Skip to main content
Logo dark

v0.4 Vertical Slice Demo released on Steam

|Sasha

Vertical Slice Preview Demo

The Cathexis Vertical Slice Demo is now live on Steam for Windows and Linux! Cathexis is a game about Smashing Your Prison, a living prison made of endlessly tiling triangular panels that responds to your every move.

exterior view of The Construct
The colossal exterior of The Construct.

The Journey

Cathexis has been in the works for four years, evolving through many rounds of feedback and playtests. Cathexis began its journey as a top-down hexagonal strategy game about combining islands of hexes, but has since evolved into a first-person action game set in a frightening megastructure called The Construct.

The Construct is full of deadly traps, like lasers and flying eye panels.
The Construct attacks with an endless array of traps, including laser and self-flinging eye panels.

Making a game like this involves tackling some enormous technical questions:

  • How do you make a building morph into different shapes?
  • How do you know where enemies can spawn?
  • What kind of Director system can make all this dynamic and procedural?

Now that the demo has shipped, I'll be diving deep into these technical challenges over the next few weeks and describing some of the gameplay that emerged as I got curious about these problems. Can't wait to tell you more.

We Want Your Feedback!

Until next time, try the demo and let us know your thoughts on our Discord. We'd welcome any and all feedback as we plan what's next for Cathexis!