Video Game / Pixel Cat's End

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Pixel Cat's End is a browser-based game in which users can manage a village of cat-like aliens. It has been in beta since February 19, 2022. It was developed solely by Squid.

The game begins with a sequence of comics about Nestor, the moose guardian, inviting not-cats to join them on their native planet of Not-Earth. Players can then create a custom not-cat and roll for a random "squad" of five other not-cats. From there, players can complete daily activities: visiting Nestor, feeding their not-cats lunch, sending their not-cats to complete day jobs, and daily scenarios where their not-cats can socialize. Players can also Adventure, bringing their cats on a journey fraught with hostile creatures, rough terrain, and even other not-cats.

Rather than genders, not-cats have four possible "winds": North, South, Trade (a mix of the two), or Null. These winds determine which not-cats can breed, as well as their coloration, but do not have any bearing on pronouns, which can be changed at any time. Not-cats can develop relationships and have baby beans together. There's a genetics system to determine the traits of the baby beans, the subject of much player study.

Pixel Cat's End contains examples of:

• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • The shops Whisker's Wares, Peppa's Patterned Fabrics, Prideful Paws Clothiers, and Teddy's Toy Shop.
  • The Typo Turmoil forum thread used to report typos.
  • The 2022 April Fools' Day trinkets' names, such as Notorious Noodle Named Ned and Sneaky Snoodle of Slowness.
• Adjustable Censorship: In your account settings, you can toggle the creepy eye imagery on or off, but it doesn't affect certain items or monsters.
• An Adventurer Is You:
  • The Tank: Guardians get extra health, and the Guard ability lets them take damage for their teammates.
  • The Healer: Medics.
  • The Status Effect Guy: Scouts calling their team to action and Bards using Hiss and Rally.
  • The Jack-of-All-Trades: Multiclassed cats can have all sorts of abilities, but only the bonuses of one class.
• Aerith and Bob: There's a wide range of names in the generator, from "Willow" to "Devil Ray" to "Tall Cat."
• Alternative Calendar: One in-game year is composed of four 50-day seasons (approximately 28 weeks), with each day running on real time. Lore-wise, a year on not-Earth is also a few months longer than Earth's.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The Adventuring enemies come in fun color varieties, like rainbow leaf mites and bright blue snakes.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: You can get various clothes from adventuring, including scars, wooden armor and bucket hats. High rolls in daily jobs can also reward clothing items.
• Animal Facial Hair:
  • Lakeweed Beards, available in three color varieties.
  • The moustaches from April Fools' Day 2023.
• Animals Not to Scale: Averted, Squid confirmed that the decor is in fact to scale.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Nestor is guaranteed to give one cat every week, even without consecutive log-ins.
  • Limited-time collectibles such as the ones from festivals cannot be sold to prevent you from accidentally losing them.
• April Fools' Day:
  • On April 1st 2022, a set of worm trinkets were released, each with a -2 effect on a different stat.
  • 2023 had moustaches on every cat. Players also received two as clothing items.
• Artistic License – Biology: The "Watercolor" coloration is completely made up. They are, however, not actually cats, so it makes sense.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Once an adult not-cat has reached a certain power level, they can use a special item to form a pact with one of the Guardians and ascend to their final form. Over several months, they develop some physical features of their Guardian (such as antlers for Nestor), gain an extra die to all of their stats, but they become committed to their spiritual duties and are no longer able to work their day jobs or have biological children. However, the transformation is painful and leaves the ascended not-cat extra hungry, so they're usually fed high-protein diets to gain back their energy. Despite their godly powers, they're still mortal, and they eventually fizzle out into magical space dust after a long life while ascended (although gameplay-wise, not-cats don't die).
• Bizarre Alien Biology:
  • While not-cats mostly resemble real life cats, they evolved some features that helped them adapt to Not-earth. They're much stockier and more compact, and have wider legs, shorter torsos, and larger heads. They also have opposable thumbs to hold objects and can stand on two legs more easily. Additionally, they have better resistance to fall injuries as they simply bounce off after landing, and have a more robust digestive system that allows them to have an omnivorous diet, although they still can hardly taste sweet foods. Moreover, they're a highly intelligent, sapient species that speak in Not-meow — a language composed mostly of clicks, chirps, and other sounds — and have become civilized enough to form societies such as the village you're building for them.
  • Not-cats reach sexual maturity in their species' equivalent of late teenhood, as opposed to preteenhood/early teenhood in humans.
• Bizarre Alien Sexes: Not-cats can have one of four "winds" (actually related to magnetism): north, south, trade, and null. North and south can breed with their opposites or trade, trade can breed with other trades as well, and null can't breed at all.
• Born Undead: The creatures known as "ghosts" are actually members of their own semi-incorporeal species distantly related to not-cats.
• Breakable Weapons: Gear that improves the party's dice for skill checks has a 1-in-6 chance of breaking after use.
• Brown Note: The Shadow of Nestor sings dreadful songs and emits eldritch hisses that can damage your entire party anywhere or make them Afraid, reducing the effectiveness of their dice.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Since the game takes place on an alien planet called Not-earth, baby not-cats are called "beans".
• Cat Concerto: In Scenario number 82, two not-cats have an option to sing compliments at each other about their Friendly And Eternal Affection, which just sounds like screaming to everyone else.
• Character Level: Cats can gain levels from Adventuring and from their day jobs.
• Color-Coded Elements: The magic system's Aspects, the "Winds" and the personality types all have a unique color attributed to them.
• Conlang: Not-cats have their unique in-universe language and writing system.
• Cooldown: 89 days between partners having beans.
• Creature-Breeding Mechanic: While the game is explicitly not meant to be a breeding game, the breeding and genetics system is very popular.
• Damned by Faint Praise: One of the choices in Indoor Day #169 has one not-cat posing for another not-cat as the latter's muse. After their painting is done, the muse gets confused for a while before realizing it's them with multicolored noodles. They then compliment the artist's... "creativity?".
• Defeat Means Friendship: Defeated enemies can drop their associated decor that can be placed alongside not-cats in sceneries.
• Defend Command: Block is a basic ability that improves a not-cat's dodge dice, increasing their chances of reducing the damage they get from enemies by evading them. Thieves can learn an upgraded version of this called Hide, which improves said dice twice.
• Draw Aggro: Cats with the guardian class are more likely to be targeted by enemies. They can learn the guard ability, which redirects all damage a selected ally would receive to themselves for a turn.
• Elemental Powers: Many of the upcoming Aspects are element themed. These include Flora, Growth, Magma, Sea, and Frost.
• Extra Eyes:
  • Nestor is surrounded by giant floating eyes. A switch in the profile page lets users turn this off.
  • Juvenile Corrupted Maples are trees covered in eyes.
  • When Ascending a cat, an optional feature will be adding eyes.
  • The Leggy and Crabby ghosts from Candlelight have four and six eyes respectively.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: The rare variants of many enemies in adventuring.
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: Some resources have sparkles. It's hinted they have magical properties and could be used in alchemy.
• Fictional Holiday: There are four seasonal holidays in the game, though only three have been released so far: Leaf Day, Candlelight, Snowmelt, and the unreleased Midsummer Festival.
• Friendly Rivalry: Not-cats who become rivals or best nemeses are affectionately called as such in the tutorial for relationships.
• Fluffy Fashion Feathers: Feather pendants, feather tailpieces, feather scarfs!
• From My Own Personal Garden: Not-cats eat food grown at home, in the village gardens.
• Gotta Catch Them All: There are several sets of Collectables obtainable through daily jobs, adventuring, and traveler letters.
• Green Thumb: Jobs include Gardener, which yields flowers, and Herbalist, which yields herbs. Farmers can also create plants.
• Honorary Uncle: Not-cats can call the friend of their parent their "not-pibling"^note "pibling" is the gender-neutral term for aunt/uncle.
• Human Aliens: Not-cats look extremely similar to real cats, with only minor physical changes.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: A wide variety of snacks are available to restore health during Adventuring.
• Interface Spoiler: Each scenario offers two options on how to have your not-cats engage with it, and a secret third option that only appears if one of the not-cats involved has a certain personality. While the tutorial on Daily Scenarios mentions this, this isn't apparent until you encounter a scenario where there are more not-cats involved than what the text implies, even after you tried out both options. This means that the secret one does involve the additional not-cats.
• In-Universe Marketing: The site is funded by user-created ads, some of which are for on-site businesses like the Post Office.
• Item Caddy: You can give not-cats jobs, where they gather resources for you once a day. Some jobs require resources to be performed.
• Item Crafting: The Crafting workshops allow users to craft a variety of recipes for each unlocked job.
• Item Farming: Possible through Adventuring, though there's a cooldown to prevent farming the first, easiest area over and over.
• An Interior Designer Is You: Sceneries allow you to put buildings and all sorts of decor on a variety of backgrounds, in addition to cats and enemy sprites. The buildings do not show a fourth wall, allowing the interior to be decorated like a doll house.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Developing the relationships between not-cats increases the party's harmony in adventures, upping the chances of critical successes. Disharmony, on the other hand, is developed by fostering rivalries, which boosts critical success only on withered dice or when a not-cat's HP is less than 20%.
• Like Brother and Sister: Not-cats that aren't related by blood or adoption can call each other "not-siblings" or "not-cousins" depending on their relationship.
• Meaningful Combined Names: The NPC duo Raine and Bow, rainbow, running the pride themed shop.
• Mermaid in a Wheelchair: The tutorial for mercats states that they often use wheelchairs to get around on land.
• Mermanity Ensues: The Soup Of The Sea item allows users to turn one not-cat in their village into a mercat.
• Money Sink: Some facilities are designed solely for you to spend your excess money on.
  • NPC shops.
  • Buying extra scenery slots.
  • The Open Marketplace, with its 5% tax on all sales.
  • Buying catpacity expansions, which start at 6000 paper notes and only get more expensive from there.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Instead of genders, not-cats have four possible winds, which are not at all correlated to their pronouns. Not-cats can have as many as four partners, or no partners at all, and they are not limited to partnerships that can produce offspring.
• Not Allowed to Grow Old: For the player's convenience, adult not-cats never grow old or die, but according to the lore, they're still mortal, and even ascended not-cats eventually fizzle out into magical space dust.
• One Curse Limit: In battle, a not-cat can have one Condition, Stance, and Mood each at a time, e. g. if a not-cat is already afflicted with one Mood (such as Determined) but gets afflicted with another (Shocked), the new Mood will overwrite the old one.
• One Size Fits All: All clothing items can be put on both adults and kittens, and clothing will grow with the kittens as they age.
• Only-Child Syndrome: Kittens born without any littermates are called Lonely Kittens, and they'll grow up less brave and more introverted if they don't have any other kittens to play with, which they call their "not-littermates". It's common for parents to raise their only children with other families so their kids can grow up side-by-side Like Brother and Sister.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: PCE's ghosts aren't dead, and are their own separate species rather than former not-cats, although they're suspected to have evolved from a common ancestor. Being largely made of a cold fog, they're transparent and semi-incorporeal shapeshifters, get around by floating and flying, and can squeeze under doors. Their appearances range from resembling normal cats with Fog Feet, to having two heads or extra eyes, legs, or tails, to the Peepers Ghost which looks like a starfish with eyestalks. They live in the upper atmosphere and visit the surface during Candlelight, where they often trade gifts for buttons. Oh, and they lay eggs.
• Palette Swap: The Adventuring enemies come in a few different color variations, as do most clothing items.
• Palette-Swapped Alien Food: Snowmeowtoes resemble tomatoes, except blue instead of red.
• Parental Substitute: Not-cats, particularly null winds since they're sterile, can adopt abandoned kittens. Conversely, kittens can randomly choose older, unrelated not-cats to be their "not-parents".
• Personality Mechanic: A not-cat's personality stats affect how well they do in their assigned jobs and how they interact with other not-cats. Three of them: Bravery, Benevolence, and Spite (low Benevolence) also affect how effectively they can use certain abilities and skills in adventures.
• Pizza Topping Conflict: In A Timeless Dispute #148, two not-cats argue over whether Snowcap Mushrooms or Snowmeowtoes are the better pizza topping. A third not-cat settles the argument by picking either side.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Best friendship is treated as exactly as important as romantic partnership, both being the final stage of relationship evolution. The only difference is that best friends won't have beans.
• Player-Generated Economy: The Open Marketplace allows players to buy and sell items, and the Cat Recruitment Board allows players to buy and sell cats. Private trades and gifts allow for direct transactions between two players.
• Play Every Day: Collecting resources from your not-cats' jobs and gifts from Nestor are done once a day, which refreshes every midnight in Eastern Standard/Daylight Time. However, there's no cumulative gift system, so you won't miss out on big bonuses if you miss a day.
• Poisonous Person: True to its name, the Poisonclaw Frog can poison your not-cats with Poison Claw.
• The Power of Friendship: In adventuring, the closer the cats in the party, the more damage they do with critical rolls.
• Power-Up Food: The daily luncheon provides bonuses for daily jobs and Adventuring.
• Premium Currency: Essence Fragments are a special currency that can be randomly found in chests during adventures or bought with real money.
• Queer Colors: Prideful Paws offers clothing patterned after several pride flags.
• Rapid DNA Test: The Family Tree item instantly reveals a not-cat's genetic string.
• Rare Random Drop: Business cards from Adventuring, which spawn a new cat in your village.
• Resource Reimbursement: Certain jobs such as the Builder and Baker randomly give you back some of the resources spent to let them work, sometimes even the exact amount.
• Reward for Removal: When cats are sent to the city, they're permanently removed from the village and drop packages containing currency and the postcard collection items, the latter of which can only be obtained from sending cats to the city or traveling.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Newborn kittens, called tiny beans in-game... the tiniest beans ever.
• Set Bonus: There are collectable items you can get from adventures, leveling up, and special events that once completed into sets, they reward you with custom dice.
• Significant First Steps: At three weeks old, beans are expected to be able to walk as this is considered a "milestone" that changes them from infant to young kitten.
• Snack-Stealing Seagulls: Tufted Seagulls can attack your party in flocks at Crescent Shore to try stealing your food, although they don't actually do that in battle. There's also a random overworld event where a flock of seagulls attack your not-cats during a snack break.
• Status Effects:
  • Call to Action: One extra die for the party.
  • Rally: Two extra dice for the target.
  • Block: Improved dodge die.
  • Protect: Two extra dodge die.
  • Guard: All damage is redirected to the Guardian.
  • Hiss: Lose two dice on all roles (Shocked condition).
  • Afraid: Reduces the target's dice.
  • Hide: Improve dodge die twice.
• Shoot the Medic First: Enemy Medics such as Flower Fairies and Fungus Hounds often heal themselves or their allies, so they should be taken down first.
• Virtual Paper Doll: You can buy or gather clothes and accessories for your not-cats and dress them up.
• Virtual Pet: The game is about virtual pixel cats you can raise, feed, dress up, take on adventures and so on.
• You All Meet in an Inn: Referenced in the title of Scenario #388, "You Meet at a Tavern...", where four not-cats form a Tabletop RPG crew.