Catnip Games · Design Proposals

Each proposal below is a full write-up of an idea we are considering: what exists today, what other games taught us, and what we could build. Every page has a comment box at the bottom that needs no account. Telling us which parts matter to you changes what gets built first.

• Player Dungeons Deep Dive: 25 Proposals
  August 4, 2026. Player-built dungeons reviewed against every serious attempt the genre has made: Neverwinter Nights' immortal persistent worlds, City of Heroes' farm meltdown, EverQuest 2's twice-dead Dungeon Maker, the Foundry's shutdown, Mario Maker's clear-check, and the RuneScape house dungeons that have run untouched for twenty years. Our system is deeper than most players know, and almost nobody visits it: no way to find a dungeon, no reason to enter one, no record that anyone ever did, no map, no traps, and blueprint drops that gate the front door. Twenty-five proposals: publish your dungeon by beating it yourself, an entrance plaque with first clears and record times, a Delve Board directory, an owner-staked prize chest, pressure plates and dart walls, a live dungeon map, new creature families, bookseller blueprints, monthly build jams, and a Dungeon Master mode where the owner runs the night. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Player-Owned Towns Deep Dive: 24 Proposals
  August 4, 2026. Player-owned towns reviewed against Star Wars Galaxies' player cities and twenty-five years of settlement games since. We sold town ownership around 440 times and delivered the deed; the town game never shipped. Governing happens in a lot sign's right-click menu and three slash commands, no list of towns exists anywhere in game, and a town on day 1,000 plays identically to day 1. Twenty-four proposals: a governor's console, a message of the day with an arrival welcome, a town directory sorted by who is actually home, a placeable town crier who speaks your message aloud, named townsfolk, district signposts, multi-destination town teleporters, town banners and citizen titles, lot applications, a donation board that upgrades the town square and never downgrades it, market row vendor stalls, and shipping the five finished bespoke town maps that currently ship to nobody. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Guilds & Guild Wars Deep Dive: 25 Proposals
  August 4, 2026. Guilds and guild wars reviewed against Ultima Online and twenty-eight years of games since. Our guilds have the 1997 half: a charter, a roster, a handshake war that flags you against the whole world. The genre built the rest, and this page proposes it: a guild vault with per-rank withdrawal caps, an activity log you can read in game, a guild finder with applications, alliances, negotiated war terms with counter-offers, war PvP scoped to your actual enemy, persistent war history with craftable victory plaques, mercenary enlistment, guild PvE hunts with a first-clear ledger, a quarterly ladder that resets, and each guild's own page on the web. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Home Decorating Deep Dive: 26 Proposals
  July 27, 2026. Home decorating reviewed against Ultima Online and every housing game since, built on a fresh read of roughly one hundred decoration threads from our own forums. The engine is generous: free transforms, deep nesting, per-item permissions ahead of the genre. The tools are not: no undo, no multi-select, meters without numbers, failures that flash red without saying why, and an edit mode whose keybind ships unbound. Twenty-six proposals: placement denials that speak, an undo stack, marquee multi-select, copy transform and eyedropper, magnet snap, a free placement mode, a decorator camera, decoration layouts with seasonal layout slots, batch permissions, bigger access lists, deco NPC patrol routes, and a decoration limit raise priced in telemetry instead of hope. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Death Magic Deep Dive: 18 Proposals
  July 27, 2026. The school of the grave reviewed against Ultima Online's own 2003 necromancy retrofit and the necromancers the genre built since. The school is at its weakest in a crypt: undead heavily resist it, its drains refuse to feed on the dead, and the Lich costs six times normal experience without earning it. The audit found much of the missing school already in the game's files, wired to stats nothing grants and a fourth summon nobody can see. Eighteen proposals: a resist strip that works for everyone, an anti-undead passive, the missing death weapon enchant, corpse-fed sustain, the Skeleton Mage fielded, summon feeding and death detonations, a corpse economy with printed rate caps, and nine audit bugs filed the same day. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Earth Magic Deep Dive: 22 Proposals
  July 27, 2026. The Earth school reviewed against Ultima and the games that gave stone a job. Earth today is three buffs on a melee bar: the community's mage-build threads do not mention it, and its one terrain spell was cut before launch while its skill identifier still sits in the game data. Twenty-two proposals: Stone Wall returns as a placed destructible wall, Earthquake aims at the ground and spares your party, the elemental learns to hold the line and grows greater with specialization, armor becomes plates you can spend, a stun bosses can respect, and eight audit bugs filed the same day. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Life Magic Deep Dive: 24 Proposals
  July 27, 2026. The healing school reviewed against Ultima Online and the healers the genre built since. In eighteen months of community threads, not one asks for anything from Life magic; this page argues that silence is the finding. Six of its nine spells restore hit points and differ only in dice, and the school owns zero glyph combos of its own. Twenty-four proposals: the broken ally-cycle key and five other repairs, overheal captured as a ward, a prevention line, heals that transform when stacked three high, the first Life and Life combo, a triage heal, the dormant Summon Ankh shipped as a placeable healing totem, resurrection that restores death decay, and three open questions for your vote, including healing outside the party. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Fire Magic Deep Dive: 24 Proposals
  July 27, 2026. The Fire school reviewed against Ultima Online and twenty-five years of fire design since. Fire is the strongest elemental school in our own audit, and this page asks for no more damage. It asks for depth: burning becomes a state you can see and count, a new Combust spell detonates it, the school's hidden Fireboost bonus becomes earnable in play, every fire glyph gets a combo, Ignite Weapon joins Frost and Shock on equal footing, fire resistance gets one honest rule, and burns finally do real work against the undead. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Taming Deep Dive: 28 Proposals
  July 26, 2026. Taming and pet combat reviewed against Ultima Online and the pet classes that followed, ending in twenty-eight proposed changes built on one deal: less pet power that plays itself, more power in the handler's hands. A pet ability bar on your hotbar, real stances with tradeoffs, send and guard commands, a revived Veterinarian, sidegrade pet gear, rare tames, a Bond system, and an open look at the rebalance math, including the level cap bug fix. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• The Enhancement Chain: 18 Proposals
  July 26, 2026. Masterwork, enchantment, the exceptional roll and the socket, audited as one system, because armor and weapons share every part of it. The finding that runs through the page: maximum durability is not a condition meter, it is the enhancement budget, and it is invisible. A crafted one-handed weapon can absorb five failures in its whole life. Eighteen proposals: the full odds ladder, the budget shown as a budget, a planner, an effect browser, failures that pay forward, a guaranteed lane, a safeguard reagent, catalyst-steered rolls, scar restoration, and the chain's missing verb, taking an effect back off. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Weapons Deep Dive: 13 Proposals
  July 26, 2026. The twenty-four craftable weapons measured against Ultima Online and the genre since. A Grand Master enchanting a bow, a crossbow or a shield is offered three choices from eleven, and all eleven are attributes whichever gem is burned. Both archery enchants in the game are fitted to swords. Forty-eight unique weapon parts ship with their bonuses written and no recipe makes any of them. Thirteen proposals: real gem pools for ranged weapons and shields, bows and crossbows told apart, the unique component tier, honest damage numbers, a throughput readout, and a maker's mark that means something. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Armor Deep Dive: 7 Proposals
  July 26, 2026. Armor reviewed against Ultima Online and eight games since. The worn suit under-reports itself three separate ways: no set-bonus readout, an invisible cliff where a broken piece protects for nothing, and no per-piece breakdown. Seven proposals covering the set module, the broken-piece cliff, per-piece defense, cloaks that inherit their materials, and a balance changeset that finishes the matched-suit bonus the game already computes and throws away. The shared masterwork and enchantment bench is covered on the enhancement chain page. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Alchemy Deep Dive: 28 Proposals
  July 26, 2026. Potions, food, and brews audited for power and cost against the shipping game data, compared with Ultima Online and seven games since, ending in fourteen proposed improvements and fourteen new consumables in full detail: exceptional potions, an alchemist's jewelry enchant, weapon oils, gathering draughts, a daily study tonic, a potion cask, and more. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Crafting Deep Dive: 22 Proposals
  July 26, 2026. The crafting station and recipe book reviewed against Ultima Online and the games that refined crafting since, ending in twenty-two proposed improvements with mockups: instant recipe matching, Craft Again and Make Max, a batch queue, ingredient search, a shopping-list breakdown, bulk salvage, and more. Every proposal has its own comment thread and vote arrows.
• Inventory Deep Dive: 16 Proposals
  July 26, 2026. The inventory system reviewed against Ultima Online and the modern games that solved bag management, ending in sixteen proposed improvements with mockups: attribute search, a column picker, quick deposit, junk marking, container colour tags, and more. Open for comment.