that to calculate the "probability" of a given outcome (for example, the titular Catgirl being alive or dead); the game world then reacts to that probability to trigger different scenes or change its appearance.

To engage the player with more than just dialogue choices, the game has an "evidence connection" system, wherein the player can take two pieces of evidence and attempt to combine them to create a deduction about the mystery. For example, combining a "knife" and a "bloodstain" would produce the deduction "Someone was attacked with a knife", but combining that same bloodstain with "claw marks" would produce "Someone was attacked by an animal". This allows the player to communicate directly to the game and thus affect the world state. This same system also allows for more traditional puzzles such as finding a password for a safe.

Above: A gif showing two characters interacting; a level design mockup for one of the game areas.

Schrodinger's Catgirl was successfully funded via Kickstarter in October 2021, after spending around a year in the prototyping and demo phase. The studio also received a grant from the UK Games Fund to assist with development costs. Currently, the game is scheduled for release in 2023.

Schrodinger's Catgirl