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Comment by DizzyDoo | Hacker News Reader

I released a small computer puzzle game based on finite state automata called The Cat Machine[0] back in August, which still steadily sells copies, accompanied with bigger spikes when a Steam sale comes around. From what I hear, the 'long tail' after release goes on for some years, which I believe since back in 2009/2010 I wrote a number of Flash games and I still get a monthly Paypal of about $5 from them. Steam is a bit healthier than the Flash marketplace nowadays.

[0] http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900

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This is amazing and hilarious! Could you tell us a bit more about the process? Did you build this on your own? What did you use to make it run on so many platforms - Unity?

I made in just under 4 months of work, came from an idea I had at University when studying those classic finite state machine diagrams, where you effectively have to draw state machine diagrams that process a regex-like set of rules. I realised I was having fun solving these problems, and I reckoned with the right abstraction I could trick people into doing some basic Computer Science-y logic puzzles! Cats, it turns out, are really good for that!

All built on my own, with some music help from a friend of mine. Used Unity for ability to easily hit Windows, Mac and Linux. I'll probably get around to porting it to iOS and Android next year too, since feedback has been so strong on Steam, and there's a definite impulse-buy aspect to having lots of colourful cats riding around on trains.

The game looks interesting. How did you come up with the music in the trailer? I think it's really fitting. :)

Full credit to my friend Peter Nickalls (http://www.peternickalls.com), who composes music for TV shows that are far more impressive than my little game. The soundtrack he did for the game is fantastic, I'm glad we put together the soundtrack DLC.

I haven't had much time for video games lately, but I love your game. Glad to hear it's still bringing in money for you.

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