Idle Cat Forest

A non-commercial forest colony game. Cats gather, carry, build, learn, rest and raise kittens while you decide how the village develops. Specialist officers gradually take over work that begins under manual control.

The game runs in Unity with a C# simulation and an Apple Silicon macOS application. The migration acceptance ledger records gameplay, save compatibility, native UI checks and measured performance.

Play on macOS

Install Unity Editor 6000.6.0f1 for Apple Silicon with Mac Build Support IL2CPP. Open the repository's unity folder in Unity Hub, open Assets/Scenes/Forest.unity, and press Play.

With Unity CLI 1.0.0-beta.6 installed:

bash tools/forest.sh open

To build the native application, close this project's Editor first:

bash tools/forest.sh build
open 'artifacts/macos/Idle Cat Forest.app'

The project pins Unity Pipeline 0.6.0-exp.1 and its package graph. The native build uses ARM64 IL2CPP. Browser and other native exports are not verified targets.

Controls

• WASD or arrows pan the management camera. Wheel, +/− keys and the on-screen buttons zoom. Right or middle drag grabs the world; Home centers the village.
• Click a cat or workplace to inspect it. The left navigation opens management tools, and Back returns from an inspector to its list.
• Use Build to extend a road from the shrine, then choose a clear building site beside it. Every new building needs an entrance on that connected road network. Cats carry the construction materials.
• Assign a worker and edit station or individual work queues in the workplace inspector.
• Research offers searchable cards and a dependency map for all 487 studies.
• Inspect a cat and press Tab to enter third-person control. WASD walks, right drag turns the camera, E interacts, and Tab returns to management. Inventory, needs and identity belong to the same authoritative cat throughout.
• Village creates a personal village, selects the Commons, saves locally or connects to a shared server. The other villages keep simulating.

Inventory marked with an asterisk is a physical Accountant report, which can be stale. The game does not pretend an unvisited pile has a fresh exact count. Action failures appear at the bottom of the window.

New villages have a centered 3×3 shrine, a road around it and four open gates. Existing saves keep their buildings, cats and progress. To try the revised founding layout without replacing a played world, launch with a separate, unused save path:

open -n 'artifacts/macos/Idle Cat Forest.app' --args --forest-save "$PWD/artifacts/playtest/world.json" --forest-seed 41

Reusing that path resumes its world. A seed applies only when creating a new save.

Shared world and saves

The local app embeds the same authority used by the server. Install .NET SDK 10.0.400 to run a separate shared world:

dotnet restore IdleCatForest.slnx --locked-mode
bash tools/forest.sh server

The default server listens on loopback at ws://127.0.0.1:8788/ws. The Village panel connects to it. Personal villages belong to signed identities; the communal village is shared. Remote connections require secure WebSockets except on loopback.

Local Unity saves are separate from the old game's data. Existing worlds are loaded, never replaced because loading failed. See the tested save and identity migration procedure before importing a maintained legacy SQLite world. Keep its original database, signer and identity files intact. Import writes a new destination.

Development and verification

dotnet build IdleCatForest.slnx --no-restore
bash tools/forest.sh server-test
dotnet run --project tools/scenarios/Forest.Scenarios.csproj
bash tools/forest.sh edit-test
bash tools/forest.sh play-test

Close this project's Editor before batch Unity tests. The development guide explains setup, inspection, build commands and isolated scenario saves. The testing guide explains focused checks, long campaigns, normal UI verification and performance evidence.

Game rules live in unity/Assets/Forest/Simulation, independently of Unity. The .NET host and scenarios compile that same source. Rendering and input live in Presentation; signed identity and persistence live in Authority. Read the architecture and game vision before changing behavior.

Most custom models were authored in Blender. Editable sources and reproducible FBX export, import and geometry checks are in source-art. No external AI service is required to play or test. Package and asset provenance is recorded in third-party sources.

The former TypeScript game is historical on archive/web-game. The Rust/Bevy implementation at the migration base remains available in Git history. A frozen Rust library and SQLite loader under tools/save-import/legacy support legacy import and catalog export; they are not another playable application.