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Stray Whisker Here!

When the theme was announced I was lucky to get an idea pretty quickly. Since kittens had been another candidate I had already been thinking about games with cats and so I decided to create a game where a kitten was left alone to fend for itself until the player was able to find others. I started making the game with no idea of how it would actually play in the end. I just concentrated on making the game as fun as possible to just move around and be a cat. I didn’t consider any goals for the player, and even in the finished game I don’t really think there’s really a “goal”. There is an ending. I just wanted to make a game where you could play as a cat. And in essence, that’s what my game is about. It’s about pretending you’re a cat, jumping around like a cat and being a cat. If people find enjoyment in simply moving and interacting with the objects in the world, then I think that the game achieves this aim. In a way, it’s like being a little kid playing with a toy figure outside, except instead of a toy figure, you have a virtual one. You can “win” the game in a very very short amount of time, but I would expect (“hope”) that people would spend time exploring the world and jumping around.

If you haven’t played the game yet you can Play And Rate The Game Here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=3289

It would be good to play it first since the following may contain spoilers.

With these things in mind, here is my short post-mortem:

Things that went well

• Graphics and cat animations. I rarely do graphics for my games. I usually partner with someone else and I’m the code monkey. So I was pretty happy with the graphics I did in this game. I started out doing “rough sketches” for the cat and buildings, however I liked the style and so I kept them for the whole game. Many people have asked me what tablet I used to draw the sprites with, but I actually just used my normal mouse. I have a large mousepad so I was able to do large sweeps to get natural curvy lines such as in the trees. I felt that the animations were quite fluid and I’m happy with those.
• Visual ambiance. I wanted there to be a lot of “stuff” to play with in the game and I think there is a fair bit to do such as smashing pots, playing with the ball, wind particles, leaves, grass, water, butterfly, etc. I would have added more of this if I had time (rubbish, rats, more ‘junk’).
• The red ball. I am very happy with the movement of the red ball and I think it’s a lot of fun to play with. Some people do find it hard to move exactly where they want, which is understandable. I find it easier myself because I spent so long playing with it while developing the game. I would have probably tweaked the movement a little so that you didn’t have to throw it around so much to get it to go where you want it. One thing I really love about the red ball is that nobody ever says that you need the red ball. Yet almost all of the players I have seen play my game attempt to take the ball as far as they can to the end.
• The Cat AI. I’m pretty happy with the AI of the cats that you come across. They weren’t meant to follow you constantly, or be completely random, and I think they’ve got a good blend. The AI of the cats you encounter differs slightly (the blue one is a bit more ‘sporadic’) but they both switch between moving randomly, following you and following the ball. Some people found the other cats annoying when you’re trying to move the ball – but I think they’re fun. They want the ball just as much as you!
• The cat movement. I think it’s very fun to just run and jump around, with no particular goal in mind, and that was one of my aims for this game which I think I’ve achieved.
• Level Design. I designed a lot of the game in a way which hopefully also explains the player’s abilities. An example of this is when you encounter the red ball. There is a wall directly in front of it, indicating that the ball can indeed be thrown. I also was quite happy with the placement of certain “triggers” such as when the first cat starts following you. Having watched people play the game, they all seem to do the exact same thing. They stop when they see the blue cat… jump up and down for a bit, trying to get its attention, and when they finally give up and think that the cat won’t follow them, they walk off to the right and the cat jumps down. Similarly the interaction with the dog forces the player to jump over it to dodge it, and the lack of buildings makes it a true chase.
• Focused effort. I put a real good effort into this game and I think it really paid off. I really did spent most of the weekend on it apart from a couple of a parties at night. And I even went crazy and pulled an all nighter on the last day until 7AM in the morning!

Things that could have gone better

• Only one ending. I had originally designed the game for two endings, one with the girl and one with the kitten friends you have made. I was hoping that the player would have then been faced with an emotional decision to choose between the cat friends they had made and the girl, their owner. I wasn’t able to implement a second ending for a couple of reasons: I created the girl’s ending first, and after doing so I found it very difficult to work out where exactly to place the alternate ending. Should it have been when you walked into the kitten den? The problem with that is that then the secret (where you take the ball to the kitten den) would not have worked, as it would have triggered the alternate ending first. The second reason I didn’t put it in was of course, as always, I didn’t really have time to do it. In the end I compromised with one ending and one secret.
• Variety in the backgrounds. I had hoped to have every single object (primarily buildings/trees) uniquely drawn. I did pretty well with making the trees unique, but there were only 3 building types which I duplicated many times throughout the game. Again the reason for this was time, and a bit of effort. The buildings weren’t really that hard to draw but I had to complete other more important tasks.
• Music. There was no music or ambiance in the game. I spent some time (as you can see in my timelapse) mucking around with FL Studio to create some ambient music. I didn’t finish this and I didn’t use any music in the end as I felt that a bad track would actually detract from the overall game. There is one gorgeous track by FearOfDark that would have suited the game very well I think. However since this is LD we of course have to make everything from scratch. The track is here: https://8bc.org/music/FearofDark/Recovery+%28VRC6%29/ Try playing the game with this in the background!
• Sound. I did some sounds pretty well I think but there could have been more. In the end I had jump/land/pot break/pot hit/dog bark x 3/various meows (in retrospect that is a fair few effects )

If I had another chance I don’t think I would have done anything differently (process/time-wise). I would have changed the above problems in my game, but overall I am quite proud of what I made and I think it’s an entertaining little game for 48 hours.

I hope that this post will help others in developing their games next LD!

Please checkout my game if you haven’t already done so: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=3289