A Game About Cats by Rytannic

[raw]
made by Rytannic for LD 40 (JAM)

​What happens when last minute ideas, shoddy programmer art and terrible voice acting combine? 'A Game About Cats' is the grotesque lovechild of poor time management and a lack of creativity. Why not treat yourself to one of the various cat games that seemed to have popped up for this Ludum Dare? Why not make it my one?

The game may take a couple of attempts to get the hang of but it can be pretty intense and fast paced with 2 full shelves of kitties.

screenshot 1.png screenshot 2.png

The game also features cat names selected from a random pool! However, the pool is quite small so some names might double up sometimes.

Ratings

Overall 748th 3.25⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Fun 698th 3.167⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 978th 2.667⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Theme 292th 3.778⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 917th 2.816⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 494th 3.056⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Humor 403th 3.278⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 967th 2.667⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 8🗳️ 3🗨️

Feedback

Mathiouza
04. Dec 2017 · 21:22 UTC
Cool concept ^^ Great executed, but why not whashing or not playing with a cat makes him dead ? x) Overall cool game, but a little too unbalanced. I liked the music though.

Great job ! Keep coding :)
🎤 Rytannic
04. Dec 2017 · 21:27 UTC
@mathiouza Because cats are needy bastards, haha! Thanks for the feedback :)
meursault
04. Dec 2017 · 21:33 UTC
Cool game, but very stressful. I chose to close the game when I couldn't keep up anymore. so no cat died and they lived happily ever after!
ElFippo
04. Dec 2017 · 21:35 UTC
Well done! I played for quite a while, got really stressed at the end. Last time I looked at the day I was past 20, and it felt like I had to prioritize and only care for the black needs. Had fun! Good job!
corc0
04. Dec 2017 · 21:36 UTC
After you get a bunch of cats, this game keeps you really busy (although I think you're making enough money to load up on food/water early on, so you might just chalk it up to my limited experience with strategy games. Does each cat need food/water/love at a different rate or are they all the same? I couldn't tell.
Nammflow
04. Dec 2017 · 21:40 UTC
I got to about day 24 before my first cat died, but it was definitely tough to keep it going so long! I felt like I was being randomly given money to buy items, but i'm not sure it was entirely clear how to get money. Sometimes I was worried I wouldn't enough money to feed my cats!
🎤 Rytannic
04. Dec 2017 · 21:42 UTC
@meursault - That's one way of avoiding Kitty Genocide.

@elfippo I'm glad it kept you on your toes. That was the intention :D

@corc0 I tried to make it so you could only get by if you really paid close attention to which cats havent been fed in a while. In answer to your question. Each cat starts with 100 of each stat. These stats decrease at different rates. Hunger goes down 2 each second. Dirtiness goes down 1 each second. From what I remember happiness goes down 0.7 each second.

Thanks to all for the feedback :)
🎤 Rytannic
04. Dec 2017 · 22:24 UTC
@nammflow It says in the tutorial that you earn money daily :)
I'll make sure to be clearer about things in future. Thank you for the feedback
SerpentWorks Games
05. Dec 2017 · 03:18 UTC
This was super stressfull but super fun~! I could def see this played on a touchscreen or tablet to great results! Good job 8D
🎤 Rytannic
05. Dec 2017 · 11:39 UTC
@serpentworks-games Thanks :D I'm glad you found it fun. I imagine a tablet would be a lot easier so I'd have to up the speed of stats decreasing to keep the challenge ;)
ArturasD
05. Dec 2017 · 14:44 UTC
The game is really nice. While Playing it I thought it would be way easier to play it of tablet of some sort. But I still did enjoy it. At start it was kinda confusing with the controls, since I did not really know if you should drag the food onto the cat or just press on the cat but after a few tries everything went smoothly. It's really fast paced ! Good job.
🎤 Rytannic
05. Dec 2017 · 19:09 UTC
@arturasd Glad you enjoyed it. Might give it a bit more polish and perhaps I'll port it to mobile :D
Thanks for the feedback!
Arputikos
10. Dec 2017 · 20:47 UTC
K, K, K, K .... hehe. Just kidding ;) They survived for 22 days. I could'n manage it for longer because of lack of money! What could I do? Anyway fun game and music is not annoying!
kbf123
10. Dec 2017 · 20:48 UTC
Dang, only lasted a month. Anyways, fun hectic game!
Samuli
10. Dec 2017 · 20:49 UTC
Demanding cats, can't even survive a day without any help. :)
Survived twenty-something days.
🎤 Rytannic
11. Dec 2017 · 02:10 UTC
@arputikos Thats a pretty good score :) Letting some cats go hungry and trying to ration your food in the early game can prolong your supply. As it was made for LD40 I couldn't get in as much play testing as I wanted to. I'll probably work on some balancing and stuff later :P

@kbf123 glad you liked it :D

@samuli Not a bad score! :P It's a post apocalyptic world where cats rule and humans are enslaved...or something.
Mr.MadCat
11. Dec 2017 · 10:47 UTC
Pretty cool. Also the graphics are rather good in my opinion.

One minor balancing issue is that if you let two cats die, it is pretty easy to kepp the rest alive indefinetly. So after thirty something days I just sat there and watched them die a (not so) slow and horrible death.
(Am I a bad person?)
fangzhangmnm
12. Dec 2017 · 10:27 UTC
Lower saturation can make your game look better :)
ciderWrath
12. Dec 2017 · 12:26 UTC
Was fun! Real simple and racks up in speed very quickly. Think it would be even more hilarious if for some reason the amount of cats was never ending, but juggling between 10 cats is already difficult enough. I do wish that petting the cats made an impact in their mood considering they were interactable (which is awesome btw). Thinking about it now, it probably would be more intuitive to remove the smiley face button completely and just make the cats show emotions. With the button also gone, clicking on them would mimic petting a cat in real life and make them feel better. In the end though, I enjoyed this game very much.
🎤 Rytannic
12. Dec 2017 · 18:27 UTC
@mr-madcat Glad you like my hastily slapped together doodles, haha! That balancing issue is pretty crucial too so thanks for pointing that out :)

@fangzhangmnm Do you mean contrast? Like the colour scheme being all over the place?

@ciderwrath Glad you liked it! I thought about never ending but then i'd have to increase the money paid daily and stuff and it ended up being more work than i was cut out for. There was originally meant to be 10 cats but I went for 8 instead. That's a good point! I'm considering getting rid of the 'pet' button entirely now. :)
Adding alternate art for the cats that they can switch to when you pet them is a great idea.

Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you all enjoyed the game :D