A trailer has been unveiled at the Tokyo Game Show for a new video game that has been produced by a Cornish developer.

Jamie White, the founder of game developers Kittens in Timespace, is an active member of the Cornish games industry and represents Cornwall Games, an organisation embodying the local gaming community.

He and his publisher Megabit have recently unveiled a trailer for their new game CLAWPUNK at the Tokyo Game Show, one of the largest gaming events of the year.

Speaking to the Voice about having his product shown to thousands of gamers at the show, Jamie said: “It’s a very surreal experience! When I first learned that this was the plan, I was very excited. But once the event started, I felt my heart rate accelerating with anticipation.

“We know that gamers can sometimes be fickle, brutal at times, so I was keeping a close eye on the comments the whole time. But overall the response has been very positive and it was really nice to see a spamming of heart emojis when the trailer aired!”

CLAWPUNK is a game that features plenty of chaos and cats. It is a pulse-pounding, melee-focused 2D action game infused with roguelite elements and an array of cat characters.

The new game allows players to tear through a fully destructible environment where every smash and bash rewards your reactive and aggressive play style. Players must aim for the highest score possible by laying to waste everything in their path.

Jamie, who lives in Helston, adds: “CLAWPUNK began as nothing more than three friends getting together to make a game, back in 2016. We liked games about causing destruction and generally being a menace, so we came up with this idea of having multiple cat characters running rampant in a destructible environment.

“We put that idea into a little demo, but then we had to focus on our jobs, families and other priorities. It wasn’t until 2020 when it started to grow into a proper game, and then it was just a case of persevering through many years of setbacks, adapting to the rapid evolution of the games industry, and ultimately coming close to giving up as the market became increasingly difficult to navigate.

“But right at the last second, we found our publishing partner in Megabit, who gave us the opportunity we would go on to cherish for a long time.”

From the point of getting his first games console one Christmas, Jamie, who has lived in Cornwall since 2001, always wanted to pursue a career in gaming.

He fell into a postgraduate degree and remained in academia by starting a teaching career, going on to lead the gaming course at Falmouth University. But the itch to make his own games never, ever went away.

After growing frustrated at game development being nothing more than a hobby, Jamie felt that it was now or never to pursue it as a career. He took the plunge and quit his job to focus fully on Kittens in Timespace, the indie games studio he founded. Jamie also travels around the country with Cornish Games to support their presence at major gaming events.

Speaking about working locally, he adds: “Cornwall is a very special place to me and there is nothing like crossing that border, either by car or by train, to that sense of home.

“It is important to me that Cornwall remains a viable place for people to create games – to fight back against it being known as the poorest county in the UK and to show it’s a place where you can do business, where you can have a career if you know where to look.

“This is where the idea behind Cornwall Games comes from. We have some big, established games studios here, with plenty of successes we need to celebrate. There are plenty more people who want to spend their lives and careers here, but feel they have to move to one of the other big industry hubs in order to progress.

“My co-director Katie Goode, of Triangular Pixels, and I are working hard with Cornwall Games to push the message that Cornwall has great potential as a games industry hub. She is doing wonders fighting for things like grants, and making the political case for the area.”

CLAWPUNK will be available on PC, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 when it is launched on November 14.