LudumData

Meowlediction by Inferture

[raw]
made by Inferture for Ludum Dare 45 (JAM)

You wake up and, to your surprised, you lost everything, TRULY everything You want to get to the bottom of this and understand what happened !

A visual novel with reigns-like mechanics. You play a cat and choose to swipe right or left to make choices.

Spoiler-ish territory (for the first few dialogs but since it's not very long... I still wanted to warn)

You play a cat who is sure that it was once a human being, but does not have any memory of his past life. The idea here was to make a character that truly lost everything, obviously all its personal belongings but also his ability to talk, his memory and his human body. The mechanics of swiping left and right is as minimalist as possible to underline how little actions the character is able to do (originally, it shoudld've only been meowing in 2 different ways but story-wise that seemed like not enough).

Does not spark joy: The original scope was too big (especially since I had some work to do on the weekend) so the VN is shorter than it should be :( . I also did not have time for proof-reading :((

Does spark joy: That was a fun experience and definitely one I would love to do again.:) That was my first time making a non-action oriented game and that was quite pleasing :))

I hope you'll have fun ! ^^

waterReflectionAtNight2.png

Youtube http://inferture.itch.io/meowlediction
Youtube http://inferture.itch.io/meowlediction
Youtube http://inferture.itch.io/meowlediction
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/meowlediction

Ratings

Overall 1021th 2.829⭐ 40🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1044th 2.513⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 873th 2.769⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Theme 977th 2.662⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 928th 2.756⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Audio 663th 2.446⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Humor 562th 2.716⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Mood 945th 2.776⭐ 40🧑‍⚖️
Given 37🗳️ 36🗨️

Feedback

Tommyflower
08. Oct 2019 · 10:19 UTC
That porcupine! I love the effort you put in the story and the graphics style very simple but made effective by the use of the right colours. Choosing where too swipe looked a bit arbitrary though.
🎤 Inferture
08. Oct 2019 · 15:29 UTC
@tommyflower Thanks for playing !

By arbitrary do you mean that there was no logic to why a certain choice was at the right and another at the left or do you mean that the player did not have enough information to make a decision (or something else ?)?
And thanks for the feedback, that really helps (it's my first time making a visual novel so I still have a lot to learn) !
Tommyflower
08. Oct 2019 · 15:52 UTC
@inferture Yes I couldn't understand which choice belonged to each direction.
🎤 Inferture
08. Oct 2019 · 16:22 UTC
@tommyflower I think it might be a resolution problem, but when there were choices to be made, they should be written at the bottom of the screen when you tilt a card in one direction or another. When nothing is written, it means that there is no choice to be made (it's just swipe to continue).
I couldn't test my game on devices with different resolutions other than my desktop and phone.
If I understood well, you didn't see these choices ? (bottom right corner on the screenshot):
![choices.png](///raw/939/b1/z/28d8d.png)

And I think the text should also be bigger though, that should definitlely change in a post-jam version ^^
Tommyflower
08. Oct 2019 · 16:33 UTC
@inferture yes! I totally missed them. Retried now and finally understood. They appear (in a very small font) only when the swipe action has begun and I swiped too fast to see them. You could just add them at the bottom of the text, before touching anything.
🎤 Inferture
08. Oct 2019 · 16:44 UTC
@tommyflower That is definitely something to consider for the post-jam version ! I think putting the choices onto the card like Reigns does could be another solution. Either way, that's definitely an issue to fix, thanks for bringing my attention to it :)
Ioleoso
08. Oct 2019 · 16:51 UTC
First time I see a videogame using tinder-like interactions. This is quite contemporary, well done!
Paulo Brunassi
08. Oct 2019 · 20:33 UTC
Interesting take on the theme, I also loved your artstyle. Good job!
🎤 Inferture
08. Oct 2019 · 22:15 UTC
@ioleoso Thank you ! I took inspiration from games such as Reigns and Lapse (Android) which uses these kind of mechanics and I thought it could also be used for visual novels.
@paulo-brunassi Thanks a lot :)
Porocyonak
09. Oct 2019 · 06:47 UTC
this reminded me to drink water, thanks
ItsNotAGoodTime
09. Oct 2019 · 06:50 UTC
Idk what just happened but there was a few laughs (:
tohubohu
09. Oct 2019 · 07:01 UTC
I like that you built this with mobile devices in mind, but still made a build for WebGL. I enjoyed the swipe mechanic... haven't played Reigns, but if I ever do I guess I can say it reminds me of Meowlediction! To be honest, I didn't really pay attention to the life meter, not sure if that mattered at all. Maybe there are more choices that affect it? Not sure... I played through twice and seemed to do just fine. I do like the "choose your own adventure" aspect of the narrative though. Congrats on the submission!
🎤 Inferture
09. Oct 2019 · 07:16 UTC
@porocyonak My pleasure ^^
@itsnotagoodtime Haha I'm glad it made you laugh :)
@tohubohu The life bar was supposed to matter but in the end, I didn't have time to make use of it :/ Thanks for taking the time to play twice ! ^^
Ben Ash
10. Oct 2019 · 01:32 UTC
First one I've played with a swiping mechanic so far! And choices! Yay! Nice work. :)
SirRed
10. Oct 2019 · 03:19 UTC
Got some laughs out of me. Interesting story. I like the Rigel interaction a lot and the porcupine.
U-Tsang Clan
10. Oct 2019 · 03:33 UTC
There seems to be an issue where the life bar does not reset when you restart the game. I haven't been able to reach zero since it seems to increase at some points, so it might just be a visual thing.
🎤 Inferture
10. Oct 2019 · 03:44 UTC
@u-tsang-clan Yup, I did forget to reset it and when I realised it was too late x)
(though, it is not used in current state of the game, so it shouldn't bother for one's playthrough ^^)
🎤 Inferture
10. Oct 2019 · 03:48 UTC
@sirred I'm glad it did make you laugh, that's really nice to hear ^^
@ben-ash Thanks a lot ! :D
Xarras
10. Oct 2019 · 21:57 UTC
NOOOOOOoooooooooooo I wanted to know more. Just when I was engaged! Don't you want to make a post-LD with the rest? You should!
My hype counts as a review right?
🎤 Inferture
11. Oct 2019 · 00:27 UTC
@xarras Thanks a lot for your reaction !

I will at least proof-read what is already existing and improve the UI for a post-jam version (bigger texts for the choices in particular). As for the rest of the story I can't really guarantee anything :/ (although I really hope I do find the time to continue ^^)
Xarras
11. Oct 2019 · 09:34 UTC
Right the small text at the choices was something to improve, good to see you'll keep it going :)
Hellper
11. Oct 2019 · 11:05 UTC
Nice art. I feel like they've been made with the use of a lot of filters but they look good!
Too bad the story's very short D:

Thanks for the game!
🎤 Inferture
11. Oct 2019 · 20:18 UTC
@hellper Indeed I used photofiltre to make this :) Thanks a lot !
someone
12. Oct 2019 · 19:54 UTC
Nice art, fun story.
I didn't like the control scheme. I had no idea what each direction would do what so ended up playing randomly.
I found out there is sometimes text that appears after reading some comments here. I never saw that at all. Perhaps it should be always there rather than only appearing when half-swiped.
🎤 Inferture
13. Oct 2019 · 00:16 UTC
@someone I definitely understood that the UI for the options should be modified to be more obvious and visible and I'll correct this in a post-jam version ! Thanks for your feedback !
samh
14. Oct 2019 · 19:36 UTC
The endings are a bit frustrating and made me wish there was just a little more… but good story anyway, it’s really worth playing multiple times to understand a bit more of what happened. I did see the texts at the bottom but that was because my browser window was just tall enough, I agree they could be larger and maybe centred. The sound effects were perfect, though my cats did not react to them… they must have been spoken in another language!
🎤 Inferture
14. Oct 2019 · 20:29 UTC
@samh Haha thank you, I wish I had had the time to make more content ^^' I'm glad you liked the sound effects though ! :)
Xotsu
15. Oct 2019 · 09:21 UTC
Fun game cool concept well done
🎤 Inferture
15. Oct 2019 · 19:45 UTC
@xotsu Thanks a lot ^^
Smitto
16. Oct 2019 · 02:44 UTC
Took me back to growing up reading the Warriors novels, keep it up! Also that porcupine is terrifying :)
🎤 Inferture
17. Oct 2019 · 08:31 UTC
@smitto I just looked them up and it looks like they could make for an interesting read one day, thanks for mentioning it ^^
As for the porcupine, let's just pretend that was on purpose 😇