Rise of the CatMancer by Daniel C

In the realm of "Rise of the Catmancer," shadows weave tales of both wonder and dread, painting a tapestry of mystery across the land.
The choice is yours, dear adventurer, but remember: in the world of the Catmancer, every step taken carries with it the weight of destiny, and the line between salvation and damnation is thinner than a whisker's breadth.
[GAMEPLAY] You have a little aura around your cat that damages priests, click on corpses to spawn skulls that protect you. Do you have what it takes to reach the S-Tier?
[DISCLAIMER] The in-game music is made by our amazing musician friend, bandcamp link below :D The menu themes and grade themes were created using the AI platform https://suno.com/ - please keep that in mind if you rate our Audio
| Itch.io | https://lastvision.itch.io/riseofthecatmancer |
| bandcamp | https://dungeonwizzard.bandcamp.com/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/rise-of-the-catmancer |
Ratings
| Overall | 340th | 3.79⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 171th | 3.931⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 745th | 3.196⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 221th | 4.127⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 842th | 3.304⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 341th | 3.62⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 91th | 4.067⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 412th | 3.755⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 60🗳️ | 115🗨️ |
The voice lines, art and gameplay were AMAZING (funny af)
The sound over all is a bit too much at times. If you haven't, you should add a limiter (using your program of choice) so that no sound goes over 0 db. You could also maybe BitCrush effect. Whatever it is, it's a bit too much especially later on when it gets more hectic. The main menu music should also be increased, its significantly more quiet than the rest of the game.
I don't know if this is intentional, but the character also moves faster diagonally. This is a very common problem when first starting to make games, because the two movement get combined (diagonal and horizontal). It's a pretty easy fix, you can find it everywhere online.
In the parts with the weird building it's kinda hard to see the bodies,
Lastly, after about a minute of playing the first time the game crashed. I couldn't replicate the crash so it probably doesn't matter :)
Don't let all my criticm here confuse you. This is probably one of the best games in this Jam I've played so far. Keep it up man, I'm sure you'll make even more amazing games in the future!
Everything is very much bitcrushed :)
And yes - the game is definitely extremely loud and chaotic
I think the mainmenu being quiet in general is actually more of a case that I discovered a bug where our "mainlevel" just ignores all the volume options and "please don't be extremely loud" settings we had.
At the end of the day we just went with it.
Thank you so much for your nice review!
Edit: I will strike my co-developer on the finger for not normalizing the diagonal movement ;)
At first the game seemed odd, the graphics was a bit confusing, I didn't know what is background and what is not, the corpses were a bit hard too notice... BUT THEN!!! ... This is an awesome game! I had so much fun, I don't really like chaotic games, but due to the chaos being increased step by step, I enjoyed it and replayed it a few times! :smiley:
I can only recommend this game, even if at first it seems a bit odd. After a minute or so sou start to like its quirky and absurd atmosphere. :laughing: by the way, are those voice lines inspired by Half Life? They sounded oddly familiar, like the "Why won't you die???" one.
Nice entry, cheers!
@drgcandle
Hell yeah, thank you so much <3
Started a little bit boring and slow. But a sudden increase of speed is a good drive. So the beginning was only a time to get along with the mechanics. Gameplay is really fun.
THE SCORE OF THE GOOOODS
One of the best games I've played! Very amusing :D
Thank you so much for letting us know :D !!
at first I thought that is slow but then it get heated ..:D
My only complaint would be that it got a bit hectic and at some point it was hard to see dead bodies under all the particles and other enemies... but I feel like the chaos adds to the game's charm (yeah, let's call it charm ;D)
Thank you so much :D
This is going to put me in a good mood for the whole day!
Great entry! Found the overall experience very enjoyable, liked the hectic combat and loved the voice lines. I was blown away by all the different music you had for the different grades. Overall really fun game !
Thank you so much for those nice words!
@theheheo
THE SCOOORE OF THE GOOOODS
You're the second documented person ever to reach that far! Well done!!
@baluj
There's always tomorrow!! Thank you :D
Thank you so much :D
Overall really good job guys!
Thank you so much <3
Where did you find the in game voice line ?
Amazing entry, everything is on point: short, esay to understand, fun to play and with cat !
Tha soundtrack is great to.
<3 Thank you so much
We made our own voice lines!
Great entry!
@alxander Absolutely! The cat-screens were a last minute addition, and I would have loved for our artist to have as much time to make a pixel-art beautiful version like the menu - but we ran out of time
@risminator Yeah, it goes crazy at the end, thanks for playing!
Cheers man! Thanks for playing our stupid game!
@pattedecanaard
Hahaha thank you! The graphics were often times the programmers throwing in random stuff and then our one artist trying to keep up replacing our placeholders with pixel art - in the end - he couldn't replace it all
Animated leaves on the background are a nice touch on the menu, the menu music evokes a sense of epic wonder for the adventure to come. When returning to the menu later, The music takes another turn entirely. Even though I'm not a huge fan of that specific genre, it brought a smile to my face.
Options menu seems to be a bit bugged. Accidentally turning down sound levels sometimes mutes it to zero and there's no way (in game) to pull it back to the right. Restarting the game brings those levels back to default though.
I was confused about the background art like @pres2300 but after figuring this out, I really enjoyed the free range of motion given. Though, you can walk into the black of the map too?
I had a lot of fun with this one.
"God forgive me for the smackdown I'm about to deliver to this f*%&ing cat" I'm dead. XD. Sorry if I misquoted this one, I was too busy fighting off priests - some altar boy probably
The holy killdozer!!!! I made that!!!
I love you hahaha thank you so much for appreciating our dumb game! The spikes are absolutely unclear, that is valid criticism! Next time we will do over and do right!
@trevor-lentz
I also did the leaaaves!!
Sorry about the options, they only work in the menu haha, I didn't have time to bugfix it! The volumes are tied to the "max of master" and it's also unintuitive.
Your quote is word for word perfect I believe from memory!
Edit: I didn't even see the 100,000 damn that's really impressive! :O
@bjornstenlund The voices are always with me, I'm just introducing them to everyone else <3
Honestly we just threw the spritesheets together in photoshop and used the paper flipbook thingie, but we have a great artist leading the way in @isacb!
@hadik Thank you! Yeah the audio kind of goes too far, but I feel like that's almost part of the charm
@lancejz Sorry about the windowed shenanigans but then again you got to hear the B-theme which is one of my favorites - RISE OF THE CATMANCER HEYY, RISE OF THE CATMANCER HEYY
Thank you so much for playing our game!