CATO
The Summer of Demos - Day Fifteen
There have been many great partnerships in video games : Penn & Teller’s Smoke & Mirrors, Fireboy & Watergirl, and now Cat & Toast. Born out of GCORES’ 2022 BOOOM Gamejam, Frank He and Blasin Ree’s game asks players to multitask as two player characters to solve puzzles.
As Cat, you can pass through clear tubes and walk left to right (and up red fabric walls). As Toast, you can jump on walls and enter yellow machines that can trigger switches. Together, you can jump indefinitely and enter portals to finish levels, as well as moving around like a typical 2D platformer mascot.
The levels in the demo seem to be from the opening of the game, being focused on tutorialising their movesets, with some iterations. Many of the puzzles involve “disassembling” and reuniting the duo in order to activate separate switches. By the end of the 24 levels, you’ll understand exactly what they each can and cannot do. Most puzzles were fairly obvious but there were a few where I feared I’d soft-locked myself when the solution was right under my nose, to the game’s credit.
Most interesting about CATO was the final level available in the demo, a 3D on-rails challenge where you often have to separate Cat and Toast moments after jumping on spikes to safely proceed. Visually and tonally different, with a trail of butter flying behind them as Cat skates on Toast, but a good implementation of the mechanics honed in the rest of the demo. The pixel art in the rest of the game is competent and the animation of Cat snaking through clear tubes is cute, but there is little to this game that really stood out to me.
In a word : smooth.
CATO is an upcoming puzzle platformer developed by Team Woll and published by GCORES Publishing for PC via Steam, targeting an Autumn 2024 release. Ports to mobile platforms, Nintendo Switch and Playstation are planned following launch. All images copyright of Team Woll & GCORES unless otherwise stated.
This article is part of the Summer of Demos series, where I’ll be releasing a Demo Diving preview article each day in July. If you liked this article, be sure to share it with a friend or enemy. If you back me on Patreon, you get access to articles one day before they release anywhere else. If we reach £25/month before the end of July, I’ll extend the Summer of Demos into August.