After its initial release in 2020,Calicois, as porting studio Whitethorn Games put it, “out meow” on PlayStation 4 and 5, letting players on Sony’s systems finally get a table at the game’s cozy magical girl cat cafe.Calico’s 2020 launch on PC, Xbox, and Switch came as a surprise that drew comparisons to then-recently releasedAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsthanks to a focus on a pastel-bright slice-of-life experience where players befriended animals and design and decorate to their hearts’ content. It focused on designing a cafe and completing quests for NPCs like finding lost pets.
In 2022, the Pawsome Update forCalicointroduced improvements, bug fixes, and features like new animals and cooking minigames. AsCalicowas about to launch on Sony’s platform at the end of November 2023, Game Rant spoke to Kells, founder of Peachy Keen Games, as well as John Russell, the porting engineer who handled the PlayStation port as part of Whitethorn Games. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: What were the driving factors behindCalico’s PlayStation release?
Kells:We hadoriginally planned to release it on all consoles! Our goal is to haveCalicoavailable in as many places as possible, so everyone has the option to play.
Q: Were there any challenges porting the game?
Russell:Calico’s greatest strength is that nothing is “out-of-the-box.” This gives it a unique style visually and in its gameplay systems. This also meant that adapting visual components (such as shaders) for certain render pipelines required a deeper level of technical knowledge than usual during the porting process. Fortunately, these kinds of challenges are the most satisfying part of the job. I spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with console debugging tools and analyzing the outputs. Before we could tackle any of these issues, we needed to know more specifically what was causing them. A lot of time was spent going through memory footprints and graphics outputs.
After we diagnosed the issues, nearly all significantchanges to the shader systemhad to be made by Peachy Keen Games, though I was able to leverage some 3D math knowledge to make a bunch of minor changes to translate shader math into a form the consoles could recognize. What I did do was dive into the console and HLSL (high-level shader language) documentation so I could translate the differences of the systems to Peachy Keen Games, allowing them to make the overarching changes that were needed.
Q: What has the reception to the game been like overall?
Kells:We’ve been really excited to see so many people enjoying it, and seeing the same joy in it that we see! What’s been interesting is the spread of types of gamers who enjoy it. The low difficulty of the game means we’ve seen kids as young as six enjoy it, which is adorable to see. We initially had a lot of feedback about bugs to fix and more content to add, which we’ve been consistently fixing and adding since launch.
Q: Are there any future plans forCalico?
Kells:We have lots of plans! We’re very attached to the universe ofCalico. We’re in the process of making more fun content updates forCalico, and planning out what games we want to make in the future set in theCalicouniverse.
Q: What inspiredCalico?
Kells:Calicowas formed from personal wish fulfillment. At the time that we started development, there werevery few cat- or cat-cafe-centered gamesand very few games in the pink and cutesy style I wanted. The first premise was just “cat cafe and magical girls,” and we ran with that!
Q: The game has been widely praised for its character creator. What were your priorities designing it?
Kells:My biggest priority with the character creator was representation. I wanted to make sure the larger body sliders weren’t just stretched versions of the skinnier shapes. Along with that, I wanted a good spread of hair types and skin colors.My other priority was to give players creative freedom. I always get annoyed in games when I can’t get the exact color I want, so all of it is color customizable. And my co-creator Andrew [Bowie] implemented a really cool feature to be able to put patterns and images on all the clothing.
Q: Your cat cafe can have more animal friends than just cats. How did you choose the animals that appear inCalico?
Kells:We basically just added all our favorite animals. The first ones I put in were cats, an Australian shepherd (my favorite dog breed), a red panda, and a raccoon. One restriction we had though was that we only had a certain range of rigs and animations. For example, the cow and goat are using the deer animations, and the ferret is a long raccoon rig! A lot of the animals are also from Kickstarter backers, which was very fun to put into the game.
Q: Who are some of your favorite characters in the game?
Kells:Honestly I’m very attached to all of them. I worked on their designs for a long time, and it took even longer to pare down to only the bunch that we have. Sunny and Blossom, who are in all the key art, have a special place in my heart, though. Autumn, the witch who turned herself into a cat person, is also up there on my top list, as well as Daisy, the cute little mouse girl.
Q: WasCalicoenvisioned as a “short and sweet” experience?
Kells:Over the development time, we extended and reeled back the scope multiple times. My goal though was to have a certain amount of content to lead to the credits, and then have some extended post-game content you could continue to play. I wanted thecredits portion to give players a sense of accomplishmentwhile welcoming them to continue hanging out in the cozy world as long as they wanted.
Q: Were there elements you wanted to include in the game that still haven’t been realized?
Kells:I had some characters I cut that I’d love to add back in, and we have at least one planned for that soon! Additionally, I’d love to have more fashion choices put in; we could use a lot more genres of fashion!
Q:Calicohas great LGBTQ representation, how was this prioritized when designing the game?
Kells:Honestly, once we made it a goal, it was pretty easy to put in. I designed the characters based on the type of people I know and love in real life, and that led to the spread of diverse characters we have. I think the sapphic quality just comes from my own preferences.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Kells:We’re just so excited to be able to invite PlayStation holders to join in the fun ofCalico!
Calicois out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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