Phase 1 Launch Date
Our current day we have set for phase 1 release, is going to be **January 2nd 2026!**
We are based in EST, and with the method of distributing keys we don't have a specific time -- but we will announce a few hours prior when we will be going live!


Playtest Signup
As a reminder, we do have an alpha testing form set up for those who want to partake in the first phase of our game's testing!
In order for anyone to be able to test this, we must grant you access with a steam key! So you have to submit to the form for us to grant a key.
If you can, please share this info around to get the word going! We would love to have you and your friends try our game!
https://forms.gle/VnhznK9QUkybaEhU7


Focus of the test
Catpanion Adoption Stories
- We have a completely revamped story system we are excited to share and test out! There will be many more stories to come, but we want to at least give you all a look into one of our favourite parts of becoming invested into Catpanion.

Stability and Compatibility
- We want to ensure that our game is stable, this means that when you're in the desktop environment (cats roaming on your screen) we want to ensure that there isn't any compatibility issues that you can find with other games, programs, or interactions on your computer. Basically we wish for a lot of testing to see if there is any problems with our transparency setup that we need to address!

Custom UI functionality
- Another thing we created was the customizable UI feature, we showcased this briefly before but we need to ensure it works on computers that aren't ours. Our team has a lot of similar setups, and we need all kinds of computer setups to test this thoroughly!

Cat Behaviours
- Our Catpanions have been written from scratch, and there is only so much testing that our small team can do alone. We want to find out if there is any odd behaviours that they shouldn't be doing. As an example, if you see your catpanion climbing a wall upside down, we want to know about it... It might be possessed

Environment items
- Allowing the player to place items in our environment has been a hard one to manage; things like placing beds for your catpanions to sleep on has... been *something*. We need to extensively test this feature, it may not be fully ready but this phase of testing will help us a lot with finding out it's quirks.

'Catphone' Apps
- There is some apps we wish to test, and are tied into some of the above focuses
- Cat Information, Closet (item storage), Settings


Informative
Seeing as we are disabling some features that tie into the ones that will be active, we are going to have an app in the catphone called "DEV TOOLS" which will have options to do things like giving yourself a cat bed. Anything in this section will not be present in the main game, and is there to allow for feature testing!


Features disabled for phase 1
Clothing & Toys
- With our major rework to how we designed our catpanions, and the adjustments to their animations, we have to start these parts from scratch. Its for the best, it will be a LOT easier now, but due to this we wont have any toys or clothing available for awhile

Shopping
- As a follow up to the adoption stories, the shopkeepers are also going through a large set of adjustments and will not be available for this phase. These changes being made to get them in line with the story makes them unusable at this time!

Some 'Catphone' Apps
- The following apps will set to be unavailable as they tie into other disabled features
- Bank, Games, Map, Messages (Notifications), Socials, Tasks