CAT FLAP

What is CAT FLAP?

CAT FLAP is a horror-comedy inspection game built around one anxious ritual: something is knocking at the cat door, and the player has to work out whether it is the pet that went out earlier or a convincing impostor. The setup is deliberately domestic. A cat leaves at nine, the flap starts rattling at eleven, and the head pushing through looks almost correct. The polaroid on the fridge is the reference point, and the mismatch is small enough to miss if nobody counts.

The game stretches that single worry across seven nights of checking. Stripe counts, toes, eye colour, pupils, the way a cat responds to its name, and whether it takes or refuses a treat all become evidence. Each visit ends with one decision: open the flap or lock it. A wrong call is not an instant death; it alters the kitchen and colours every night that follows, which turns early mistakes into long-term consequences.

The browser demo covers Day 0 and Nights 1 and 2 at no charge. The full game, sold at $2.99, continues with Nights 3 through 7, adds endless and daily modes, and includes six endings. It is a single-player experience about protecting an animal that cannot speak for itself.

How to play

Every night follows the same loop, and the loop is where the tension lives. Start by aiming the flashlight and zooming in. Eye colour, pupils and toes only register in the light, so a visitor inspected in the dark is only half inspected. The polaroid on the fridge sits beside the visitor for comparison, so the real cat's markings are always visible without blocking the view.

Next comes the call. There are 18 call cards in total and two are drawn for each visitor: the cat's own name, a wrong name, a coaxing phrase, or a whistle. The genuine cat turns for its name. Some impostors turn for anything at all, and one of them answers in words rather than sounds.

Then there is a test. Options include the treat the cat hates, the string, or the kitchen light. The free nights allow one test per visitor, while the full game allows two. The real cat refuses the hated treat, plays the way it was taught on Day 0, and casts a shadow. Careful observation is meant to be enough: no visitor is decided by a coin flip. Finally, decide. Open the flap or lock it, and live with what that does to the kitchen.

Controls

CAT FLAP runs on mouse, touch and keyboard, and the demo needs no download, so a browser tab is enough to start. The pointer aims the flashlight and handles zooming, which is the core inspection work; on a phone or a touchscreen, the same aiming and inspection happens with a finger.

Keyboard shortcuts cover the decisions: 1, 2 and 3 play the call cards, O opens the flap, and L locks it. That gives a player with both hands on the keyboard a fast way through the repetitive parts of a night without hunting for buttons, while a player who prefers the pointer can ignore the keys entirely.

The demo saves progress in the browser. The full game is a separate download with its own save file, and it lets a new player begin at Night 1 or jump directly to Night 3 with a fresh cat. Progress does not appear to be shared between the two versions, so the demo is best treated as a place to learn the inspection routine rather than as a head start.

Tips for your first run

The first two nights are a tutorial in disguise, and the habits formed there decide how the later nights go. Treat every trait as one part of a picture rather than a single decisive clue, and remember that the game deliberately includes honest edge cases.

Spend the daylight. Day 0 is a couple of minutes of bonding: naming the cat, choosing its collar, and taking the fridge photo. That photo is the only reliable baseline for the rest of the run, so the choices made there matter more than they first appear.

Track what changes. Because a bad call reshapes the kitchen permanently, the room itself becomes a record of past mistakes, and noticing those changes is part of reading the nights ahead.

• Use the flashlight first, since eye colour, pupils and toes are only visible in light.
• Count stripes against the polaroid rather than from memory; several coats and stripe counts exist.
• Do not assume a six-toed visitor is fake, because six-toed cats are a real variation.
• Watch for a shadow, a refusal of the hated treat, and play behaviour learned on Day 0.
• Lock your own cat out and it returns the next night wet and cross, which makes recognition harder.

Content and replayability

The visitor roster reaches 12 kinds, four of which appear only in the full game: a copycat that mimics the collar and the way the cat answers, two identical heads arriving in the flap together, something scratching from the inside, and a thin stray that genuinely is not yours. Letting that last one in is a choice rather than an error, which is the sort of small mercy the design keeps offering.

Nights 3 through 7 hold roughly 30 visitors and reshuffle between runs. Complications include a cat asleep on the step in the morning and a power cut that leaves only the flashlight. On Night 7 the roles reverse and the player comes home late while the cat does the checking.

Six endings wait at the end — Home, Full House, Locked Out, Replaced, Family and No Cats — each with its own picture and an earned title. Night ∞ keeps going with faster nights and scores consecutive correct calls. A daily seeded night gives everyone the same set of visitors and a shareable result card.

The cat itself is generated from 6,400 possible combinations before the collar: eight coats, two to six stripes, patches or points, five eye colours including odd-eyed cats, four tails, four ears, and four or six toes.

Presentation and performance

Every picture is drawn in code and every sound is made in code, with no AI art and no AI audio. That approach suits the material: the visuals can stay flat, bright and toy-like while the horror arrives through timing rather than gore, and the audio can carry the small sounds that matter here, such as the rattle of a flap and a purr that will not stop.

The whole package supports 12 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. The demo runs in a browser on phone and desktop, which keeps the barrier to trying it close to zero, while the full game ships as a download for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Anonymous play statistics are collected when the game loads, covering session length, screen size, input type, levels reached and errors, with a random browser identifier counting return visits. No names, emails, advertising or data selling are involved, and the statistics can be switched off through Do Not Track, Global Privacy Control or a launch setting.

Who should play it

This is a game for players who like the shape of a spot-the-difference puzzle but want it wrapped in a story. The inspection loop is readable in seconds, yet each night adds another trait to weigh and another consequence to carry. Anyone who enjoyed the idea of a roguelite where the run is measured in correct judgements rather than combat will find the structure familiar.

Cat owners are the obvious audience, because the humour comes from recognisable behaviour: the refusal of a treat, the selective response to a name, the suspicion that the animal on the step is not the one that left. The comedy goes wrong slowly rather than loudly, and the closer the player looks, the less comfortable the room becomes.

The content is mild horror rather than shock: a cat says a word, and one visitor is described as a very polite stranger. There is no stated gore, and the tone is described as funny first, wrong second and a little sweet at the end. Sessions are short, the demo is free in a browser, and the full game costs $2.99 as a single purchase with no ads and nothing to buy twice.