Calico is a community sim game released in 2020. The game revolves around the player running a cat café on a magical island. There, they can make food, buy decorations and furniture for the café and their garden, collect various animals for their café, and complete quests for the various NPCs, unlocking food recipes, clothing customization options, and access to various parts of the island.
Has no relation to Quilts & Cats of Calico despite both of them involving cats.
Calico contains examples of:
- All Animals Are Domesticated: Wild animals like bears and foxes are just as friendly as cats and dogs, and will happily receive pets and join your café. Justified in that the island's magic makes them friendly.
- Amazing Technicolour Wildlife:
- The Forest Spirit Cat is a massive, sparkly, rainbow cat.
- One potion allows the player to turn an animal purple, along with giving it a flower crown.
- The Witching Wood is home to a cat with fur that looks like a sparkling galaxy, and another that projects a small area of inverted colors around itself (amusingly, with the aid of the color-inverting potion, this cat can become the only normal-looking animal). There is also a calico cat in the city that has constantly-shifting patterns in its fur.
- One of the citizens, Ash, accidentally cast a spell on a rabbit attempting to turn it into a rainbow-colored rabbit, thus invoking this trope. The spell went wrong, however, turning the one rabbit into seven rabbits, each one a different color. Which is still an example of this trope!
- Bonsai Forest: Averted. Trees are actually realistically tall, so much so that their dense canopy can make it difficult to see in the distance.
- Cave Behind the Falls: One of the waterfalls in Heart Village has a cave behind it.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Some of the animals include crows and a black cat which are just as friendly as the others. Additionally, the player has the option to make their character a goth using character customization and/or decorate their café entirely in Spooky type decor. None of this prevents them from making food, allowing the other characters to pet cute animals, and doing quests for the NPCs.
- Forest of Perpetual Autumn: The Golden Grove, a forest area with orange trees and plenty of leaves on the ground.
- Glowing Flora: The colorful mushrooms in the Witching Woods start glowing when you get near them during nighttime.
- Horse of a Different Color: You can ride any animal that's big enough. Smaller animals can even be made big enough to ride with the Big Small Potion.
- Huge Rider, Tiny Mount: A downplayed version. While animals have to be in "big" mode to be ridden, there is a cat on the island (appropriately named "Tiny") that is the size of a young kitten despite apparently being full-grown. When given the potion to make it big, it is the smallest ride-able animal, with the player character's feet brushing the ground while on the cat's back.
- In-Universe Game Clock: The game changes between day and night, with separate songs for each area's daytime and nighttime.
- Invisible Wall: While you can freely go anywhere, you can't leave the island itself. Even after you've earned the ability to fly, invisible walls prevent you from flying over the ocean.
- It's Always Spring: Heart Village features cherry trees in perpetual bloom.
- Iyashikei: The game takes place in a tame world with no conflict, no ability to get hurt in any way, and totally passive, friendly animals that players can ride, pick up and carry, or even wear as a hat.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Blossom and Sunny, the lesbian couple living in Heart Village, are an extremely traditionally feminine couple.
- Magical Girl: Many of the characters, who indeed have magical powers. The game's tagline is "Magical girls running cat cafés!"
- Mega Neko:
- The same giant cat blocks your way on two separate occasions - first covering the entrance to a hollow tree trunk leading to the Golden Grove, and later blocking the path to the Witching Woods area.
- There's also the Forest Spirit Cat, a huge cat glowing in rainbow colors.
- On a more downplayed note, you can make any cat big enough to ride on with the Big Small Potion.
- Mini-Game: After a major update in January 2023, the cooking system was completely overhauled and transformed into a well over a dozen minigames depending on what you're cooking. These include games such as bouncing on cupcakes with a pogo stick to decorate them, playing pool/billiards with sugar, and collecting ingredients in a bowl.
- No Antagonist: The game has no main antagonist or conflict, with the focus on just continuing to grow and manage your café.
- Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: One of the horses has the default name of Horsey... and not too far from this horse, you'll find another horse named Horsey 2: The Sequel.
- Patchwork Map: The world includes snowy mountains, an autumn forest, a forest of blooming cherry trees, a forest of giant mushrooms, and more, all right next to each other and reachable on the same altitude. Not only that, it's possible to stand on a very tall mountain and see at least four biomes at once!
- Punny Name: Captain Bara the capybara.
- Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: Level 4 on the scale. While the game's areas must be unlocked one after another in order to be able to visit them, they're all connected to each other and Heart Village at the center. Once all areas are unlocked, you can freely go to all of them, and you unlock the ability to fly!
