To hear Swery talk about The Good Life — whose inspirations include Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, aesthetic departures from the psychological thrillers and horror titles that influenced his earlier work — makes his dedication to the project no surprise. He told us that the game's emphasis on cats (which the protagonist, a New York-based photographer who moves to an English village suddenly besieged by a murder spell, can transform into) comes from his own love for the animal. He told us with a straight face that the game idea came to him after spontaneously buying 12 cats of his own, which ... we still find hard to believe. But Swery is nothing if not sincere about his quirks.



His hope is to create a game that juggles light and dark, tough puzzles and passive sidequests. Whether that bears out through Fig or not doesn't faze him, at least when he spoke to us.



”Everybody loves cats, right?" he said after admitting that White Owls has yet to drum up a contingency plan, should the project not hit its goal. ”And I want to make people happy. So I'm not going to let go of that."



The Good Life's funding campaign ends on Oct. 12.