Red Dot Rising

You are the night keeper of NEKO-9, a cat cafe stacked three floors up a narrow atrium in a rain-soaked neon city. The building's three cats only move for one thing.

Your laser pointer is your only tool, and it is a real one: a hot red beam that overheats if you hold it, and that lands a dot every cat in the room will chase. Get MISO, SUMI and YUKI up the tower and asleep in the rooftop loft bed before sunrise, or the morning shift finds them awake.

First person. One tall room. One night, ten minutes long.

How to play

Park the dot where you want a cat to be. Any cat that can see it runs at it.

Let the trigger GO to plant one. A cat standing on the dot when the beam goes out settles there and holds the spot for a good while. That is the whole trick: plant a cat on one pressure plate, then walk over and work the next one. If the pointer cuts out from heat instead, the cat only pauses, so plant it on purpose.

Hold the plates a floor needs and the lift wakes. The Lobby needs both of its plates held at once. The Library needs its one. Each floor you earn opens the gate over the next landing.

Ride up with the cats. Step onto the cage and hold the dot on the deck beside your own feet. Three cats running at a red dot on the cage floor is how they get aboard. The whistle calls the cats on your floor over to you, and the cage holds its doors while one is still walking.

Floor 2, the Library. The plate sits inside a glazed reading room you cannot walk into. There is a cat door at the foot of the glass and a mirror on a pivot by the west wall. Thread the beam through the low gap, or swing the mirror round and bounce it in.

Floor 3, the roof. The heavy plate takes more than one light cat. SUMI is the one that weighs enough. Hold it and the loft bed's canopy unlatches. Put the dot on the mattress and the cats climb in.

Three cats asleep before the dawn meter fills. The clock starts on your first shot.

Controls

Action	Mouse + keyboard	Touch	Controller
Move	WASD	left stick	left stick
Look / aim	mouse	drag the right of the screen	right stick
Laser (hold)	left mouse button	LASER button	right trigger
Whistle	Q	WHISTLE button	left trigger
Interact (the mirror)	E	INTERACT button	X / Square
Sprint	Shift	SPRINT button	left stick click
Pause	Escape	menu pip	Start
Menus	arrows, Enter, Escape	tap	d-pad, A, B

The HOW TO PLAY card in the game shows this same table for whichever device you are holding.

The cats

• MISO — lanky marmalade tabby, tail up, fastest of the three.
• SUMI — round, heavy, blue-black in a white shirt-front. Slow, and the only cat that weighs enough for the roof plate.
• YUKI — small, white, all leg. Reaches shelves the others cannot.

Worth seeing

The opening drops you down the face of the NEKO-9 sign in the rain before it hands you your own eyes. The beam reads as a red line through the fog in the lift shaft, and it is the only red thing in the building. Hoshi Okabe, who owns the place, talks to you over the intercom all night. Everything you hear — the rain, the neon hum, the score, the cats and Hoshi herself — was made for this world.