01 / The game
Trim a cat’s nails with a physical controller.
Hands Off My Paws is a cat nail-trimming game played with a physical controller. Players hold the restless paws forward and time each trim as the scissors move.
02 / Final demonstration
See the experience in action.
03 / My contribution
My work on the controller and tutorial.
My main contributions were work on the physical controller and implementation of the staged tutorial. Game design was shared across the team; paw controls and trimming were implemented collaboratively with the other programmers.
04 / System design
Demonstrate. Practice. Continue.
Interim players struggled to understand the controls and premise. We added a witch mentor, and I divided the tutorial into stages centered on individual mechanics.
Watch the demonstration
The witch demonstrates nail clipping, establishing what the player is trying to do and giving the task a story context.
Perform the action
Players practice the core controls. At key moments, gameplay pauses until they perform the specific action required to continue.
Play independently
The mentor leaves, and players apply the controls in the main game: hold the paws forward and time the moving scissors.
Witch mentor artwork from the team’s Unity assets. The final video above shows the physical controller and gameplay together.
05 / Playtest & iteration
Playtest findings and tutorial pacing.
In follow-up playtests, players completed core actions with less help and better understood the mechanics and story. They also felt the tutorial was a little slow.
Observed improvement
Players needed less assistance to perform the core actions.
Pacing tradeoff
We prioritized understanding before the main game. Tutorial speed remained an area to improve; separate team changes made the core game easier.