The Coffee Cats - Mia Ma, Lucas Speier, Qiuyan Chen

A cozy cat care game that calms through repetition. Merge puzzles fund your shelter cats' needs. Soft colors, gentle loops, zero pressure—designed as a meditative break for stressed minds.

Comment

Inspiration

We were inspired by repetitive games like 2048, which one of our teammates plays to de-stress. We realized these meditative loops aren't just fun—they're therapeutic. We wanted to create something similarly calming but with a nurturing twist: caring for shelter cats.

What it does

Coffee Cats is an idle care game where you adopt shelter cats and keep them happy by fulfilling their needs. To afford supplies, you complete merge puzzles that generate resources when your cats are thriving. The gentle, repetitive gameplay loop provides a low-stakes mental break.

How we built it

We started with a Figma mockup where we designed the UI and created all custom icons (in Illustrator). Then we brought it to life using React, translating our pastel aesthetic into an interactive experience.

Challenges we ran into

Converting our Figma designs to code was trickier than expected—we kept hitting snags with scaling and conversion factors between design and implementation. Getting the pixel-perfect aesthetic to translate properly took significant troubleshooting.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a fully playable game with custom art, mechanics, and a cohesive therapeutic vision in just 48 hours. We created something genuinely calming, not just conceptually but experientially.

What we learned

One teammate relearned Illustrator and Figma workflows, while we all discovered how to balance aesthetic consistency with technical constraints under tight deadlines.

What's next for Coffee Cats

More cats, more customization options, and polish! We want to expand the shelter, add cat personalities, and refine the merge mechanics to make the experience even more soothing.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates