A really cool idea realised well! I think the game would really benefit from some background music and perhaps a bit more visual variety.

A little tough to figure this one out. I guess my goal was to place towers to stop the cats, but when I did that the towers seemed to shoot out balls that got in my way as much as the cats did. I'm also not sure how intentional this is, but the driving controls are super slippery. I found the only way to control it was to very, very lightly tap the keys when I turned, or else I'd completely spin out of control. Maybe lower the sensitivity there.

The concept seems cool though!

@Evan-Minto thanks for the feedback.

The slipperiness is intentional! That's the "drift" part of the title 😁. Unfortunately I didn't quite get enough time to put in proper skidmarks and tire screech sounds. Lightly tapping the controls is a good strategy. If you're having trouble staying on the track, you can also try letting go of the accelerator to slow down. I tried to give the player plenty of time on the clock (at least at the start of the race), so it's a good strategy to take it slow and focus on trying not to fall off the track, instead of trying to go fast and keep restarting checkpoints.

And you're right about the towers. You definitely have to be careful about where you place them. The towers prioritize whichever target is closest. So, if you put them right next to the track, they'll be very good at pushing cats away, but you're also likely to get caught in the crossfire. If you put them further away from the track, they're more likely to get a cat *before* it reaches the track. But the trade-off is that they might not be able to target cats that land on the track.

Good game, nicely implemented as well. Somewhat hard to play at first though. The driving physics are super finicky. For the TD part, I didn't know where the cats would be coming from, misplaced my towers and got swamped by cuboid kittens, so the game definitely has a learning curve to it.

I really liked the concept of this one. I felt like the drifting was a bit over the top at first, but once I got used to it it felt way better. Like you said, it's better to take your time instead of speeding and having to restart. I see what you were trying to accomplish and I love what you did with it. Like other commenters have mentioned, when you get some extra time on your hands I'd love to see some other stuff get added to the game because it really has potential. Bookmarking this :smile:

I'd also love for you to checkout my submission! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/keyboard-warrior

That was way too hard way too quick but so much fun! Couldn't get past the first race with cats. I ended up listening to the noises laughing out loud.

10/10 would play an updated / optimized version!

Cool game! Really liked the combination and how you implemented it. Some issues, but overall I liked it!

nice, that drift track was hard.. but i was starting to get it.

And, top prize for making the most hilariously perfect "cat-in-your-way" model/enemy... so good... so true. Cats WOULD ruin my drift track if they could.

A chaotic but also super fun game. For a lot of the racing game in LD, the controls is super bad, but in this game the controls is simple and they works very well. The graphics and sounds is okay, but could have been better, and it could have been cool with some music in the game. But overall a fun little LD game.

Really cool game!
The tower defense part caught me off guard at first but it turned out to be a lot of fun.
The one thing that bothered me is that cats really get in the way, I know that this is the way it's suposed to work but you can't really do anything about it and at times cats can end up completely blocking your path and thats pretty much an instant Game Over.

Fun playing and avoiding the cats. It was neat how you combined the two genres. Sometimes the car movement felt unsmooth, but perhaps you fixed that in the postjam version. Great effort in 48 hours. I really like the boxy aesthetic.

Well done, At first it was a massive struggle to even reach the checkpoints but eventually I found the right balance between acceleration and turning. It was actually quite enjoyable once I got use to the control to try and to complete the first track in the shortest amount of time. there were a couple of occasions I found myself facing backwards and funny enough sometimes it was easier to get through obstacles that way.

I love the idea of a tower defence and racer combine but I think the way it was implemented made completing the track almost impossible to do. More often then not I would find the track completely littered with cats unable to get through, It would slow me to a stop and ruin the delicate balance between speed and drift I need to maintain. I think one way you could go about solving this might be to make the cats not so heavy. Have them slow or slightly nudge the player but as they are currently I would hit one and it felt like hitting a wall. Another suggestion would be to make the track wider allow the player to really explore the drifting, give them more room to manoeuvre out of the way of the cats.

As for the tower defence at first I was very confusing. It took me a couple rounds and a bit of experimentation to understand how and where to place the towers, But I will be honest I still don't quite understand the best placement for them. If they are too close the enemies it would shoot upwards and simply nudge the cats higher but not changing much the trajectory. also even tho I would try to dedicate one tower to every enemy It still felt it wasn't enough to keep the track clean. The tower projectiles on occasion was an issue for me, More then once I lost a game because The tower was trying to hit one of the cats in the tack and It would hit me instead. You could solve this by simply putting The player in a different layer that doesn't interact with the physics of the projectiles.

Over all well done, the game could use a rework but the concept is sounds. i love the cats and sounds, the car drifting was enjoyable. Can't wait to see what you do next LD.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I've made some more changes and uploaded new post-compo builds for Win, Mac, and Linux (compo version is also still available on the itch.io page). The biggest changes are new effects for drifting, range circle indicators for towers, and various balance tweaks to make the earlier rounds more forgiving. A more detailed list of changes is on the itch.io page.
Previously, I was only able to survive until wave 5, but now I've been able to make it to wave 8. Let me know if you can beat my high score!

@Kappa-b Thanks for those ideas about the cat mass and the collision layers, they worked well. I increased the car's mass by around 10x, so the cats are now more like heavy boxes instead of solid walls. If the road is completely blocked, the player can slowly push their way through, or knock a few cats off the track. But it's still easy to get knocked out of control if you hit a cat at full speed. The collision layer thing is pretty subtle, but it definitely prevents some frustrating occurrences where your own towers mess you up.

On the original game, the driving controls are a little hard to master indeed. I really liked the combination of game genres and how the cats pose a thread to the player has he commits mistakes about placing the towers.

I found this to be as fun as this is difficult, really like that instead of life you used time for the tower-defense part, that they just block the road and not attack something

The first play though I was utterly confused on the second driving attempt. Once I understood a little better what was going on I had a lot of fun with this one. The bouncy cat physics were often disastrous for my race but were too funny to be irritating. The towers could maybe have been a little more clear in what they do, but it was easy enough to figure out if you watched them instead of racing.

Pleasantly oddball! The controls were a massive issue for the few couple of minutes, but I gradually acclimated. Once I did, the highlight moment was drifting sideways with my ass hanging in the wind, sliding along the cambered edge of the track.

The whacky premise was amplified by the goofball sounds and I loved that the cat cubes had little pink paw spots and just wouldn't get out of my way.

I have mixed feelings about the controls, because they were certainly a hurdle at first without me understanding why. Later I came to appreciate what they made possible. I am unclear on whether there is a set of changes to keep the good and shed the hurdle. I have played with car controls five different ways myself, and it's just really hard to create expressive driving controls with digital toggles (keys), since it's inherently an analog activity.

I came to enjoy the feel, though. One thing that did jam me up hard a couple of times was when a cat was right on my spawn point. My final moments with the game I was low on time and spawned on a cat that sent me spinning like this: https://imgur.com/RQt7BX7 I just spun and spawned and spun and spawned while the clock counted down to my game over.

I don't want to dwell on the negative, because although I felt a few splinters I definitely hit some outstanding high notes! You even tickled a few small flashbacks to dodging through traffic in Road Rash on Genesis, a rare feat.

So well done - a cool concept and an intriguing execution with flair.

Interesting idea.

It is really hard to get into it, but with time I managed to drive somewhat steadily.
I think the controls would need some more fine tuning, as I rarely had problems with the cats, but just with the controls of the car.
The ensuing chaos is definitely fun to watch. Also, plus points for cats ;)