LunarShadow Designs

Tell me about your campaign – what’s it for and what’s your favourite bit?

We’re funding the English version of Catcrawl, a standalone exploration game about a cat in a new home.

“You are a cat and have recently arrived in your new home. Now you’re alone in this unfamiliarenvironment for the first time and set out to explore it. Is your exploration going to be curious and cute? Or are you a cat that’s out for chaos and destruction? How are you going to interact with the environment and what are you going to discover? Play to find out!”

My favourite bit is of course being able to play as a cat!

What story or experience do you want people to get from Catcrawl?

We’re aiming for a fun, collaborative game session (or a fun, imaginative solo session) where players get to explore the seemingly familiar environment of an apartment through the unfamiliar eyes of a cat. We’re also hoping that Catcrawl eases people into TTRPGs in general and provides an on-ramp for trad-game-experienced players into story games and GM-less games (by providing lots of prompts to spark players’ imaginations and improvisation and by switching roles to distribute responsibilities through the whole group).

What sort of mechanics are you using? Are they tried and trusted stalwarts or are you branching out into something new and experimental?

Catcrawl takes hexcrawl-like mechanics into story games. The result is a unique GM-less or solo role-playing game for 1-4 players who collaborate to tell the story of the cat’s exploration. Catcrawl’s gameplay is based on a lovingly detailed apartment map with 24 squares the cat can visit and interact with. Players take turns playing the cat, describing its environment, and narrating the consequences of the cat’s actions. Roles rotate with every new square. The players are supported in all roles by several prompt lists.

The game is ideal for one-shots and has a flexible play time of about 30 minutes to 3 hours. It needs no preparation – just open the zine and start playing!

What was the inspiration for the project? Are there any shows, films, books you’d point people to and say “if you enjoyed this then you’ll love Catcrawl?”

The questions “What would happen if you took a hexcrawl into an apartment?”, “How can we make a familiar domestic setting interesting again?”, and “What if there was only one player and multiple GMs?” were the foundations for this game that everything else eventually developed
from.

We also took inspiration from aspects in other TTRPGs, such as the bar map from Midnight at the Oasis (TTRPG by Catherine Ramen, in: Codex: Glamour, 2018), the cut-out minis from Tiny Wanderer (solo game by npckc, 2021), the rotating roles from Lovecraftesque (TTRPG by Joshua Fox & Becky Annison, 2019) and of course from real cats.

What have you worked on in the past? Is this a continuation of a previous world/system/story or something new that’ll stand on its own?

Andrea and Jasmin have written four other games together before Catcrawl, all published by Plotbunny Games. Andrea has also written several games on her own and together with other game designers. Jasmin has previously worked on multiple projects for a big German TTRPG publisher before moving into the indie game space. (See below for links and details.)

Catcrawl continues our shared interest in easy-to-learn one-shot games, several of which are suitable for all ages and feature cute animals. It also continues our innovations in bringing together mechanical elements from OSR/NSR and taking them into whimsical new settings and combining them with a GM-less story game approach (such as our previous projects Bunny, We Bought a Dungeon and its sister game Dolly, We Bought a Dream House).

Catcrawl still stands on its own as a full game that can be an entry point for new people into the TTRPG space as a whole or the story game and GM-less space more specifically.

We’ve talked about the project but can you tell me a little about yourself and the team working on the project? What’s your background in the hobby and what games do you enjoy playing?

This is our team for Catcrawl. We have all worked together before, most recently on last year’s Zine Month project Against the Monster. (There’s also another proofreader for the German version of the game.)

Plotbunny Games — Publisher
Plotbunny Games is an award-winning indie TTRPG publisher from Berlin, Germany. We publish both translations and German originals. Great games by marginalized creators are especially dear to our heart. You can find out more about us on our website (German-only so far) and on our Itch.io page (English and German). You can also follow us on social media.

Andrea Rick (she/her) — Game Design, Artwork, Layout, Translation
Andrea Rick is a game designer, graphic designer, translator, and editor and the sole owner of Plotbunny Games. You can find her games on Itch.io, including Miss Bernburg’s Finishing School for Young Ladies and Viva la QueerBar, as well as a bunch of smaller games. She previously wrote and published four other games together with Jasmin. You can find her on
various social media.

Jasmin Neitzel (she/her) — Game Design, Crowdfunding Consulting
Jasmin Neitzel is a veteran of the TTRPG industry; she has done about everything one can do with a game, from editing to line development to marketing and community management. She has worked on The Dark Eye, The World of Darkness and designed Against the Monster with Andrea. You can find her socials and podcast here.

Marx Shepherd (they/them) — Proofreading
Marx Shepherd is a freelance editor and writer who makes weird games for cool people and cool games for weird people. They’re also the community manager for Far Horizons CoOp, the former host and producer of Yes Indie’d Pod, and the former cat herder for the in*die zine. They’re perhaps best known for their editing work on Anamnesis by Blinking Birch Games,
Valiant Horizon and Apocalypse Frame by Binary Star Games, and Terminus by Bright Bard Games.

Further illustrations have been provided by members of the Plotbunny Games Discord community (names not final yet).

When are you aiming to launch and most importantly where can people find the campaign?

Our campaign runs on Backerkit from February 4th, 2025 until February 21st, 2025.

What are your social media handles and which platforms do you use?
Plotbunny Games:
Website: https://plotbunnygames.com/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/plotbunnygames.bsky.social
Mastodon: https://mastodon.pnpde.social/@plotbunnygames
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plotbunnygames/
Andrea’s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/curiouscat.bsky.social
Jasmin’s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bratapfel.bsky.social

Finally, is there anything else that you’d like to share?
Thank you for the opportunity! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!