GattoMagico by tanis

[raw]
made by tanis for LD35 (COMPO)
GattoMagico

You are a stray cat with super-powers!!
A horde of rats is chasing you and you must make your way through different levels and reach the end.
You can shapeshift between three different shapes:

- the fat ROUND cat, whose super power is being extremely goot at eating snacks!
- the SQUARE cat, able to shoot fishes at doors to bash them open
- the TRIANGLE cat, the fastest and fiercest of them all. He can freeze the rats tailing you!

How to play:
==========
LEFT / RIGHT to move your cat
Z to shapeshift (Z or A in the post-compo version)
X to use the special ability of your current form (X or S in the post-compo version)

ROUND = can eat snacks for energy
TRIANGLE = can freeze enemies
SQUARE = can fire to open doors

Press SPACE to make your choices in the menu screens.


Updates
=========

2016/04/20
-------------
- Added A and S as alternative keys for shape-shifting and using the special ability.
- "CONTINUE" is the default menu choice.
- Added tracking of high score and top level.
- Your progress is now being saved so that you can play from where you left last time you played.

Ratings

Coolness 68% 3
Overall 3.00 636
Audio 3.24 227
Fun 2.94 592
Graphics 2.77 593
Humor 2.94 209
Innovation 2.56 780
Mood 2.76 570
Theme 3.32 493

Feedback

Aaranos
18. Apr 2016 · 18:58 UTC
A bit hectic on a few of the levels but it's an interesting game.
shadowforce768
18. Apr 2016 · 19:02 UTC
I enjoyed the intensity of the game the most. The only down side is after five minutes the mouth noises get really annoying, but are still funny! Nice game!
cornand34
18. Apr 2016 · 19:02 UTC
Tanis, thanks for the tip modified the game(Pong) to only allow 16:9 and 16:10 displays
ziege
18. Apr 2016 · 19:03 UTC
Great and fun game! I really like the music and sounds. But x/z controls are a bit uncomfortable for non-QWERTY users. Sadly I couldn't get past fourth level.
Ibzy
18. Apr 2016 · 19:06 UTC
Surprisingly addictive considering how basic it is.

The rats seem to be unstoppable in level 4, but that could just be me not using the Freeze as often as I should?

Controls are well responsive, but the hitbox of the obstacles is unforgiving - trying to make those quick dashes for snacks can end you very quickly. I feel it may be better that the obstacles reduce your distance from the rats rather than instand death? But that's just me.

A nice and entertaining game. 3 thumbs up.
ajhc
18. Apr 2016 · 19:42 UTC
My favourite game so far! Beat level 04 a couple of times, tried 5 a few times and couldn't get past :P have kept GattoMagico on my harddrive though (unlike rest of the LD games I've tried so far!) so maybe that will change!

This definitely has that flappy-bird-factor haha, extremely frustrating but really addictive. Getting your swaps down perfectly is incredibly satisfying. Doing it consistenly is extremely challenging.

Honestly my only criticism would be to streamline the menu. 'Continue' should be the first option (the number of times I went back to level01 because my downarrow wasn't registered in the menu...) in fact you really should be able to retry a level with one buttonpress - a game like this definitely needs that to counter frustration!

Anyway thanks for a great game! Played for a solid hour and I'll probably go back to it in future! Can I ask how many levels there are in total?
🎤 tanis
18. Apr 2016 · 20:58 UTC
Thanks for all the comments so far guys! :D

@shadowforce768 I know the rats can become annoying after a while. And I even toned them down a lot compared to the first versions :-P

@ziege I completely forgot about non-qwerty users! So sorry! I'll add more key variations in an upcoming post-compo version!

@Ibzy the first 3 levels are pretty basic, then the net 3 ramp up with difficulty. Freeze is key to get over level 4. I don't know if getting away from the insta-death mechaninc would add to gameplay or rather tone it down. Thanks for the idea anyway!

@ajhc thank you soooo much for the comment! I really like that you enjoyed the game that much!
I should definitely move that "continue" button in the first place and let it be the default selection! I'll do that in the next post-compo release.
APantaloni
18. Apr 2016 · 21:28 UTC
That music is awesome! Nice game.
EstrelSteel
18. Apr 2016 · 21:50 UTC
Nice. Really fun
Lagoe
18. Apr 2016 · 21:59 UTC
Welcome to "Z and X button" world... XD
Nice game.
Paskal007r
19. Apr 2016 · 15:18 UTC
Nice game! love the idea you have to stop enemies, makes for a good strategic variant on the classic runner game.
banana.hammers
19. Apr 2016 · 19:05 UTC
Interesting game, kept me on my toes. Not for the faint of heart, though :D
Cheers,
Matei (BananaHammers Team)
josemwarrior
19. Apr 2016 · 19:34 UTC
Nice game for a compo.
qu2
19. Apr 2016 · 19:38 UTC
Nicely done. I would prefer it if you didn't insta-die with every mistake though.
nintendoeats
19. Apr 2016 · 19:39 UTC
Very nice little project. Very challenging, but it a good way. I liked the interaction of the 3 cats. It would have been good to have some indicator of what cat was next, because keeping track of which cat you are about to become is hard during twitch gameplay. Sound was very good.
sbeif
20. Apr 2016 · 12:10 UTC
Nice, the only thing that bothered me was that the first selection after death was new game instead of continue.
It's definitely my fault but I misselected new game quite a lot of times, while i think the most commonly selected option would be continue and it should be on top.
arhpositive
20. Apr 2016 · 12:16 UTC
This is a good implementation of a decent idea and it was fun to play it. Although it would've been better if I had the option to begin from the same level that I got killed instead of the first one.
gnerkus
20. Apr 2016 · 14:40 UTC
I like the sound effects for the animals (cat and mice).

The game was a little hectic at first but I got a hang of the controls later on.
brainstorm
21. Apr 2016 · 17:08 UTC
Interesting mechanics, I think that if you continue developing this it will be a great game!
DesignerNap
23. Apr 2016 · 10:22 UTC
Hi, nice game but please don't name your download files "LD35". Why not name it your game's name or username?
fatsopanda
26. Apr 2016 · 19:39 UTC
Took a few tries to understand what's going on. After that it started to go smoothly. A fun game! :)
Hempuli
07. May 2016 · 12:00 UTC
The title screen music is great! Also loved the sound effects. It took me a bit to figure out how the enemy-freezing worked but the game was fairly enjoyable to play. I kinda wish it ramped up the difficulty a bit faster, though! Good work.
Ellian
08. May 2016 · 11:04 UTC
This was cute! Hard to keep track of all shapes and what they do, but the game works well!