Cat Quest 3 interview: “We keep a dictionary of cat puns!”

The Gentlebros is a Singaporean indie studio whose Cat Quest franchise has proved incredibly popular with gamers all over the world. We got to chat with Desmond Wong, CEO of The Gentlebros and one of the artists and designers who worked on their latest game, Cat Quest 3.

How do you balance and scale up as the game progresses with a natural feel?

In general, we try to ensure a gradual progression of activities and quests of increasing difficulty that gravitate out from the player’s position when the game begins. This means that no matter which direction the player decides to go, he/she will encounter increasingly difficult enemies the further along that path they travel.

However, because Cat Quest 3 is a fully open world game, this means players can still enter high level areas in the early game if they aren’t careful. To combat this, we visually change the entire scene to let players know they’ve entered a new and dangerous area.

How long would you say the game will take people to see credits? And how much for us pixel hunting completionists?

We think that for the average player, it would take about 10 hours to see the credits, but around 15-20 hours for completionists to get 100%! On top of this, we have New Game+ and the upcoming Mew Game to further lengthen that playtime!

With the series having such a strong fanbase, how important is it to keep the core feel, but expand the game via things like ship combat?

It is very important to never lose sight of what people like about the Cat Quest games, but also ensure we make each iteration feel fresh. This isn’t easy because if we keep too much the same, the sequels will feel repetitive and dull, but if we change too much there is a risk the game wouldn’t feel like Cat Quest anymore.

For Cat Quest 3, we wanted to add something new that fits with the pirate theme. At the same time, this new mechanic would have to support and evolve the core mechanics of a Cat Quest game as well. Luckily, the addition of a ship solved all these issues, but we didn’t stop there. We looked at every core facet of the games to see how we could tweak things to make Cat Quest 3 feel fresh again. One such example was the camera angle; with this players can now see so much further which changes how exploration is done!

The theme for the third game is pirates, do you have a bank of ideas for the series like that you’re keeping a lid on?

Of course! The Cat Quest universe is huge and open to many pawsibilities! We don’t want to spoil anything, but we have a roadmap for nine Cat Quest games we want to do!

Co-op in the series is a lot of fun, are there any plans to add an online version for 3 post launch at some point?

We really like the couch co-op aspect of the Cat Quest games, and do not have plans for an online version anytime soon!

How difficult was it to design the ship combat. It’s another thing to balance, so was that tricky?

Ship combat was one of the earliest problems in the game. In the first iteration, the ship would auto-target any enemy in a 360-degree radius. Although this made combat very easy, it also made it extremely boring after a couple of encounters.

To solve this, the team had the idea to require a little player skill as well. We realized that if we limited the auto-target to just the front of the ship, players had to physically maneuver their vessel to face the enemy before firing. This resulted in a risk vs reward system as doing so would also put your own ship at the biggest risk of being hit by other enemies. This was a huge success, and we basically spent the next few months fine tuning how quickly the ship could turn and other details.

Will there be any nods to previous games, or easter eggs for fans to uncover?

There are many, many nods to older Cat Quest games (and even references to other popular titles too). We’re really looking forward to seeing if players can discover everything we’ve tucked away!

Did you get any feedback from the demo that has been actioned in the game?

We got a ton of feedback, and fortunately we’ve managed to look at almost every single one! One of the biggest feedback we got was that the text was too small, and we’re happy to say that this has been fixed! It’s even been Steamdeck Verified, meaning the text is big enough even on a small screen!

Unfortunately, there will always be things that are too late to change, but we hope that once players get a chance to experience the whole game, they won’t see them as issues anymore!

How have you found reaction to the demo, generally?

It was super positive! We got messages from all over social media from fans telling us how they felt this was the best Cat Quest game yet! The preview event we held after that was also really positive too!

Do you ever tire of cat puns? Is that a thing people can even get tired of? Do you have a specialist on the team for this?

We don’t tire of them as much as we worry that we will run out of ideas for new ones! Thankfully, with every game we always add something completely new, which also adds a whole new slew of puns we could use.

In the team, we’re all specialists by now, but we also keep a central dictionary of puns so every member of the team can reference.

Did you ever consider hard gating areas that are too high level for players? Or is the freedom to explore and freedom to try too vital?

The freedom to explore and find areas that are too difficult is what gives the world its openness. As designers, we need to be brave enough to let players make mistakes. The moment we guard rail too much is also the moment the game feels less like a world you’re exploring and more like curated museum of activities.

Any future content planned post launch, roadmap etc? How do you feel about adding and DLC in general?

We’re already hard at work on the popular ‘Mew Game’ mode that comes with every Cat Quest game. Mew Game allows players to play the game again with challenge modifiers to increase the difficulty. It’s a mode with a ton of replayability and much sought after by Cat Quest fans!

In general, we think post launch content is great if developers still feel there is something they had wanted to get into the game but couldn’t manage by launch.

Many thanks to Desmond Wong for taking the time to answer our questions.