Malthusian Cathouse by Alan Lu
Your cats breed uncontrollably, and your roommate has to do laundry. Keep the cat population from exploding out of control before he gets back.
1.1 update: the game used to get wonky input in Chrome (see this issue: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/16262) but that has now been fixed. Also a small visual error has been corrected.
| Source code | https://github.com/cag/ld42/archive/master.zip |
| HTML5 (web) | https://cag.itch.io/malthusian-cathouse |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/malthusian-cathouse |
Ratings
| Overall | 387th | 3.333⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 326th | 3.31⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 154th | 3.595⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 164th | 3.929⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 441th | 3.048⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 419th | 2.725⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 7th | 4.184⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 222th | 3.237⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 13🗨️ |
Input glitches up in chrome: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/16262
There's a workaround, but I didn't find it before the compo end, so I am leaving the game in its broken state, as I think it would be against the rules to work on it now (maybe? This is my first LD).
EDIT: Just saw the rules clause that allows small bugfixes, so expect that to land some time after work for me.
Once I restarted and figured out how to herd the cats, the challenge was perfect. Just enough to feel like I had SOME control, but not much…
Pretty much the perfect cat herding simulator.
Pros :
- The roommate and its timing thoughout the game, comedic genius
- Simple but readable graphics and action
- Good sound design makes for easy interaction with the cats
- The layout of the room and the cats'behavior help build an okay difficulty curve
- Great implementation of the theme
Cons :
- Some background music would help
- The cats'hitbox is not that clear ; it would help to get some visual feedback to better show which cat is selected.
Awesome work !
Play through #2, let's rub the cats together to see if I can crash my computer.
In all seriousness, the concept was simple but appropriate; and a nice joke since you are literally herding cats. The cat's movement makes sense, not too frenetic, but stubborn. The only technical issue I had was that there were times where either pick up the cat or putting them down didn't trigger as expected. I couldn't figure out if it was an input reading or a hitbox issue.
Only negative for me was that I was stuck with the first two cats for quite a while because I thought the game had already started. Not sure what the best way to prevent that would be, maybe the next event should just happen automatically after a while if the player doesn't let the cats touch.
Apart from that, one of my favourites so far. Good job!
By the way, did you use Godot ?
@whismirk Yes, I did use Godot.