Summary
In the years since its initial release, 2020 cat cafe simCalicohas continued to grow and evolve, first through its 2022 Pawsome Edition free update and now by releasing on Sony’s Playstation 4 and 5 consoles. But the cozy world of magical girls and cats so reminiscent ofAnimal Crossingcontinues to grow and evolve.
InCalico, players take control of a cat cafe. From cooking, to befriending animals, to exploring the local fashion trends, players can make their mark on their cafe while fulfilling quests from NPCs around town.Reaching the credits of a game likeCalicoisn’t really the end of the game, explains Kells, founder ofCalicodeveloper Peachy Keen Games during an interview with Game Rant. Rather, it is just one accomplishment in an endless world of creativity and friendship.
As the PlayStation release was going live, Kells talked to Game Rant about the road to this point inCalico’s life, and what remains on the horizon. Peachy Keen has even more interesting plans forCalico’s future as it continues to expand on the options available to players already in the life simulator. Those plans may even involve entirely new games set inCalico’s world.
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.
Concretely, Kells mentioned several characters that didn’t make it into the final game, at least one of whom Peachy Keen is presently working on implementing. She also mentioned wanting to implementother genres of fashioninto the game at some point in the near future, further expanding on the ability to customize players’ characters.
That customization has been a major focus ofCalico’s development, she explained. The character creator goes beyond what Kells sees as more standard body shape options by making sure larger bodies weren’t just stretched versions of skinnier ones, and ensuring the game had a variety of skin tones. Moreover, Kells said the game’s technical director, Andrew Bowie, implemented a system to allow players to apply patterns to clothing.
That will be far from the first major update toCalico. In 2022, Peachy Keen released a free update to the game’s 2.0 build called the Pawsome Edition. That came with scaling rewards for the various minigames players can undertake, as well asdozens of new cooking minigames. Of course, the Pawsome update also added new animals to befriend, and was able to reuse some animations to get more animals implemented.
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.
The Pawsome update also came with a slate of bugfixes that helped improve the game’s reception. Kells has, overall, been satisfied with how people have responded toCalicoand the wide range of people who have picked the cozy title up.
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 meanswe’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.
As for what will come next in the world ofCalico, Kells didn’t offer any hints but made it clear that Peachy Keen is sticking with the pastel world of magical girls and adorable animals for some time.
Calicois out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
MORE:Cozy Cat Cafe Calico Comes to PS4, PS5 After Three Years
