The best game at Steam Next Fest June 2026: Cat Mail Co

This is what the [music] people want. They're begging us as game developers to make this game for them. They're like, "Please, can you make this?" I'm like, "No, no, we're gonna make a pixel art platform because that's what I love. I'm a cold, heartless marketer and I must destroy everything with numbers and stats." Oh my. What am I? I'm a magic socialist cat. You know, where did you come from? Is there a trap door down there? What is going on? Cat Mail Co. which is an awesome game. It did very well in Steam NextFest and it did well after launch. So, let's take a look at it. I'm going to play it because this is a great demo and a great type of game and kind of is instructive of what I mean by when I say, you know, the game matters and you should really be careful about the games that you pick. This people who made this game, they nailed it. So, let's go. All right. So, you just run a post office. That's it. But you're a cat. And let's just do

the first objective. Call a customer. You just get your little kitty paw. Look at that cat. Just pop it straight up. Uh, hi. Parcel is from my mom. Her last name is Long Fang. Sounds like one of those wizard cat books or warrior cat books. My grand has very long claws. They might have scratched the parcel, but we're going to see some environmental storytelling here. All right, so let's look. Oh, so we got to look for see who this is. That's uh Barnaby. We're gonna put Barnaby right back here. We're looking for Long Fang. Was it Long Fang? Long Fang. And she has long claws. Long Fang. So, we're going to look around here. This is the tutorial still. Let's see what we got here. Does this have any name on it whatsoever? Male. Get it? Male. Male. Male. Uh, let's see what we got here. We got one and two. No long fang. No long fing. Got a little bit of a puzzle to solve. Long fang.

All right, we're going to go into the back. Let's see. Maybe it's Oh, wait. My grand has long calls. Maybe it's L long think. She didn't put her full name. Come on, grandma. Um, so might have to solve a bit of a mystery. She's got long claws. Look at that. Look at that. I wouldn't even say those are that bad. So, I'm going to make a guess now. I'm just giving mail to this person, even though the name doesn't seem to check out. Thanks. Have a nice day. If I went to a post office and I just said, "Hey, uh, starts with an L." And they're like, "Oh, here's a package. Starts with an L." Don't know if that would check out. So, let's look at the map. That's our next objective here. Let's just So adorable. Okay. Two types of parcels. those with cat island and those will be requested at the counters and those for other destinations which will leave the island. You are here. We're on cats island. Okay, not cats land. Cat Island.

Now, as you might imagine, this is an adorable game. It is wholesome as get out. It is cozy. Look at how cozy this a rug a well decorated rug. This is the best decorated wood finishing post office I've ever been into. I can't think of anything cozier than this. Okay. Now, um, but this is a parcel simulator game. You you you take in customers, you find stuff, you package it up. We'll show you. And whenever I say so, these simulation games, simulation-y are so popular on Steam. This is what the people want. They're begging us as game developers to make this game for them. They're like, "Please, can you make this?" I'm like, "No, no, we're going to make a pixel art platformer cuz that's what I love." It's like, they don't want that. They want they want this. Now, some people are like, "Well, I don't like that art style of of simulation games." Well, the cat male people are smart. And they were

like, "Well, we like wholesome and we like cat. We like cats and this genre of simulating a job is good. What if we just And there are so many people who are wonderful artists. They're beautiful. Their art enlightens the world. And yet, they still want to make puzzle games and Metroid vanias and platformers that just are have such a hard time selling. And I wish all those artists, those beautiful artists were so good and so talented would just make something that allows them to quit their stupid job and do this full-time. And let me tell you, the people at Katco, I'm pretty sure they're quitting their day job if they had just their full-time job. All right. So, let's let's carry on. Okay. So, without me blabbing, let's look at it. Okay. Um, let's call another customer. See, it's it's kind of a shop center. This is what you do. You click the button, they just appear, and I've bought something to ship. All right. Uma

J. All right. Thank you. Okay. So, here's what it is. They say, um, I have to kind of look because my camera is right over the thing. Open the stamp mode and stamp mode. I got to open stamp mode. Okay. Um, enter stamp mode. F to answer stamp stamp mode. So, they are they are Oh, boy. They are going to cat island. We're We're on Cat Island. It's going away. So, this is their destination. We're gonna we're they're going to go to I think it's Windy Town. What was it? Uh, so we did that. We got the stamp on there. Look at the weight board. Okay. Um, so the weight board is it's if it the kilograms, how many stamps I need? See, they're just simulating me being a little stamper. Um, so I'm going to exit and let's put on the let's put on the scale. Um, what's it say? How many kilograms? Each parcel returns a simple a certain number of stamps based on the weight stamps on the category except Okay, so

we got a blue category which is three kilograms which requires four stamps. Um, so, um, let's open it. Whoops. Let's go open stamp mode. It needs four stamps. So, we're going to put four stamps on here. Two, three, four. I'm going to kind of go with a diamond look on there. So, we got four. Glow stamp mode. That guy just took off without paying. He didn't even say I didn't even tell him like, "You need four stamps, buddy. You better pay up." The cat's just like, "See you." [laughter] apparently some sort of weird socialist cat thing where money doesn't matter and nothing matters. But that society is not going to last long, I'll tell you that much. Anyway, um okay. So, why why even have stamps if everything's free? Um okay, let's let's put this on here. What what am I doing here? Um okay, what's it? Stamp the correct amount of weight stamps. Uh oh, I think I already messed this up. I already failed at my job. I thought I did. I thought I thought it's the blue

three cat. One, two, three. Four stamps. I put four stamps on there. Maybe maybe I didn't need a different stamp. Um, okay. I am really Oh, this is the weight stamp. Oh, these are weight stamps. Just stamp the hell out of this thing. Weight stamps are this one. So, I need four weight stamps. One, two, three, four weight stamps applied. Usability in Catland doesn't make much sense, but anyway, time moves forward. Why don't just make the weight stamp also the destination stamp, but hey, whatever. All right. Time moves forward every time a customer is satisfied. So, take your time. Time moves forward every time. Once I would say once a customer is satisfied. So, take your time. Time in there twice. But I'm not a copyright. They know what they're doing. They know what they're doing. They know what they're doing with the uh the writing with this game. Okay. Continue serving customers until customer two out of five. Okay. So, what we're going to do is we're going to put this in the

to-go box. There's a to- go section, I think, over here. This is the to-go box cuz I've played this. I've I've kind of already done this. Well, I played So, I played the demo that is uh that was on um that was on Steam NextFest. I played the demo there cuz it was popping off. And I'm going to go in just a second here and show what's going on here. Um, and it was popping off. So, I played it already. And so, I kind of know what's going on. So, a ship's going to show up here after I get five customers solved. A ship's gonna show up and I need to load that ship up with these. And so, now I know they kind of reveal this stuff as you're going. So, your first round is awful. They don't overtutorialize, which is awesome. See how it says continue serving customers? What I've learned is stuff's going to get confusing and you're going to be like, "What does this go here? Does this go here?" So, look at let's look at the destination here. destination is still windy island and the weight is three or whatever they use those weight stamps. So what I've got a filing system there's no rules here. This is what make what I say crafty buildy strategy simulation.

They aren't locking you into like do this do that. They're kind of like whatever you want to do however you want to organize your little mail place little cat you do it. And so I am going to use this as the outgoing. It doesn't say anything like most put outgoing stuff here. What's that do? Oh, look. See? But I wanted to go. They just kind of didn't tell me this. I just discovered it. So, this is my outgoing section. I know this now. I got to be organized cuz there's just Somebody just trashed this place. Let's see. Uh, destination is home. So, this is coming here. So, this is the stuff we want to do here. So, look at that. I want this to be this stuff. See? Isn't this cool? I could do it either way. There's no rules. This is what I mean, folks, when I say the type of game that do well on Steam are these. kind of just kind of sandboxy. They don't have a lot of rules. However you want to serve these customers, I'm going to do one more and then I'm going to do a deep dive into um the sales and why I picked this game and why I did so much. So, I'm going to do one more. Let's do this. They just pop out. Okay. Hello. I've brought

something to ship. All right. You got it. All right. Let's see what you got here. What? What do I What am I doing here? Where are you going? Port Windy. See, he just says Port Wind. I'm kind of So, this is what's kind of fun at this. You kind of get a little mystery solving. See, he just put Wendy. All right, I'm going to give you to Port Windy. Let's get you a destination. Wait, let me get you a destination stamp. We're going to Port Windy. Kind of wish it said that if I held my little catpaw over there. So, we're going to Cat Wendy. We're going to do this. We're going to We're going to We're going to get you up on the scale. Let's see. Your destination is a 2 kilogrammer. Um, let's get you 2 kg. I'm just going to go kind of with a fish. One, two. You would think they would go. Why don't they just do number of kilograms equals number of stamps? They're cats. They can't count very well. Um, and so this is going to Port Windy. I'm going to put this right here for now. I'm going to get your other one. What's the other one? Oh, both Port Wendy. Very nice

handwriting.
Thank you so much. He's just Hey. Yeah, you got to pay. You have to pay. All right. Jeez, somebody should really crack down on these people. So, we're going to Port Windy again. Let's see how much this one weighs. What you got here, cat? Um, you've got a threebanger. Let's go. We got to get four of these. Let's go with the the fish one. Come on, cat. Can I rotate a little bit? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you can. See, that's They don't overtutorialize it. See this? And you can't quite see this. Let me let me move my head. You see that? They don't over tutorial. So, you can do this. It's all open. It's a sandbox. If I want to be crazy with the stamps and just be one, two, three, just be a a nasty man. I can do that. There's no rule. It's a sandbox. This is what

And they don't overtutorialize. Like, you must put them up. You must line up. There's like if you want to, you can discover by looking at this stuff down here. All right, so I am going to I've done this customer. I'm I can ring the bell again and get another customer. But I think you get the gist. Okay, I'm going to pop over and show you just a little bit how awesome this game is. Okay, let me All right, while I'm talking to this cat, look at that cat lady. I am going to say uh don't forget um I'm going to do a live stream in just a [snorts] minute uh tomorrow. Oh, it's uh Thursday at 9:00 a.m. uh America time. I I think it's I think we're Pacific time. I think we're Pacific. 9:00 a.m. Pacific time. Link below. Scheduled YouTube Q&A. I'm going to answer a question about Steam NextFest. I've just published a bunch of data about Steam NextFest. I published this video that you're watching right now about cat games and and friends slop and and how to uh take a genre that's hot, like a sandbox game, and make it your own. And don't

make another Metroid vania. The world doesn't need another one. Please, please, it doesn't. Um, and I'll answer all those questions for you. And it's the goodbye to my course. My course is on sale. And I've got this bundle that I've discounted so deep. You get everything I've ever made in the past for the same price as my course full time, the full price of it. So, you should probably get that one. And I offer discounts and all that stuff and and full refunds if you don't like it. So, really do it. All right. Back to to helping this cat out. This cat lady. stress. Anyway, bye spreadsheets because I can I as as a marketer, I cannot just appreciate art for art's sake. I'm a cold, heartless marketer and I must destroy everything with numbers and stats. It's I I just destroy everything I touch. Okay, now this is what turned me on to Cat Mail Co. I did my survey of Steam NextFest every year and every every next a lot of them. And

this game came in and it was like look at this. Okay. So I can look at the stats and if you look at the baselines numbers don't change that very much. So this over my hand disappears. I'll just point without going over there. Um see that that is June 2026 and this is the number of wish list they came into. Now I know because I ended up talking to the cat people. Um they said that they got 6,000 wish list before NextFest. So, they're in the bucket that I I made this bucket 1,000 to 10,000 in that bucket. Okay. Um, and when the data came back, uh, there were strong buckets. Uh, that's the 30th percentile. Uh, median is 1.2K and 2K is what you expect to get out of NextFest if you win in with about two 10,000 wish lists. Well, Katco is the big 42. 42,000 wish lists during Nexfest. They were one of the most played demos and they launched shortly

after. Let's see. Well, let me let me show you the timeline. Well, when I saw that 42,000, I was like, "What the heck? What is going on here? I got to play this." So, I played the demo and I was like, "This is good. This is good. This is exactly what Steam wants." So, as you can see, they launched in June, like basically a month ago. They announced their Steam page. Everything took off naturally and then they released and they did steam next fest um somewhere along there. Well, see the thing is you don't see a sharp uptick. I didn't include it in there. You don't see a sharp uptick from Steam NextFest because everything was just going crazy. I think they launched with 5,000 followers which is like 50,000 wish list which they earned during NextFest. Like that whole month was NextFest. And then they did a little bit of time after. The other thing that that happened is there was Nexus was so awesome. Steam put them in popular upcoming. They basically did what I said which is the rapid release and I wrote a blog post about this. Um I'll link it

down below. Oh blog post is so much better than YouTube because you can get into the numbers without scaring. I know I can just feel the people watching this drop off because I'm showing a graph and talking about it. People on YouTube don't have patience. People blog people have patience. So if you're a blog person, check the blog. you're gonna be rewarded with knowledge because reading is cool, kids. Anyway, so um yeah, they were also in popular upcoming. They launched a month later, like a week ago. I think they launched shortly after NextFest. Fantastic. They're already at 1,500 reviews, I think. Did I include that in the chart? No. But anyway, okay. So, why and I always say get lots of wish list before you launch. They did. They got lots of them, but they did within a month of their Steam page being live, which is insane. How did people do that? Because genre genre genre matters and one of the cool genres right now I mean in general are simulation games. Okay. And simulation games mean you just do a job like and it is so and I'll I'll do it again. I'll do another round of

customer stuff and I'll explain why the game design is so awesome for indies. But you're just doing a job. You don't have to go on a quest and talk to five some somebody and collect the seven keys of Vamptusler and turn it back into them and then hear about their backstory and then learn that your father was actually in the village and was actually the bad guy and all this hero's journey crap. You just you just work a job and cute stuff happens. And this is a very and I'll I'll go through why it's such a good thing for indies to do. And anytime I'm like, "Hey, this genre and this game play is so powerful. You could launch a game and make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a week. Like this game, if you just kind of follow the genre, not saying chase because they didn't chase anything. They the genre came to them. They're like, "Here it is, and the genre is there." Um, but then people are like, "Well, I don't like that genre. I don't I don't like that." And what I'm saying is you

don't have to make exactly like if I show this really derpy looking like playway simulation game. A lot of people like well I don't like that game. It's it's not my type of game. You can take those bones of a simulation game and paint it with your artistic brilliance and do some amazing creative things that don't look like the sloppy. look past the gross playway sloppy looking graphics and make it magic. Okay? Because that's what the artists can do. Artists can make stuff magic, okay? And they can see beauty where nobody else sees beauty. And the cat mail people saw the beauty in sloppy playway style job simulators. Okay? Now, there's a sub subg genre, lots of them like supermarket simulator, um shop simulator, you know, all those shop simulators, gas station simulators. Let me show you one. Another one. This is very similar. This game order 13 is a

post office job simulator/horror game. Okay. What I kind of say is you can take I'm not going to explain. This is gross. It's all on this blood stuff. But same thing. Customer comes in, you have to like stamp it, you have to put it, then you have to file it away in this warehouse. But a monster chases you. That's their little creative adjustment. It's the same basic gameplay, but they put a layer, a coding of what they prefer. I'm going to move on because it's gross. Another one, a guy who's moderator for the HDMAG Discord, parcel, I think it's just called parcel simulator. They took it same basic job stamping and stuff, but they put an automation sheen on top. Okay. where you've got like all these conveyor belts that you can make and all this processing and it's a lot more in a different direction. And so what I'm telling people when I say like these genres are hot, I'm not saying clone. I'm not saying chase a trend. I'm saying

start with the bare bones. Like what is it that's fun? And I'm going to do another round of cu getting a customer. And I'm going to show you what's fun and exciting about that core gameplay. And then I'm not saying, well, everybody's going to make a parcel job simulator. They don't because everybody has their own peculiar thing. Like these people like cats. Cat mail code. They're like, "Let's make it cats. Make it cute and cozy. Boom. Let's make it gross." and dungey and bloody and horrifying. Boom. Done. Let's make it deep technological mathy it up simulating like conveyor belts. They everybody has an artistic vision. And so when I say look at the core of this, this is what the core thing is. You can expand that to you. Make it your own. Make it your style.

Make it your art. You're an artist. You truly are. You're not chasing trends. Just because you're Jackson Pollock painted on a canvas and you paint on a canvas does not mean you're chasing the trends of canvases. Use these gameplay mechanics as your canvas and paint your beauty on top of this. And I know you're like, "But I don't like this. I don't like this." There are many other genres very similar to this that you might like and go in with an open mind with your open artist brain and say like I got that is I have an idea I can make this now one thing that you have to concern yourself with is mixing too many genres. Okay. And let's go back to the cats. I'm going to talk while I'm serving it this that has no concept of money. At least

if they like paid me in cat treats or something. All right. So, let me let me tell you this. What I'm trying to get at is um there's a core to a game. And in this one, and I'll do the core. The core is push the button. Boom. Guy shows up. Guy has a thing. I'm Nigel. Round eyes. Of course you have round eyes. Everybody has them. It has a sprig of lavender sticker. Then step one. Okay. Customer. I gotta find their package. All right. Oh, whoops. I gotta I pushed the wrong button. I didn't switch over. There he is. When I said push the button, I wasn't showing you exactly what I was doing. Here he is. That's that's Nigel round eyes. See him? He it is a springrig of land lavender sticker. Okay. Now, this is phase two of this game play loop. Okay. Or maybe it's phase one. I Let's say calling a customer is phase one. Stage two is okay. Now I'm doing a hidden object game. It's kind of like a

hidden object game or you got say it's a fetch quest, but it's a very fetch easy fetch quest. I don't have to go battle a wizard or something. I just have to kind of look for it. And it's not a complicated thing. All I have to go is like, do you have springrig of lavender? Sprig of lavender. No. Get out of here. I'm going to clean up as I as I work. I'm going to clean up here. I'm going to kind of organize. Sprig of lavender. Spring of lavender. No. Okay. No. Okay. Put you back in there. You're too big. Okay. Let's go deep in here. Oh, the tutorial is flashing it at me. Okay. Let's go grab this thing. Oh no. I played this before, so it I knew this story event [music] was happening. Okay. I wonder what's behind this pile. Yeah, look at all this junk. But Nigel R, round eye. And there it is. Spring of lavender. So it also kind of has a little bit of an aspect of like

identifying match shaping shape matching shapes. Hunting find cuz I'm looking around my dirty shop. Look at this shop. It's dirty. That's That's loop number two. Now loop three kind of branches. It's a little bit different if I'm coming or going. Um, so I here it is. There you go. Um, I'm gonna close my dial and then the go the guy goes. That's it. So that's one loop could be coming in and I got to do a hunt and p find little adventure game. Okay, it's very simple adventure game. It's just like what color? There's usually some identifying thing. Cat scratches. Remember that other one? Or a stick of lavender on there? Or the name on the tag. All clues that I that I do. Okay, let's do the other one. Let's do the fifth one and see if this is a new one. Okay. Uh, good evening, Vivian Nuzzle. It's just a letter. What? It's just a letter. Like, do you want or do you Okay.

I'm Vivian Nuzzle. It's just a letter. I think she ask for it. Use your verbs. I think she wants a letter. So, uh, Viven is her name. Vivian Nuzzle. So, Vn Vivien Nuzzle. Is this a letter? Let's go. find. Is this considered a letter? I think it's a small package. So, let's let's look in my very dirty office. And as I'm going through, let me let me explain what I'm seeing here, too. You get a little environmental storytelling. A lot of game designers always want I want to do some environmental story. Look, here it is. You get this little plaque. That's my my little island. Um, you get the little cat toys everywhere. It's cute. I wonder why is it night cold storage? I wonder if that's going to be in the full game. You got the doorstep little look the pop the little footsteps like environmental storytelling. Okay. Um, look at that. That is smart. That is smart. That is [music] genius. Builtin wish list thing in game. Love it. I'm

going to click it just for scientific purpose. You can't see it, but it pulls up a browser window going right to the game. Bro, steal this. 45,000 wish lists [music] from Steam Nexus. Do it. And they did. So well they ended up on popular upcoming which is a very hard thing to do now. Popular upcoming shifted to be only super high earning games. So let's keep looking for our stuff. Let me look through these letters. Oh my god. Vivian. Vivian. Who made this mess? Let's see what we got here. So this is I know it's incoming. River D. I'm going to start putting stuff away. I think these are letters. I don't see anything that looks more letters. There's Buster Keat in there. Or maybe this is a letter. Let's get Look at this mess. How do I drop Q? I'm just going to drop that there. What do we got here? Look at Sarro prop. I always have to call out Sarro. Saros apparently grow in this land. Better not be Texas. Saros don't grow in Texas. Um I'm just going to we're going to perpetuate the the mess. Um I'm still

looking for Viven. I'm just going to not going to clean up. I'm not going to watch you clean up. So again, we're playing the find game. There's a little thing under here. What's this one? Rory, look. Imagine this person. What if you went to a post office and ask for a package and there's just some person rooting through this stuff and you're like, uh, maybe we should have a a system of money cuz then we'll actually have good help and it won't be a just total chaos scene of people doing this. Is this Vivian's letter? Via Nuzzle, there's your letter. Okay, I'm coming around. Coming around. I think I can go this way. Vivian, sorry about the mess. If people would actually pay me, I would actually work hard at my job. But because we have this communist system, I'm not going to work hard. I don't get any incentive out of this. So, I'm just going to be a messy messy man. Okay, there it is. Boom. Have a nice day. Sounds good. Dusk. Let's see. Empty the boat. Okay, so we've now got a loop within a loop.

So, we have two types of people. They come in. They either come and they want a letter and I have to do a hunt and find game or like that guy uh who said, "I'm dropping off this package and I have to do the loop." We didn't get another guy like that. I'm just going to explain it real quick. We have to do the loop where I have to weigh the package, check the stamps, and then the stamps tell me um you know how how much weight to put on it and stuff. And then I put it on here. And that's one loop. And then we've got this bigger loop which is the day night cycle. After I do five people or however many customers, then the boat shows up. We're going to go to boat time here. Um the boat shows up and hello. Let's get to work. This is hold R darn dust captain closes fulfilling the request. So I need to unload his boat because these are inbound. So we're going to put him in our inbound organization system which is this one. This is I'm going to do inbound because I want to go when a customer sees when I

see it when customer sees me I want to go back right here. Get it. Boom. There's your package. So, all the stuff that's destined for us, I'm going to put right up front so we we can do it. Let's see here. There it is. Demi, this is for packages here. Um, okay. And then let's see. I wish you could carry two things, but I don't get paid to work hard cuz I'm not getting paid at all. Um, oh, that's a letter. So, I want to put all the letters in the letter section. Letter section goes over here. See how organized I'm getting? Going to be so organized. And that's part of the joy of this second loop is like organizing and and dealing with all this stuff. Uh, I spent a lot more time when I was um when I was uh playing the demo. I really organized it very [music] well. Like I I sorted all these packages and and I had

a whole filing system. What's this one? Yep. I had a whole filing system and I had different types of packages. I found out which fits best in here and between all of these. It was so awesome. Um that should be clickable by the way. Um and that's it. Um it was awesome. I'm not going to do that cuz it's kind of boring, but it's fun to play, not fun to watch. Um okay, so now let's talk to the captain. So unload. So we're in the secondary loop. It's like a big figure eight. Imagine the two loops. It's a day night cycle. We're in Night Loop, which is organizing, dealing with the captain. So, let's talk to this captain here. I'm just going to jump over your boat. All cleaned up. Now, bring me all your deliveries for Port Windy. Look what I did. Port Windy. See how I I anticipated I put it right next to the boat. There it is. Watch this. I'm going to jump in there. I always just try and push the limits like am I going to have to play a mini game or nothing? It just doesn't matter. See, there's no death or anything. That's what makes these games. But if you're a lot of indies are like, I don't want to have guns in my game. And the thing that they default to is I

don't want death and blood and guns. Which is fine. Good. Thing they always default to are puzzles. And it's like people don't like puzzles. So they're like, I don't know. I don't want guns and I don't want puzzles. What do I do? Job simulators. Job simulators don't have guns. And you can put so much personality. Look at this guy. Look at this personal. See, this is when people are like, "Oh, I'm just not motivated by those type of games." Look at this. Look at this guy. Look at that character design. There's a story behind [music] this man. Why, despite working the night shift, does he look so good? Look at that animation. Look at that. Somebody [music] put some care into that. Look at that. Just because you are chasing trends does not mean you're slopping this out. This is good. Can I pet this cat?
I kind of wish you could pet the cat. I wish you could just say, "Hey, I'm gonna pet you." But look at this captain. I mean, look at this guy. He cut the holes in his hat. Um, let's get you the Port Windy stuff. Let's get that in there.

Now, if I was crazy, which I did when I was playing the demo during NextFest, I went through and I made sure all these packages that were going for Port Windy showed up there. Let me just find one more. That's No, that one. Yeah. See, that one's for us. I'm going to put this in the outgoing. See, and this is what I love. They don't have a big thing that says outgoing, ingoing. It's It's a sandbox. It is me deciding that I want to organize it this way. I'm going to find one more Port Windy. There's Port Windy. Let's take it to old Captain Sleepy Eyes. And let's put that And now second game loop in here. We're playing a little Tetris. We're doing a little Tetris game here. Can't fit that boat. I just wanted to show this so that I could show you what it works. How it works. We're going to do big ones. Oh boy, almost did that. I would have been nervous, but I don't get paid for this. So, I can't fire me because I'm not getting paid. So, it didn't matter if I dropped it in. See what That's why communism doesn't work. Um, let's see.

Let's pick this up. Let's pick this up. All right. Put that. Put that. You can stack that. Get that right there. Boom. All right. I'm just not going to because I can't get fired cuz I'm not getting paid. I'm just going to send the butt off like I bet there's some packages [music] back there but nobody's paying me so I don't care. Um you get on there. You're done. Let's see how it kind of handles these edge cases cuz that's what takes so long is edge cases. Send the boat back. Are you sure they're still here? Are you still here? Just uh your feet off the packages. You're still here. Just keep your feet off the packages. Okay. Does that mean I have to still unpack more? Or is he saying like, "You got to do more. This isn't enough."
What's he saying? Next stop, Port Windy. Get out of here. Don't just stand there. You're blocking the light. Okay.

I'm headed Port Windy to see who's calm today. Next stop, Port. All right, I think I'm done. What do I do? Send the boat back. How do I send the boat? Oh, I think I have to ring that bell. I think I missed that like a cat. Heading toward.
How do I send this boat back? Get out of here, boat. All right. Do I have to do it from this side? I wouldn't do that if I were you. See, there's a little little bit of character. Look at this. Look at this little cute thing. See, you just just being inspired. You can do fun stuff. So, how do I get this boat out of here? [laughter] I don't know. Maybe I just go to the end of the day. Get out of here, boat. Do I have to load out the packages? Enough packages. What do I have to do? Send the boat back. This could use a little bit more

tutorialization. I don't know what Oh, that's figured it out. That's it. See you. I only sent three packages. 119 fake socialist dollars. All right, let's go. Look at that. Ain't that cute? See, you can do cute, creative stuff by chasing trends. It's just you've got to figure out what the baseline action is. And um the night works just like the day. Satisfy customers requests. Have fun. Yeah. Um and that is the core loop. Now, let me explain some good things that they did. I don't know how long this game was actually in development. I know it was the Steam page was live for a month plus month and a little bit. I don't know how long in development, but let me show you what's going on here. X-ray parcels. Oh, I got to put this in

this. Okay. There's a single parcel in the conveyor belt to scan it. If the scanner detects anything at a stamp that matches the identified constraint to the parcel, you don't need that for for the parcels. Uh do that for the parcels customers give you. That was good play testing, but people start scanning everything. Okay, let's move it on. All right. Ah, see they added another thing now. They added to the Tetris [music] packaging gameplay loop. You can't put stuff on top of each other. That's new. I think this is new. So, this demo is live even though the game's launched. I don't think in the Steam demo, Steam Nexfest demo, I don't think they had the the added heavy and weight constraints and stuff like that. Um, okay. So, one,
I want to call this out. Indie games, you don't have to do everything. Did you see how that guy appeared? It would have taken so much work to make the guy walk,

turn around. You had to add a white walk cycle. Turn around, go bang. I'm thinking [music] there is other than me, watch me. That's the only white walk cycle in the whole game. This is why these games are awesome. Whereas like an RPG or a [music] Metroid Vania is you have to do so much like walking around. The boss has to come in and do a dramatic dance to say, "I'm a big boss." These games do so well and they're right size for indies. This is why I'm like, do these sandboxy games. these management, these simulation games because you can get away with a lot less. Like they just I push the button and the guy does a bounce. They just added a bounce tween to him. A bounce that goes and he's here and that's it. I'd like to send that. And when you do quests, you basically I don't know exactly how they coded this, but I bet there's like they can code all these new characters doing stuff that make this game fun

basically in metadata. They're like, "All right, Port Wendy, here's a name. Match a name. Match a destination." It almost autogenerates itself. Um, and then it can do this stuff. Um, I think I can scan this. I think I have to scan this now. And now I'm It's kind of repetitive, but that's what's fun is to do these things. I think I'm going to do this kilogram. I don't know what that means. I mean, I I know I'm American. I don't know what a kilogram is, but I don't know what that means. It's a weight problem. So, let's see here. What do we got? What do we got? We got a four. Oh, what is in this thing? Uh, we got a six stamper. Four port windy. So, let's pull up our old stamper. Going to Port Windy. Let's get that on there. And let's do this. It's heavy. That must That's what the kilogram thing is. So, let's put that on there. Uh, there it is. I don't know if I can fit these stamps on here. All right. And

then it's a 4 kilogrammer. Um, so let's do that. Whoops. Whoa. Whoa. I just threw it in the corner. So, you see how much time this takes? Let me to do all this. Um, let's put let's put these little guys on here. One, two, two, three, four, five, six. But you see to do all this does not take any more time of development. It's just like this one's five. This one has this attribute and it's like [music] it's in the metadata. Whereas if this is an RPG and you want to do a fetch quest, you have to have a guy. And you have to write dialogue and you're like, "Oh, my sheep have gotten out. I'm a fine sheep herder. Tell my wife I love her. And if you go and find those sheep, be sure to do you have to write all this dialogue and you have to give this guy a

backstory. And you have to do all this. And then you have to animate the sheep walking around. And then you have to find the sheep. And then you have to get the sheep. And then you have to find the one in the woods that the last one is being guarded by a troll. And you have to battle the troll and you have to animate the troll walking around in this troll dungeon. And then the troll is like, "Well, here's a choice. I stole this because that sheep herder is mean to me." Or same voice as the sheep herder is like, "Well, the sheep herder is mean to me. I deserve to steal his sheep." And then you have to make a moral choice about whether you kill the goat herder or if you kill the troll who stole the sheep or you steal more sheep. It's just too much. And that's why I don't rep re recommend RPGs is because RPGs take forever to develop versus crafty buildy strategy simulation-y where I can just go like this. Watch. Watch this animation. I'm watch this. I'm going to push this button here. It's just a little girl that goes. That's the animation. It's one model. She doesn't even walk. She just kind of like just appears. You don't Where did you come from? Is there a trap door down there?

What is going on? You don't have to animate all this stuff. You don't have to say all this backtory like the parcel is for my mom. Her name is Night Eyes. It's just a letter. Like you just write a little dialogue and those things like Night Eyes is probably dynamic text and it's all built in a giant spreadsheet or JSON file. And this [music] stuff generates much faster and so development time is you don't have to do the troll story. I know you want to write a story about a troll who fights with a sheep herder. Um, okay. Last name is Nos. Let's look it up. Let's see if we can find you. I'll do this one. Night Eyes. It's a letter, but you see how it's content scales so much better for these crafty simulation-y games that we developers who are small can make games to the size of expectation that players have. And players want lots of content. They want long games. and an RPG to make a long game you have to write so much

content and so much animation and so much art or these management simulation games where it's like fill in the blanks and it's and people will repeat this forever for hours. I should put it down here so I can actually see it. Night eyes. Night eyes. Let's dig through my slot pile here. Little girl, what are you doing out at night for your mom? Why is this guy working? Oo, that might be night. I don't know. Like, I love it. It's night eyes and it's like night eyes. Yeah, that one ends with N. That's definitely my package. No money. Well, okay, I'm joking. But here's the other thing that's awesome about this. Again, this game is done awesome. Look at how much is not done. They They just watch. I'm going to put this down. Look at my arms. They did not have to animate the kinematics of the hands reaching out, grabbing it. The hands. It's just a floating package. This is genius. And when I look down, look. How am I? What

am I? I'm a magic socialist cat who just gives away. Look at me. That I have telekinesis. They didn't animate that stuff. And I put this down. That one isn't for me. Okay. Well, your mom needs to write a full name. Okay. Um, wait. Let's see what it's for Wendy. Let's put this in the outgoing. Good job. way to be honest. Little girl out at night. Um, let's see. Let's look for these. That's for us. I think that's for us. This is my little letter section here. Paige. Okay. This might be your mom. Your mom. Watch. If this is it, watch this animation. Watch. Watch. Thanks. Have a nice day. Watch. Boom. She just blows up. That's totally fine. You could just make her They didn't have to animate her walking down the hallway,

walking down, opening the doors, going out. They didn't have to animate her um like putting money down. They're just like, "No, she's the the package disappears and she blows up in smoke." You don't have to do as much. You can focus on doing cute stuff. Like look, they spent all their budget on this beautiful cute map. This is adorable. In these crafty building strategy simulation games, they accept more just handwaving jank. Like, yeah, they just blow up. What? That that doesn't matter. They just disappear and they don't pay you money. What are you going to do about it? You like sorting packages. That's what this game's about. They just know what this game's about. And you can't get away with that if you're like I want to make a Dark Souls like a Dark Souls like you have to animate everything and it has to be perfect and if they're not people going to be like controls are janky otherwise management game this

look those packages can just appear and look it's kind of it kind of janks out here doesn't matter this game is doing gang busters awesome and look at this look it doesn't matter look at this dialogue It's like clipping through. Why is it on graph paper? Why? I can't even see this cat. Okay, I brought something to ship. I'm going to do this one and then I'm going to call it a day. Um, but what I'm trying to say is there's so much creativity that is not being done. Like we keep going back to if you're a good artist. So many artists I see, they just want to make great art. They're just like, "I love I [music] want to make a cute cat village, a society of cats." And they're like, they've got such great character design and all that stuff. And they're like, "Okay, well, I want to make a game starring a Society of Cats." And they're like, um, I'm going to [music] make the Society of Cats. And what they do is they just make

a Metroid Vania, and you have to come up combat, but you're a peaceful, wholesome game, and you don't want to do combat, but you figure it out. you're like, well, he actually uses magic and you have to [music] do all this stuff. Whereas, if you make I don't know what that sign means. Don't do it. I don't know. Maybe that means I don't need to do anything. Um whereas these management games, they I feel like they better if you want to make a cool immersive world. They're more immersive because I'm working in this world. I'm not going on a quest to defeat things. And this defeats the what do they call it? Ludo narrative dissonance. Like I'm a cute cat society. So, why are you butchering animals by the thousands? There's no butchering. I'm just living this cute cat world. So, if you've always wanted to make a cat cute cat game, don't make an RPG starring cats where you have to figure out why is this cat killing so many people. You can just make a a simulation job game where maybe they're running a cute cat library and you have to sort cat books. That's another variation of the genres. There's a cat or there's library book games where you

have to to service customers bring library books and you have to file the library books away. I can't remember the name of it, but it was big. Um, okay. We got a Port Windy two stamper. Okay. Um, let's do a Port Windy. Let's rotate [music] this. Let Let me do a do a decent job. I haven't used a sailboat yet. Um, two stamper. Boom. And let's see. Was one of these? It said 0x. I think that just means nothing's wrong with it. I think that's what that 0x meant. So, let's put in our outgoing box over here. And so, that's what I'm I'm just I know your first impression was like, well, I've always wanted to make a, you know, Metroid Vania. That's my dream game. And it's like and I know it's like, well, [music] I don't like that type of game. There's so much fun that you can have. You don't have to make a straight up knockoff here. You can do create I can't weigh

this one. I guess it's just super heavy. Oh, I got to use the big scale. See, they don't tell you this stuff. You just figure out this is good game design. This is this is fun. Notice they didn't tutorialize that. That's the other thing I think that made this game faster to develop. They didn't they don't have to overtutorialize. And this is what I want to teach you all. You're overtutorializing. Very limited tutorials. Just a few pop-ups like behind me. You didn't see as much. And that pop-up thing, I can't point at it, but it was way at the top of the screen and dropped down. Between all that, they were just like, "We don't need to tutorialize that. You can do it." Oh, that doesn't fit. Oh, yeah. I did see that big scale over there. Okay, so we got a three, which is a four. Again, this cat system, these cats, why not one stamp a kilogram? I don't know why. Don't know why those cats can't figure out the system. Guy pre-stamped it. Good for them. I don't know what the flowers mean, but way to go, Luca L. Oops, I threw it instead of did that. And there's just so much you can do

that's just left on the table. You should do just do it. Uh there's so many genres that I know they're not your dream game, but there's so much like this game is so cute and so smart and they brought this to a genre that doesn't typically see this kind of hair. So what I'm begging you [music] artists, if you're an artist and you're like, "Well, I want to make a Metroid Vania starring cats." It's like, you could do so much better if you made like a simulation game [music] starring cats. And that's all this stuff. It's not organized. Want to push buttons cuz it's fun. So [music] that's what I'm saying. I know. Oh, let me finish this guy's job. Let me finish this guy's job. He put so much out here. Udo J. This guy is busy. Where's it still? I assume Port Windy. Didn't label it, but all the Oh, poor Wendy. What you got? We got a big purple uh six banger. [music]

See, the dialogue, the action is [music] basically the same for all these packages, but I'm still having a good time. This is fun. Like, this is what you don't have to like with those um quest like an RPG, you have to come up with so many unique quests. This game is just like this is people love it and stuff. Like look at the sales of this game. Like people are content just working a cool little job like this in a cat in cat land. Um report Windy. Let's see what you got here. How much you wait? Oh, I didn't I forgot to put that game through the scanner. Nothing to do. I forgot to put that other game. See, I would be terrible at this job if they if I was in real life. It's good thing I work in a society where money doesn't matter cuz [music] uh I would I would be fired. But see, uh, in social system, you can be sucking at your job in this. They just let you

stick around. All right. Uh, let's do this. Four. One, two, three, four. And, uh, let's do this. Port Windy. Right on the back. This was going to Portland, I assume. Right. Well, I assume Mario Marlo because Marlo Thomas. Is that going to Marlo Thomas? Um, I assume so. You didn't write it on there, but not my problem. I don't get paid for this job. Uh, one more. I think we got one more. Um, where was that? Was that I swear. Oh, maybe it was. I'm terrible at this job. This why you get a a clean shop. A clean ship as a safe ship. This place is not clean. But you don't want to watch me clean this stuff. I should probably scan [music] this just to see what happens if I don't. Let's try this. Let's Let's see how their game design is. [music] I am not going to say anything about it.

Let's see what happens. How many more do I have to do? [music] I don't know how many more people I have to do tonight. I'm just going to scan. I want to see what the penalties are in a society where cash doesn't [music] matter. Bring it. What's your penalties? Um, not paid enough to care. Sorry. Did I do this one, too? Let's do it anyway. Let's go to Port Windy. How many stamps? This is one. Three stamps. Is it actually a three stamper? Some stamp. Manhandling these packages. Throwing them on the ground. Let's go. Three. One more. One more on there. Let's put that in the port windy pile. So, see, I have filled an hour. It's like an hour. An hour. You need to be working on games. What are you doing watching this? I got to stop doing this. Uh, let me finish this one. Let me just see if I think it's done for the night. Um, but see how much content an hour's worth of content out of

not much. I mean, yes, there's a lot of game development to like set all this up, but to expand P once you set up the system, it's a lot of like, well, this package has this, and it's all just randomly generated variables in metadata. And so adding additional content comes from metadata, not from you having to write this story about the ogre who's stealing cows from the thing. Cuz you can't just keep repeating like swapping out, oh, it's a for whatever RPGs, you're not allowed to say like you just go around the countryside and he's like, I'm missing five chickens and I lost them in the cave. And you just wander around the countryside doing these side quests. You can't. [music] you have to write an RPG expects a story behind every single quest that you go on. Whereas this one's like, "Hey, got a sticker of a paw on it. I need you to find it." And all you have to do is randomly generate a package somewhere in there and it says, and randomly attach a

paw sticker on there and then randomly have a person show up and say, "I need a sticker, a package with a paw on it." You see how [music] content scales? And it's not to say you can't be creative cuz you could, this would be, you could put a whole second narrative. That Order 13 game that I show, they put a whole narrative layer on it. You can still add some narrative stuff. All I'm saying is you can get a lot more content out of your game and your gameplay can go a lot longer. I mean, and here's the other thing. Here's the final thing. People are always suspicious about their demos. They're like, "But if I put out my demo, people will play it and then they won't want my game." This game has the demo up right now. You can you can play this demo right now. I'm having a blast. I would play this again forever. I want to still I want I want to sort these packages, but I know it would hurt my numbers on YouTube. YouTube sucks. Um, but that's still fun and I would still buy the full game. And a lot of people did. And these people who made the cat game kept their demo up post launch cuz

they're so confident people played. And this was one of the most top 50 played demos at Steam NextFest. and it launched a few weeks later and people still bought it. These kind of games where it's not based on a story, it's based on fun stuff that you do like, oh, I get to sort this for Port Windy. Oh boy, that is fun. And people will do it. I should really make this the Port Windy cuz it turns out that the guy was this. See how fun this is? And I bet, look, look at all these other Oh, Halloween Town. I want to go to Halloween Town so bad. I'm going to buy this game so I can go to Halloween Town. town. I want to ship packages to Halloween Town. And you could do this like um and here's my my general advice. Don't mix genres. Okay, we'll talk about this will be my final thing. I [music] don't think mixing genres is good. Like I don't think people always like, "Oh, it's a it's like a packing simulator and tower defense game. It's like a a tower def. It's a packing simulator in a in a firsterson shooter. like I have to shoot and I have to go explore and it's a you

know it's this and they mix genres and it never works because those genres have a very taste. The person who likes this just wants a nice common game. You can you can listen to a podcast. I'm able to do a whole video while I'm doing this. They just want to listen to a podcast and sort packages. That's their [music] jam. And when you mix a genre, you're throwing a different type of jam in there and they're like, "What? Now I have to fight monsters and I have to shoot and I just want to [music] sort packages. And so indies get too creative with the mixing of genres. Instead, I think a better thing is you mix themes. So it's not quite I know it's slightly a different genre, but horror works well. Like you can put a horror veneer like order 13 and you could do a different horror veneer on this one. Maybe they did it one way. Maybe do a different one. You could also do a spooky horror, but still wholesome. Like you work in a a vampire male thing and it's you have to deal with blood and it you have to put the stamp that matches

the blood type of the blood that is brought in and you're serving um vampires that show up or zombie mail or something. And but you're it's that same gameplay loop of somebody comes up, they have a package, you got to sort through this, you can put them away. The theming is different. You could do medieval times. Maybe you're a medieval courier and people show up and they're like, "Here's my sword. Oh, I have a seven keys of Vtusler. Seven of them arrived. Go find them." And you go into here and you find all seven keys and you put them back and you give her back the seven keys of Vamptus. See, what you do is it's the same basic gameplay. You're not mixing genres. You're [music] mixing themes and you're bringing in different themes. And World War II, that would be very dramatic. like it's bombing and you're and you're in the siege, the the London siege, and like the bombs are coming down and it's still the same thing like, "Oh my gosh, my my boy from the front line is sending a package. I need it." And maybe you and it's it's

chaotic and it's World War II themed and there's the music playing as, you know, Skittlebop music. Skilly bop. But see that it's the gameplay has to be that thing. And I think indies tripped themselves up when they mix genres instead [music] of mixing themes. And that's what you got to do. And these people did fantastic. They mixed the themes. They did an excellent job. It's basically a job simulator. If you play some of those other postage simulator ones, it's basically the same gameplay loops. It's just they put a veneer of cats on it and now they probably can quit their jobs if they had them. [music] So I just I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Hey, I just I really want you to quit your boring job. I just want you to and you can make whatever. If you make a million dollars off a game like this, you can make the the most unprofitable Metroid Vania the world has ever seen. That is your dream game. I give you full permission. I just want you to earn enough to quit your stupid job so you can go make that dream Metroid Vania.

So, just make a game of the cat first. Look at that. I really want to spin that. Really want to spin that letter thing. That is so cute. You just see how far this could go. You could go like8s style and girls that look like Cindy Lopper show up or Boy George. That'd be so fun. Oh, and you work in the mall mail room and it's just like Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Oh my god, that all free ideas. You can just do them. Okay, anyway. Goodbye. Don't watch anymore. Oh. Um, don't forget almost forgot. I was just making a mental note not to forget. Uh the um live stream is tomorrow. If you're watching this in the future, you missed it. Sorry. But tomorrow live stream answering Q&A about this, about Steam NextFest, about AI slop. I'll answer the questions. It's the last day of my sale. Um all this stuff is there. It's fun. I think you're going to enjoy it. It's going to be great.