CleaNyan

Cleaning gone wrong: a cat thrown off its robot vacuum mid-match.
Vacuum. Charge. Blast. Collect dust, fill the gauge, send everything flying.
Mind the edge: fall off the floor and you drop all of your dust.
Choose your cat: five cats, each in several coats.
Your room is ready: share the invite code or QR code with friends.
A 12-chain blast: walls and furniture fly. Real gameplay.
Results: the winners line up on a cat tower.
Play with friends: up to 4 players by invite code. Friends Pass required.
LAST SPURT: the final minute doubles the gauge and the points.
App icon.
The lobby: eight cats eat and lounge before the match starts.
Real gameplay on iPhone, no device frame (LAST SPURT).
Real gameplay on iPhone, no device frame (a 12-chain blast).

It looks like a cat video. It plays like a brawl.

CleaNyan is a 3D party game for iPhone: eight cats ride robot vacuums around an office and fight over the dust on the floor.
I'm entering the Best Game Award and the RevenueCat Design Award.
Eight cats, one office, four-minute rounds. Pick from five cats, each in several coats. Two to four friends can play online, and CPU cats fill the empty seats.

Why I'm going for Best Game

I'm Tatsuki, a developer in Tokyo. I kept seeing cat memes on social media (in Japan we call them "neko memes"), especially cats riding robot vacuums. Cats are cute, but a little naughty, and they turn any room into chaos. I wanted to make that into a game.

I built CleaNyan to win this award, and I kept that goal in front of me the whole time. The easy version of this idea is a calm, cute cat game. I didn't want that. I kept the cats as real and as cute as I could, and I refused to make the chaos mild: a blast throws cats and furniture across the room, falling off the floor costs you all of your dust, and the last minute doubles the points. In one test match I led with 10,039 points with four seconds left, got knocked off, and finished with zero. That is the game I wanted to make.

It took me about five weeks on my own: the first prototype on August 25, version 1.0 on the App Store on September 28, and online play on September 29.

How to play

Pick your cat. Every cat starts on its own robot vacuum. Drive over dust to pick it up: dust is your score, and it also fills your gauge. When the gauge is full, fire a BLAST and send the cats and furniture near you flying. A cat knocked off the floor drops everything it was carrying where it fell and has to walk back. In the last minute, LAST SPURT doubles the gauge and the points.

The office breaks, too. Walls come down, chairs fly, and one piece of furniture hitting another can set off a chain that opens a new shortcut.

Why you play one more round

No two rounds go the same way. Furniture falls differently every time, chains open different paths, and one blast near the edge can change the leader. Nobody is safe until the timer hits zero, and whoever just lost everything always wants a rematch.

Playing with friends

Create a room, share the invite code or QR code, and up to four people play live. CPU cats fill the other seats. I've been playing it online with my friends, and it gets so messy that we can't stop laughing.

How it makes money, and why that fits a party game

Playing against CPU cats is free, with no ads and no tracking.
The Friends Pass is a one-time, non-consumable purchase ($2.99 base price). Pay once, no subscription. It only unlocks online matches with friends and never makes your cat stronger.
It runs on the RevenueCat Unity SDK (entitlement private_match_pass), and our server checks it with RevenueCat before a room opens, so the pass can't be faked on the device. Restore purchases is on the pass screen.
You pay for the moment you want to play with your friends, never for a way to win.

What I cared about

Smooth, even online and in total chaos. Heavy work is prepared ahead of time or done on the server, and phones only play back what the server sends, so the screen keeps moving while furniture flies.
A game you play with other people. Not a game only I would play. Invite codes, QR codes and CPU cats in the empty seats make it easy to pull your friends in.
Cats that feel like cats. I made many small scenes so you get attached to them. Before a match, the eight cats eat from their bowls and lounge on a sofa, a cat bed and a cat tower. The winners line up on a cat tower on the results screen. During LAST SPURT, a cat walks across the banner.

Note for judges

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cleanyan/id6813074713
CPU matches are free and work offline. No purchase needed.
Online play needs a Friends Pass for each player, and a private room needs at least two people, so it takes two iPhones and two Apple Accounts. Offer codes and steps are in the judges' field of this submission.
In the video, the Friends Pass purchase is at 0:57 and online play with a friend is at 1:06.

How I built it

Unity and the RevenueCat Unity SDK. Online matches run on a dedicated Photon Fusion server that starts on Edgegap in Tokyo when a room is created; only the server simulates the match. Rooms, invite codes and the pass check run on Firebase. The hardest parts: the first server died six seconds after start because a build setting stripped every shader, and early online play stuttered until I played back server snapshots at a steady delay. Version 1.1 was also rejected once for marketing-style screenshots; I replaced them with real gameplay and it was approved the same day.

Since launch and what's next

Version 1.1.1 (September 30) made riding a vacuum 1.4 times faster, after watching how people actually play. Next: a running score across rounds in the same room, and a leaderboard just for your friends.

CleaNyan is not just a cute cat game. I'm proud to share it. If you like cats or enjoy a good brawl, please give it a try.