Who We Are
About Alleycat
What Alleycat is and why we build what we build
Alleycat is an open source platform for in-person play. Our flagship deployment is a cyberpunk bounty-hunting LARP at Neotropolis: hunters and bounties meet in the field, duel on Portable Data Nodes, and climb leaderboards while the fiction gives them a reason to talk.
Each year, hundreds of players pick up custom hardware we design and build in-house. The devices handle timing, scoring, and fairness so people can focus on each other.
The gadgets get attention. The game gives strangers a prompt. The community keeps showing up after the city comes down.
Read how we think about the work for the principles behind the hardware and the game.
Built by Makers
We're volunteers, makers, and friends who build the PDNs, firmware, Mission Control, props, and field ops that make the week work. It started with one question:
"Wouldn't it be cool if...?"
We prototype on ESP32 boards, test in the Mojave Desert, break things in the field, and ship fixes for the next season. Schematics, firmware, and game logic live in the open: you can fork the stack, run your own deployment, or contribute back to what Neotropolis stress-tests every year.
If you like taking things apart, soldering at odd hours, or building something because it ought to exist, you'll find people here who speak that language.