Alley Cat — six reels

This one is ours, written for this site, and it's the honest answer to "what is the real game?" It's a slice of the blend: a city you climb like a cat, things to shove off ledges because you can, hats to wear, neighbours who talk in intertitle cards, and errands borrowed straight from the 1903 film. All six reels are in the projector below — pick one and it loads in place, no reload. The seventh is the same alley stood up in 3D, and it runs on its own page.

Reel One — the alley. Three things have to happen. Knock three objects off three ledges; the noise rattles the apothecary's shutter open. Climb to the window at the top of the alley and take the bottle of fisik. Then bring it back down to the lit doorway.

Reel Two — the whole street. The alley widened into a connected block, 3600 pixels wide instead of 1400 tall: a fishmonger, a haberdasher and a picture house you can get inside through their windows. Three errands run at once — sardines for the tom, wool for the convalescent kitten, a spool of film for a pigeon with an inflated sense of his career — and one of them stays shuttered until you have broken five things. Six hats are hidden across it. Nothing kills you in any reel, falling included — cats always land.

Reel Three — the roofs. Straight up off the same street: 2600 wide and 2000 tall, which is the first reel that runs both ways at once, so the picture carries both gauges. The block is rigging a screening on the gable wall and none of the pieces are in the same place — a bedsheet for a screen, a coil of wire out of a boarded garret, a bulb, and the film itself, which a magpie is sitting on. She counts hats before she lets anyone into her nest, which is the first gate in the game that reads a verb instead of the wreckage. The way down at the end is to fall off the roof.

Reel Four — premiere night. The widest world in the prototype at 4800 across, the whole block dressed for an opening, and five errands live at once. Every one of them is an object an earlier reel asked for — a ticket, a spool, sardines, a bulb, and the green bottle of fisik from 1903 — handed back to whoever wanted it the first time. One gate wants eight things broken, one wants six hats, and one wants five meows, which is the cheapest verb in the game finally being worth something.

Reel Five — the neighbours. Eight residents, five errands chained end to end, and a trader who is paid in wreckage. Meow at somebody to talk to them; press E at the Hatter to buy off his rack instead. The lantern-moth translates everything anybody says, up to the point where it decides you are not worth translating for.

Reel Six — the house on the corner. The last of the flat reels, and the only one that turns back upright: 2400 across and 2600 tall, so it is one building climbed from the cellar door to the chimney pot, with its rooms stacked on top of each other instead of strung out along a street. Ten residents, six errands, and every kind of gate in the game at once — a chain of favours, a hat count in the loft, ten things broken to rattle the lamp room open, and a Watchman asleep on the chimney who has to be meowed awake. The last delivery is the whole way back down: a spoonful of fisik for the kitten on the front awning, which is where the 1903 film ends.

Prototype 0.6 — everything you see is drawn by code at runtime, grain and scratches included, so all six reels are one small file. It is a proving ground for the mechanics below, not a finished game.

Fastest deliveries

Every completed run of Alley Cat can be signed into the ledger — time first, with the damage and the hats recorded next to it. Each reel keeps its own book, because a climb up an alley, a run across a street, a scramble over the roofs, a premiere night, a block of favours and a house climbed to the chimney are six different races. Finish a run in the prototype above and the signing form appears with it.

1. Loading the ledger…

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