The game: Cat 'n Rat is a Halloween slot released on 13 October 2026 by GameArt, a Maltese slot studio that rates its volatility as very low. Its 3x3 grid carries five paylines.
The interview: Maria-Desislava Kostadinova Kasabova, GameArt's art director, explains how the game was made in an article dated 2 November 2026. After interviews given to affiliate websites, the studio now lets its own teams speak in its Inside the Studio series.
The balance: the backdrop brings the fear with a haunted house, a graveyard and a stormy sky. The characters and symbols defuse it with green, purple, blue and yellow neons.
The rat: Rancid Rat is a scrappy mutant that fell into toxic waste. Slime, a toxic glow and exaggerated proportions make it repulsive yet comic.
The cat: Dead Cat has piercing eyes and a mysterious air. Her skeleton version switches to cold blues and violets without losing her silhouette.
The bonus: a hidden room inspired by horror films hosts the Card Reveal Bonus. You pick one of five cards for 5 to 25 free spins, then a second reveal sets a multiplier of up to x20.
The base game: a counter draws a multiplier from x1 to x10 on every spin. When two reels fill with the same symbol without a win, they lock and the third reel spins again.
Real money: access depends on the licensing rules in your country. Kynox Casino's filters only show operators licensed where you connect from.
On 2 November 2026, two days after Halloween, GameArt published an interview that mentions neither business deals nor figures. Its art director explains how the team designed Cat 'n Rat, a Halloween slot released three weeks earlier. Everything revolves around a question many studios ask themselves every October. How do you give players the shivers without scaring them away?
At Kynox Casino, I go through her answers one by one, then I check them against the rules the studio publishes for this game. This is no art critic's indulgence. A slot's backdrop is never neutral: every colour and every change of room also tells you where to look.
What is Cat 'n Rat and what does the interview say?
GameArt's Cat 'n Rat slot came out on 13 October 2026, eighteen days before Halloween. The game runs on three reels and three rows, giving nine positions crossed by five paylines. The official game page sets it in a haunted Victorian manor and lists it among very low volatility games. Two characters chase each other there like in an old cartoon: the ghostly Dead Cat and the toxic Rancid Rat.
Behind the scenes, the floor goes to Maria-Desislava Kostadinova Kasabova, whom GameArt simply calls Desi. In an interview published on 2 November 2026 on the studio's website, the art director covers four topics: the balance between spooky and cute, the rat's personality, the cat's transformation and the bonus room. She ends with what pleases her most, the consistency of the whole world.
The schedule had been fixed since the summer. The Q4 roadmap, published on 3 September 2026, already placed Cat 'n Rat on 13 October. The game opened a run of six releases planned until 22 December. The rest of the studio's news, from tournaments to distribution deals, can be found in the articles about the Maltese studio published on Kynox Casino. The table below places the interview within that schedule.
Date
Milestone
What it adds
3 September 2026
Q4 roadmap
Cat 'n Rat announced for 13 October
13 October 2026
Game release
3x3 grid, five paylines, very low volatility
31 October 2026
Halloween
The date the theme aims at
2 November 2026
Inside the Studio interview
The visual choices explained by the art director
How do you make a Halloween slot spooky but cute?
For Cat 'n Rat, GameArt gave the fear to the backdrop and the humour to the characters. At the start, the internal description of the project fitted in one line: a Halloween game in a quirky and unsettling world, mixing cartoon energy with a slightly gross edge. The team aimed for a mood that was spooky, cute and playful at once.
According to its art director, this balance was one of the biggest challenges of the visual design. The background brings together a haunted house, twisted trees, a graveyard, a stormy sky and glowing pumpkins. The symbols, and especially the characters, are much brighter and more exaggerated. Bold neon colours (green, purple, blue and yellow) keep the mood lively instead of heavy.
Even what should disgust you goes through a cartoon filter: the slime on the frame and on the rat, the toxic waste, the dead fish.
Neon green, purple, blue and yellow, exaggerated proportions
Make the game fun
Gross details
Slime, toxic waste, dead fish
Keep a hint of disgust without darkening the game
This split is no accident. On a phone screen, the eye goes first to what shines. A dark background and saturated symbols therefore create a hierarchy: the backdrop sets the mood while the neons point to what pays. It works a bit like the carpet in a casino: nobody looks at it, yet it shapes the atmosphere of the whole floor.
I have seen enough pumpkins spin on reels since 2011 to welcome this choice. Too many haunted manors plunge everything into darkness, symbols included, and you end up hunting for your wins with a torch.
Why do the rat and the cat carry the game?
In Cat 'n Rat, both characters have a role in the gameplay: Dead Cat acts as the Wild and Rancid Rat becomes an expanding Wild during free spins. GameArt also argues that a strong character can carry the personality of a slot on its own. If the rat plays the scruffy high roller, the cat keeps a dealer's poker face.
A dirty and slightly ridiculous mutant rat
The rat became one of the team's favourite characters, says Maria-Desislava Kostadinova Kasabova. The starting idea was a scrappy mutant creature that had fallen into toxic waste. So the drawing had to make it look dirty and a touch ridiculous at the same time.
A neon-green toxic aura surrounds it at all times, with slime, goo and steam that accentuate its deformity. Its proportions are pushed to the extreme: huge ears, asymmetrical eyes, long fingers and messy fur. It is an old cartoon trick: exaggerate a feature and what would be repulsive in a realistic drawing becomes endearing.
A cat that goes from elegance to skeleton
The cat in Cat 'n Rat had to be recognisable at first glance, even before any animation. The idea of her transformation was in the GDD, the game design document, and the team adopted it straight away.
Before the transformation
In her normal state, the cat has piercing eyes, strong contrast and a more mysterious look than the rat. She embodies the clean and controlled side of the duo, without clashing with this unsettling world.
The skeleton version
The skeleton version allowed the team to push the Halloween theme further. The silhouette and overall expression are kept so that the character stays recognisable. Cold blues and violets, glowing outlines and an exposed skull make the transformation striking without plunging the game into darkness.
By the studio's own admission, the static symbol already worked. The animation mostly adds personality and a touch of magic, proof that drawing and motion complement each other. On the grid, one or two Dead Cats replace the missing symbols on a line; three Dead Cats in a row pay the highest Wild payout.
What is hidden in the Cat 'n Rat bonus room?
The Card Reveal Bonus in Cat 'n Rat takes place in a separate room with its own background. Maria-Desislava Kostadinova Kasabova insisted on not reusing the main backdrop. A change of setting tells the player, without a word, that something different is happening.
She wanted you to feel you had stepped into a small secret room inside the house seen in the background. Someone seems to have been brewing odd potions and spells in there. The idea came from horror films. A pentagram often appears on the floor, seen from above, and you get goosebumps knowing something is about to happen. She invites you to picture yourself sitting on the floor of that room while the cards appear one by one after your pick.
In gameplay terms, the bonus triggers when the whole screen fills with the same symbol, with Wilds or with a mix of both.
First reveal: you pick one card out of five and it reveals 5 to 25 free spins.
Second reveal: another card sets a multiplier of up to x20 for the whole feature.
In practice, a feature with an x5 multiplier turns a €0.40 line win into €2. Picking one card over another gives no advantage: the random number generator decides and the staging creates the thrill. The trick recalls a casino's private room: same game, different lighting, faster pulse. I find the idea smarter than it looks, because you know the game has changed state before you even read a number.
How does Cat 'n Rat play on its nine positions?
Cat 'n Rat combines a multiplier of x1 to x10 in the base game with 5 to 25 free spins in its bonus. GameArt publishes the rules, which I turn into worked examples here.
In the base game
On every base game spin, a multiplier counter turns and stops at random between x1 and x10. The value it lands on applies to the total win of the spin. Two winning lines paying €0.30 and €0.20 with the counter on x4 therefore return €2. On a losing spin, the counter obviously has nothing to multiply.
The Respin Feature takes over when two reels fill with matching symbols or Wilds without forming a winning combination. Those two reels stay locked and the third one spins again. Picture two columns of cheese and a third full of potions: no line pays, but the last reel gets a second chance. On paper, if this respin fills that column with cheese or Wilds too, the whole screen shows the same symbol. That is exactly what triggers the Card Reveal Bonus.
During the free spins
During the free spins, Rancid Rat steps in as an expanding Wild. When it lands on the third reel, it stretches over the whole column and stays stuck there for one more spin. It then replaces every other symbol. For those two spins, two matching symbols on the first two reels are enough to complete a line. The screenshot at the top of this article shows that case: the rat covers the third column and completes the middle row after two blue potions.
What does very low volatility change?
GameArt rates Cat 'n Rat as a very low volatility slot. Volatility describes how wins are spread: small frequent wins when it is low, rare but bigger wins when it is high. With nine positions and five paylines, expect a steady rhythm rather than thunderclaps. Very low volatility does not protect you from losses: it spreads them over time.
To judge Cat 'n Rat on the evidence rather than on its looks, three habits are enough:
Read the official page: the five paylines, the role of Dead Cat and the Card Reveal Bonus trigger are set out in black and white.
Check the volatility: very low here, it points to frequent but modest wins, however bright the neons.
Stay in control: a game this low in volatility makes sessions last longer, so watch the clock as closely as your balance.
None of these habits costs you a single cent.
What is this studio interview worth to a player?
The 2 November 2026 interview remains GameArt talking about its own game, signed by the person who led its visual design. It sheds light on design intentions, not on probabilities. I apply the same checklist I used for the interview with EuroGambling: what is claimed, what can be checked and what is just window dressing.
Here, the art director's statements match the official game page. The Card Reveal Bonus, the rat as an expanding Wild and the cat as a Wild all appear there. The GameArt interviews gathered in this blog's interviews section left more grey areas. This one remains promotional, but it does show how a backdrop sets up a reward.
That leaves the practical question. Whether you can play Cat 'n Rat for real money depends on where you live. Online casino gambling is fully legal in some countries, reserved for a state monopoly in others and banned elsewhere. GameArt holds a B2B licence from the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA/B2B/966/2022), which lets it supply games to operators but not take bets from players. A casino offering Cat 'n Rat therefore needs its own licence in your country. Kynox Casino follows the same logic: its casino filters are geolocated and only list operators licensed for the country you connect from.
FAQs:
Who designed the art direction of Cat 'n Rat?
It is the work of Maria-Desislava Kostadinova Kasabova, GameArt's art director. In the interview the studio published on 2 November 2026, she explains the contrast between a dark backdrop and neon characters. She also comes back to the rat, the cat and the bonus room.
When was Cat 'n Rat released?
The Maltese studio released it on 13 October 2026, in the run-up to Halloween. It already appeared in the Q4 roadmap published on 3 September, at the top of six releases.
How many reels and paylines does Cat 'n Rat have?
The game uses a grid of three reels by three rows, giving nine positions. Five paylines run across it. A line pays when three matching symbols land on it or when Wilds complete the combination.
How do you trigger the Cat 'n Rat bonus?
You need to fill the whole screen with the same symbol, with Wilds or with a mix of both. The Card Reveal Bonus then starts with a pick of one card out of five, which awards 5 to 25 free spins. A second card follows and sets the feature multiplier, up to x20.
What does the rat do during the Cat 'n Rat free spins?
Rancid Rat becomes an expanding Wild. If it lands on the third reel, it covers the whole reel and stays there for the next spin. It substitutes for every symbol, which makes winning lines easier during those two spins.
Is Cat 'n Rat a high volatility slot?
No. The studio gives it very low volatility, which suggests fairly frequent and modest wins. This profile guarantees no result: it simply spreads wins and losses differently.
Can you play Cat 'n Rat for real money?
Only at a casino licensed in your country, and only where online casino games are legal. GameArt supplies its games to operators under a Malta Gaming Authority B2B licence and does not take bets itself. Check your local regulator's list of licensed operators before you sign up anywhere.
