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Channel your inner feline mischief with Catlateral Damage

Independent game developer Chris Chung may have just answered the age-old question, "Why do cats do that?!"

Michelle Starr Science editor
Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she hopes to get you as enthralled with the wonders of the universe as she is. When she's not daydreaming about flying through space, she's daydreaming about bats.
Michelle Starr
2 min read

Independent game developer Chris Chung may have just answered the age-old question, "Why do cats do that?!"

(Credit: Chris Chung)

As someone who shares a house with a cat, I have observed, first-hand, the phenomenon whereby a feline, with an innocent, nonchalant expression, will with a single paw clear a flat surface of objects. There seems to be no rhyme or reason. There is an object. There is a cat. Only one can survive.

"Why?" you ask your pet, which will not answer, because it is a cat and can't speak. But you ask anyway, because you really want to know.

We think Chris Chung has found the answer with his game Catlateral Damage: it's kind of really fun.

The game works like a kind of reverse Katamari Damacy: as a cat cooped up in a tiny apartment, the only thing you can do is knock everything onto the floor. Within a two-minute timeframe, you have to score 100,000 points by batting every item off its tidy (or not-so-tidy) perch and make a huge mess before your human catches you.

The game was originally made for last year's 7DFPS (the same jam that saw the emergence of time-bending FPS Superhot), and Chung is now in the process of developing the Unity-crafted game further. At the moment, it only consists of a single level.

The full version of the game will receive additional levels, as well as lots more objects, new gameplay modes such as Free Mode and Cat Ops (a stealth mode), better graphics and sound, achievements and the pièce de résistance — Oculus Rift support.

Head over to the Catlateral Damage website to download the alpha version or play it online (instructions are down the left-hand side of the page), then head over to Steam Greenlight to give it a well-earned vote.

And now, just because: