Bake450 gives “cat breading” meme lovers their own iOS game

Cute cats are one of the biggest memes on the Internet. So mobile gaming startup Bake450 figured that cat lovers should get an iPhone game all to themselves.

The San Francisco studio has launched its Pokémon-inspired debut title, Bread Kittens, on iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, iPod touch) devices. It’s a mashup of cats and bread, which has inexplicably become a popular meme online.

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In this “cat battle” game, you journey into the land of Catlandia. The evil ChowCorp brainwashes innocent kittens and imprisons them. Your job is to save and collect as many kittens as you can. You “bread” the cats, which equates to baking delicious bread for your feline friends to wear in battles. The game has 60 unique cats, and you can choose from 24 different recipes in your bakery and create custom upgrades. You can put a different kind of bread on the cat’s head and share the pictures with your Facebook and Twitter friends.

The game is available now as a free-to-play title on the App Store. Bake450, headed by Ernie Pang, believes that mobile gamers are getting tired of dragons and monsters. They want something new, Pang says.

“If you can make the other person laugh, you have already won half the battle,” Pang said.

The release targets both the mostly male fans of Pokémon and the female players who like casual titles along with cat-and-bread memes. Pang (CEO) started Bake450 with co-founder and creative director Melody Wang, Juan Pablo Folco (iOS Architect), and Leandro Perez (iOS Architect). All had previously worked for Nextive, a social-gaming-technology provider. Pang said the team used its collective experience from watching other game companies and took the lessons to heart.

The company has eight employees. Rivals include CrowdStar, Gaia, and Mino Monsters. Bake450 is self-funded. Acquiring new consumers is a challenge, but the group says it benefited from getting featured on a worldwide basis by Apple just before the Thanksgiving holiday. Here’s a video of the game play below.

[Image credit: m5]