Ludography
Rat Chaos cover

2012 · Adventure · Science

Rat Chaos

Rat Chaos is a 2012 stream of consciousness art and browser game created by Winter Lake.

Released
2012
Platforms
Browser
Genres
AdventureScience
Developers
—
Publishers
—
Perspective
Text
Engine
Twine
›Story

A spaceship captain chooses between going about their daily routine or "unleashing rat chaos."

Keywords

  • interactive fiction
  • rats
  • rat

Media

Rat Chaos screenshot 1

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Story

A spaceship captain chooses between going about their daily routine or "unleashing rat chaos."

Development

While learning the software Twine, author Winter Lake made the game "in a couple hours" on July 18, 2012. Originally, the game was available via Winter Lake's website monster killers. The game disappeared for a number of years with copies only available on saved hard drives. Rock, Paper, Shotgun contributor Robert Yang made it available again on his personal website.

Reception

In 2012, IndieGames.com's Konstantinos Dimopoulos described Rat Chaos as "weird, sports a really odd use of the English language, will make you both laugh and wonder, features some interesting drawings and was created with Twine." Free Indie Games's Porpentine said it was "the funniest Twine game I've ever played, and the most human." Interactive fiction (IF) writer Emily Short critiqued it as "a very short Twine piece" that "plays with agency not in the usual ways [...] explores the idea of surface agency as a distraction."

In 2013, Rat Chaos character New Rat City won the XYZZY Award for Best Individual NPC in 2012. Jenni Polodna reviewed the character: "New Rat City is a personal statement. New Rat City is a tuning fork for all of our weird-kid mitochondria, which, if you squint, might or might not be covered in little rat faces trying to look normal. This might or might not be how you were able to unleash all that rat chaos." Comics & Gaming Magazine's Reid McCarter called it "a surrealist adventure."

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

Releases by platform
PlatformReleasedRegions
Browser18 July 2012Worldwide

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Players

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.