MEOWTERSPACE by Tetracold
This is a cat-astrophe!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck8wxWSrKyk
Feline shaped aliens are going to invade our planet...and YOU are gonna be the one to help them!
You will be tasked with the very important duty of protecting the Alien Queen from being attacked by summoning in troops in order to fight against the evil fish.
here's a total of 7 classes with unique attributes to choose from. All you gotta do is summon a UFO, place a troop of your choice in it and you are good to go. You can even swap them anytime you like. We encourage you to experiment and pair together every class! Be sure to preserve you battery power too!
How To Play:
| Action | Controls | | -------------------| ----------------------------------- | | Pick up cat | Click the cat LMB and move cursor | | Move UFO | LMB Held and move cursor | | Turn UFO on/off | Click RMB on the UFOs |
Summoning UFO costs 25 bells.
in order to use a UFO you will have to place a cat in it, you can change the UFO's ability at any time by picking and placing another cat over the UFO




Director's Note:
There's a lot of mechanics, assets, music and cutscenes finished that sadly couldn't be added in this build due to a set of unfortunate circumstances during development.
The current version is not what we had in mind, but we made this way due to time constrains. We hope you enjoy this version but also wait for the complete patch too! It will have some surprises you may like!
Credits (Team Gladiolus):
Tetracold
Director - Lead Artist - Sprite Artist - BG Artist - UI Design - Animator
ELE
Programming
Canana
VFX Artist - Developer - UI
Domalomn
Developer
Roasted And Toasted
Composer
Sharb
Developer
McKrak
UI Design - Developer
Special thanks:
Sightseeker, DMG, Glitchy Pixel, Taemolien, Terpacey
Post Jam Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNdEtFYcTSY
Post Jam Patch Notes:
Additions
- Added new enemies, from a ferocious shark who can eat your bullets to a mysterious bell shaped fish
- Added a tutorial popup that will teach you how to play the game and adapt to how you're playing
- Added a high contrast mode that improves visibility for items and enemies
- Added settings for skipping tutorials, high contrast mode and reduced motion
- Added a bunch of new visual and sound effects
- Added a popup describing what each troop does when hovering their icons on the menu
- Added a retry button on the game over screen
- Added a new intro animation when starting the game (it's skippable don't worry)
- Added reaction popups for different troop states
Changes and fixes
- The game now goes on forever
- Shield and heal troops now shoot a bullet every few seconds
- Increased beam troop's battery consumption
- Beam troops now get pushed back when active
- Beam troops are now deactivated by default when sent to a UFO
- Magnet troops will not attract items more reliably
- Increased missile troop's battery consumption to use one bar for each shot
- Meteor fish will now chase the mothership when in their exposed state
- Changed the initial bell count to 30
- Tweaked various enemy stats
- Tougher enemies will now only spawn when reaching a high enough score
- Improved various effects
- Fixed some problems with the title screen
- Removed Scott the Woz
The itch.io build is the Post Jam version, if you wanna play the original download the MEOWTERSPACE file from below
| Web Build | https://tetracold.itch.io/meowterspace |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/meowterspace |
Ratings
| Given | 131🗳️ | 250🗨️ |
It was terrifying when the game started corrupting at the end, so glad we pulled it off in the end
If only I was able to integrate the SFX and the Intro cutscene before the time ran out!
But honestly...I kind of like the silence a bit...
EDIT: To everyone complimenting the visuals, Thank you very much! I really appreciate it :)
Tried my best to take Tetracold and McKrak's sprites and make everything look juicy and fun
Game was very intuitive. Had lots of fun trying out all the different cats! my favorite is probably the laser beam one :D
Absolutely loved the graphics of this game.
The music was also amazing, it really suited the space theme.
Also cool to see another fellow game about summoning cats :)
Great work!
The amount of attention to small details is really remarkable; it makes the game feel so smooth. The art is wicked and full of character. The music absolutely slaps.
Tiny things I loved: the subtle animation in the start screen, the cats floating off into space if you miss the ship, the bubbles getting bigger as you try to pop them, the variety of enemies, pickups and cats. Gosh there's just so much to like.
That being said, the new player experience is really tough. It wasn't clear or intuitive that I could right click cats to recharge them, and I couldn't tell which things flying at me were hostile or pickups. I couldn't tell how much a new UFO costed, or what some of the cats did. Most of this was all figured out on second playthrough, though, and all of this can be solved with a couple of follow-along click tutorials, so these are small nitpicks.
I really enjoyed the drag-and-drop component of the tower defense gameplay. Constantly adapting to oncoming waves felt really enjoyable.
Truly charming and fun game. Thanks for making it!
@jdeedubs Thank you! Yeah I tried to add a bunch of little subtle animations everywhere I could, little animations and flashes and things like that really elevate a game to me
Yeah, I wanted to add some tutorial prompts that would tell the player important things, for example "Hey, stop dropping the cats into outer space, ya wingnut! Place down a UFO first!" with an arrow pointing towards the SUMMON UFO button (You can even see the Textbox style I had originally programmed for that purpose, they're used in the Credits, haha)
Course, we ended up short on devs and just had to wrap the game up a bit lmfao
Thank you so much for playing and thank you for your feedback! We will take it into account for the post-game patch!
@congeesetador Thank you so much!! Hopefully in the post-game patch we can make it a little more beginner friendly
I think when you playtest a game 289408210 times, you sort of miss out on the beginner experience and forget "Oh! This might not be immediately obvious to new players!" So it's fun trying to picture what's intuitive and what needs to be explained.
(course, we didn't really get the chance to explain junk but y'know, we'll get there LMFAO)
The bright comic art style mixed with the more unique take on the summon theme with the alien motif really helps it stand out! The core gameplay has a strong foundation, and I especially dig how you balanced out the summoning mechanic with the unit energy meter!
Great job all around, I had a lot of fun with this one! :D
The gameplay itself was fun to tinker with. It took me a little bit to figure out what the actual UX was, but once I got it, it became obvious. The only thing that was unclear to me was when I could spawn a new UFO. It seems constrained on time?
Even though the game is supposed to be endless, I think I finished it, or hit a bug :P Once I hit 211 points and 120 bells, it stopped spawning new stuff.

Edit: Also, kudos for the name! I laughed out loud when I saw it, and knew I had to play it.
As for spawning UFOs, you have to have 25 bells. I wanted to update the Summon UFO button shader to make it more clear but wow! Time flies when you're having fun!
[summon-concept.png](///raw/abf/32/z/64139.png)
And haha, thank you! We were in a voice call (some voice call, everyone was muted in text chat LMFAO) trying to brain storm what the name could be and it suddenly hit me and I cackled lmfao
!
[coming-up-with-name.png](///raw/abf/32/z/6413a.png)
Thank you! for your kind words and thanks for playing!
I'm happy to hear the visual style hits :muscle::fire: Thank you for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed! :)
Edit: OH YEAH you guys are behind the summoning of in-si-la!!! That game is straight fire and I genuinely hope it wins a couple categories
@sodagummy We have a patch coming to fix that! We had changed it from endless back to a having a limit of enemies in order to prepare for a level 2 at first, then when it became clear that time constraints were approaching, we left the enemy cutoff in the game to prepare for an ending screen, but then we ran out of time before we could implement it.
The patch should let you play endlessly and allow you to experience an increasing difficulty curve as well :)
I'm glad you enjoyed the game! The cursor effect is actually the first thing I programmed into the game!
It actually started with a very very simple little script, only a few lines of code:
```glsl
shader_type canvas_item;
uniform vec2 speed; //Use material.set_shader_parameter("speed", your object's clamped speed)
//You will want to make sure that the shader parameter speed is clamped to some -x, x range,
//where x < 1.0 or it might look unpredictable! Unpredictable is fun though, it's all up to you!
//I clamped it to a -0.8 to 0.8 range personally.
void fragment() {
vec2 uv = UV; //get the UV so I can affect it
uv.x += speed.x * uv.y;
uv.y += speed.y * uv.x; //make it stretch but in a diagonal way
vec4 col = texture(TEXTURE, uv); //get a map of pixels using this stretched uv
col.rg += speed; //red is affected by x speed, green is affected by y speed.
//this leaves blue unchanged so you end up with a really nice blue/cyan/magenta look to match the pallete.
//Try replacing rg with other values, like bg, rb, gr, etc--
//if you use rr, gg, or bb tho I would suggest dividing speed by 2 to avoid overflow!
COLOR = col;
}
```
The final script has a bit more put into it, for example, adding pressure when you squeeze against the edges of the placeable area, and things like that, but in general, it's really simple to get some pretty effects going, even if you only use a few basic calculations!
Thank you for playing, and stay tuned, the patch should be coming soon!
PS: I recognize the brush you used in your entry's thumbnail, it's one of my favorite brushes in Krita >:)
Some of the gameplay was hard to understand/execute, and at times the screen was so visually noisy it was hard to know what was going on. But overall this is a lovely entry and had a fun time playing it -- great work y'all!
As for the other points, we are currently working on a patch that will hopefully fix the visual readability issues and make it a bit more clear what you have to do
It will be better if has more content, but it's stiil a solid entry for a gamejam game!
The art in the game is very nice, and so are the animations. The colors, the effects, the quirkiness - all superb. Some more player feedback would be nice to have. Especially some sfx, as a lot is happening on the screen visually on the screen and some sound effects to draw your attention to critical stuff would be nice.
The tiny ufos discharge quite fast. Having more battery drops would be nice.
The game does not seem to be as endless as advertised, it just stopped spawning anything to oppose me at some point. So I guess I did defeat the invasion :smile_cat:

It have a lot of personality! Good job!
@fabula-rasa thanks a lot!! I'll be sure to keep in mind giving the UFOs more battery. This patch we are currently working on aims to make it properly endless lol, sorry about that.
@yanato thank you! the UFOs were supposed to charge automatically after the battery runs out but unfortunately we ran out of time before we could code that feature in. Alternatively you can right click on them to turn them on/off and that will also make them recharge
@tricky-fat-cat thanks! I'll make sure to keep those in mind, I will try to come up with a more intuitive and easy to use version of the UI in a future update.
We aim to fix some of the confusion with our patch
(me and my homies post invasion)

The gameplay is pretty nice as well and having the battery mechanic prevents you from just spamming cats.
Moreover, like stated before, for the post-jam version you guys can add some progression - like unlocking units over time - and more clarity on what each one does.
We're working on balancing them so that they each can have their own time to shine.
Really appreciate you playing the game!
@denilseven Yeah! The cursor "sticking" to the inside of the box when dragging cats around was the second VFX change I added to the game, after making it wobble based on the cursor speed :)
I've had some IRL stuff come up so I haven't had the chance to be super active at the moment, but I will try to have a little devlog made up as I recorded a lot of footage of the making of this silly little game, hee hee
Thanks for playing!

I love this game so much!
The art style is so cool!
I was very confused at first but quickly got it. This is a very creative take on a tower defense kind of game! Felt really satisfying to build up my army and watch it mow down the enemies. Perhaps it's a bit too easy, since mama cat has a lottttt of health, but I ain't complaining!! One thing I don't know if I understand is if you can remove UFOs after you placed them. I ended up filling my screen with UFOs, but then when they ran out of power, it became very difficult to maneuver them towards the energy power ups, so a way to destroy UFOs would have come in handy.
If I have one thing to point out, is that there's maybe a bit too much on screen. The background props are a darker color, which is a nice touch, but they move very similarly to the enemies, which gets my eyes confused sometimes. There's also some stuff like, random paper airplane looking things that spawn and cross the screen and don't seem to do anything? Anyway, a better separation of what's good, what's bad, and what's background would be nice. Maybe you could use colorful borders and make the BG props move a lot slower.
In any case, this one was very fun!! Props to the whole team for such a beautiful project ^^
thank you! Yeah I'm actually working on a tutorial system with Ele right now!
https://twitter.com/canana_man/status/1784365232854282580
We're working on making sure this post-game patch is the best it can be, so it's been taking a little time in the oven, but I hope that when it's ready, it impresses! >:)
It's not immediately obvious what WASD/arrows could be used for,
since the gimmick is controlling multiple cats individually,
would arrows/WASD move all of your cats simultaneously?
Just the last placed/clicked cat? The mothership?
It's not entirely clear to me what the right option would be, at the moment...
Although, I could consider possibly allowing for keyboard only control of the cursor?
(WASD and <^>v to move it, something like Shift, Ctrl or Space as the stand ins for Left and Right click, maybe a button that snaps to the nearest object in your cursor's movement direction?)
Might be a bit till I could get to something like that, have to conceptualize the best way to go about it.
Hoping that the gameplay loop is a little more clear once this tutorial build is out!
If you have any specific ideas about how we can improve the controls, I'm all ears!
And thank you for playing our game :)

We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed making it.
Tetra made some lovely sprites as always for the new characters and other features,
Me and Ele were careful to take as much feedback into account as possible while making this patch;
Ele handled most of the technical work, fixing bugs and implementing systems that I could work with, and she also developed a few new enemies to check out!
The core structure behind the popups and tutorial was built by her as well.
I spent the majority of my time on the visual design: accessibility features like reduced motion and high contrast so you can tweak the visibility and distinguishability of objects, implemented the tutorial system so that it triggers based on key moments for new players, and finally, added more sound effects to match the gameplay.
I also made some efforts in rebalancing the troops, Beam and Missile should be much more interesting to use, now!
Do let us know if you have any feedback on this version or encounter any bugs, and we will be more than happy to take a look!
To those awaiting a patch, or who were initially confused by the game's controls/gameplay loop,
we'd love to hear your feedback on the new version, whether it improved the experience for you or if there's anything we can do to improve it further! We heavily appreciate your time and support 💪🔥
> Furthermore, I *believe* I went through and played everyone's submissions every time we received a comment, but *if we missed your game, let us know and we'll be more than happy to head over and review it!*
**@dogshroom - @coke**
Just notifying you for the post-jam patch, since you expressed interest!
Thank you for enjoying our little project :)
### Tutorial implementation
**@jean-francois - @mongoose-59 - @denilseven - @zombiewalrus - @koboldskeep - @odinvii - @tricky-fat-cat - @yanato - @yoyoj - @nanaschi1984 - @zerolarih - @rubentl - @congeesetador - @jdeedubs - @ramon-camata**
Implemented an optional tutorial to make the gameplay mechanics a little clearer.
Added descriptions of each cat's capabilities.
Thank you for your valuable feedback, it genuinely helped us to realize what parts of the game were unintuitive and how to address that!

### Visual accessibility
**@fupi - @jordantanner - @drainkid**
Darkened background props, and implemented a High Contrast mode for visual accessibility.
Made the screen even MORE visually noisy, but in a way that purposefully draws your attention to what's important.

Ok, I'm half joking, but if you do find the visuals to be a little flashy, I also implemented a Reduced Motion mode that tones down the animations. The reduced motion mode also uses much more efficient shader materials, allowing the game to run more smoothly on a lower end device.
Let us know if these addressed your visual concerns, and if there's anything more we can do to make the game more accessible!

### Re-balancing, Endless mode
**@chispalbc - @nuanda79 - @eric-nguyen - @fabula-rasa - @xry - @sodagummy - @nomersol - @unrealkazu - @ordineu**
Re-balanced cats and gave them drawbacks or buffs to make them each individually more interesting and situational
Endless mode exists now! Go out there and face endless waves as intended!

### Misc
**@thomas-gelman - @pebkac**
Implemented a retry button for game-over screen, and added sound effects!.
Thank you for your feedback!

We want to thank you all again very much for your time, your valuable feedback, and I want to re-iterate, if we missed playing your game, please mention us quickly before the jam deadline and we will check it out!
Wishing you all a fantastic gamedev journey!
> *--- Canana*
P.S. My personal highest score was 3383, let me know if you can surpass it >:)

That being said, it feels like it's really hard to keep track of everything that's going on onscreen, and in order to compensate that, the game is pretty easy, so it's okay if you can't keep track of everything. I'd rather have it so that there's a bit more challenge, and that the screen is more readable overall. Maybe if there were flashier indicators for when a cat is low on battery (i.e. a sound and it shakes) so that it's easier to manage, and also having more clearly distinct enemies/pickups/etc (i.e. all the bells are yellow, and all the enemies have some other unified color scheme.
It's definitely fun, and very unique. It does the theme well! Really, my only complaint is that it is just kinda cluttered, and I think that could be fixed.
Great job! I love how vibrant everything in this is. The art and animations are particularly lovely. And man is this polished. I only wish the game area was a little bigger, to make space for even more cats, but I would say the same for every game really.