In the first part of this interview with Tariq Mukhttar, he talked about the indie game development scene in Saudi Arabia. His heavy involvement with the community doesn't prevent him from working on his own games, though, and this second part is about his game in development, A Cat's Manor. Due out in Q1 2017 on PC, with console and mobile releases to follow, the puzzle-heavy adventure game reached #8 in the Steam Greenlight rankings before being accepted.
While marketing his first breakout hit in the region, a game made in three weeks to capitalize on a football team's historic comeback, he encountered folks from Sony Saudi Arabia. They told him about Sony's annual Gamers Day convention and invited him to participate.

"I took it as a chance to learn a new game engine and programming language," says Mukhttar. Although the game was originally developed in the Unreal engine, he switched to the locally popular Unity so that he could promote discussion within his community and learn from others. "I developed a precursor to A Cat's Manor in two months, and the reception was very positive at the convention. The next two years were spent upgrading and improving the game."
The inspiration for the game sprung from Mukhttar's experience of living in a house with twenty-four cats. "Having the cat as a protagonist was a no brainer," he says. "Then the go-to genre for beginner gamedevs [is] platform games, so it was a natural fit. But then m...