Nice Games Jam: "Evil Games Jam 2: Cat Comms"

Mar 19, 2026

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Watch out, Clubhouse! Evil Games Club is out of the air vents and back in orbit to interrupt your regularly scheduled Nice Programming.

Five years in the vacuum of space haven't dulled their ne're-do-well nature one bit. In fact, they just intercepted a game jam prompt from one of the Nice Hosts. Will Dale, Ian, and Sam prove once and for all that Evil trumps Nice?

Well, duh, of course they do! >:)

The last appearance of the Evil Hosts.
Evil Games Jam: Casino Go Fish
Junction Jam Interest Form
Mewgenics
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Steam
Axios Twin Cities, the folks who are cataloguing the Twin Cities' store cats
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Audrey Kennedy

Prompt

Make a game about what actually happens when "the Cat Distribution System is at work." Matchmaking can be a secondary mechanic, but it should not be the focus.

Game type

Design document

Player count

Setup

A sketch of the controls for the game. The left column is labeled

The map the Evil Game Hosts made during their jam. It is a hand-drawn grid of buildings in a city done in colored pencils. There are symbols denoting the type of building (eg. a book on the library, etc.).

Rules

Notes:

Working title: Cat Comms
What is the goal?
- Cats on a journey through an environment to find owners
Different cats have different movement behaviors
- Torties need to meet twice
- Orange ones ignore herder but follow food
- Black cats are shy
Single player - one person “herding” multiple cats
- Herding through an urban environment
- People (NPCs) have routes and different behaviors
  - Grandma moves slow
  - Jogger moves fast
  - People going back and forth - work, library, grocery store, home
Mechanics
- One-time use items
  - Food for bait (burger, canned sardines from grocery store)
  - Fire truck to block street
  - Dogs
- More cats than people, some people may want more than one cat
- “End of level” time runs out or cats just kinda leave?
  - More cats than people
  - Cats get more chaotic/mischievous
- How to herd?
  - Real-time movement, but you can select a cat to tell it its next move, but it keeps moving after that
- Map is a small town, each level introduces new cat types
Iterations
- Ragdoll cat - doesn’t move much
- People who can’t be tracked
- Bonus points for people getting their perfect cat
- No upgrades to your skills, just adding more challenges
- Matchmaking is secondary
  - Any cat could match with any person, but they have a perfect match somewhere
- Dogs are a no cat zone
- Grocery store could match with a cat (bodega cat)