Announcing CAT WAR From Idea to Playable Game

ParitLAB has started developing CAT WAR, a casual mobile game that follows Mochi, an explorer cat travelling across Thailand. Players earn coins through play and spins, then use them to build and upgrade each destination's signature collectibles before continuing to a new place or province.

CAT WAR concept art with Mochi and Thai travel collectibles — Project direction artwork, not a screenshot from a released build.

The gameplay loop under development

The current core loop is play or spin → earn coins → build and upgrade objects → playfully attack another player's town → receive coins → keep building → clear the stage. Each stage contains four signature objects, such as a Thai elephant, tom yum, a tuk-tuk, and mango sticky rice. Every object can grow through several levels.

Build and Attack will share the same scene. Build raises an object's level, while Attack reduces it according to the game rules. Reusing the scene reduces duplicate composition work and gives new provinces a repeatable structure.

CAT WAR concept board showing the game screen, backgrounds, collectibles, character, and controls — The concept board used to define the scene, collectibles, character, and interface.

The main challenge is more than code

Early coding-agent iterations often interpreted “game” as an application screen and produced containers, cards, gradients, and material icons in place of game art. A mockup alone also did not tell the agent which parts were backgrounds, characters, buttons, or icons. The result looked like stickers placed over a scene, with inconsistent scale and perspective. Some cropped sprites also included edges or effects from neighbouring frames.

Early Attack prototype showing problems caused by combining many separate assets — The Attack prototype before the redesign, showing inconsistent edges, scale, and scene integration.

The chosen art system

The revised structure reduces the scene to one background + four objects + a character sprite + a UI overlay. Mochi remains separate from the background so the character can be reused across provinces and animated through Idle, Run, Attack, Hit, and Win states. Each frame will be an individual transparent PNG or WebP to keep neighbouring frames and unwanted edges out of production assets.

Mochi sprite concepts for Idle Run Attack Hit and Win states — The Mochi sprite and effect direction that will be separated into production-ready files.

Status on 15 September 2026

System	Status	Current work
Home	Playable prototype	Improving production-asset sharpness and consistency
Spin	In testing	Refining Idle, Spinning, and Reward visuals
Attack	Redesign	Moving to Background + 4 Objects + Mochi
Build and Level	Concept defined	Coins raise each object's level
Map	Concept	Planning a continuous scrolling journey
Backend	Architecture defined	PHP/MySQL, shared hosting, and Google Login

Estimated path to a playable build

Within 7–14 days: an internal playable build covering the basic Home → Spin → Build → Attack flow on development devices.
About 2–4 weeks: an MVP Alpha with multiple stages, progression, backend, login, and a complete loop for a test group.
About 4–8 weeks: a test-ready Android/iOS build with production assets, balancing, bug fixes, sound, and animation work.

These ranges are estimates based on the state of the project on 15 September 2026, not guaranteed release dates. The largest variables are producing sharp, consistent assets and integrating them smoothly with Flutter on real devices. We will add testable builds and evidence to Lab Notes as each stage becomes ready.