Hi everyone! We decided to talk a little bit about our LD40 game, how was the experience, and what we want to make for the future.

We're a group of 3 people. @jpiolho, @grlira (Programmers) and @SaraFilipa (Artist), with the exception of @jpiolho it was our first Ludum Dare, but first time in a group for all of us. We just woke up Saturday morning and while we had breakfast we just threw silly ideas around, I don't exactly recall how it was but we ended up deciding about an old lady having too many cats. Having cats is nice but as you have more, the more you have to do clean up and take care of them. Early on we decided that the cats would be pooping and peeing around the house and we'd need to clean up after them and later we came up with the idea of having friends coming over for tea parties.

Screen from early in development

There wasn't much game design involved as none of us are good with that sort of thing so the game just kind of evolved as we added more and more things. One of the first challenges was to decide how we'd make the movement style, we ended up going with free look without being tied to a top-down grid like movement. This wasn't so easy as we didn't really know how to do it make feel good in Unity but in the end we got something we were happy with. The lack of game design was a problem, especially when it comes to the losing condition, we only thought about it at the last day and it had to be put in a bit at the last hour. Making the game was a bit like assembling a puzzle, initially it didn't look like much but once we started adding graphics, especially the house, it suddenly started making sense and looking really good for us.

We thought big and we didn't have time to add all the features that we wanted to. These include things like cat pee, upgrades with prestige, a bigger house, more types of cats and old ladies.

Our artist wanted to say a few words about creating the art for this game.

@SaraFilipa Regarding the process of creating the art for this game, this was my first time making (and animating) pixel art, even though I had previous experience with illustration and vector design. But I’ve always loved pixel art (being a gamer since the 90s), and wanted to challenge myself. I made a lot of newbie mistakes, such as using the completely wrong software and not being very wary of the different proportions, and of course I didn’t have time to fix anything.

And finally some screenshots of the build we did for LD40:

As for the future, we're looking into continuing this game and develop it further and finish it properly. It was quite fun for us and we're definitely coming back for the new LD.

@SaraFilipa thank you ALL for playing (and rating, and commenting) our game! And of course, thank you so much for all of the lovely compliments and constructive criticism on the graphics, which is what I worked on. But since finishing LD40, I’ve been making some research and educating myself and for version 2.0 of Kittea Party, you can expect: - 100% redesigned character sprites and animations; - New background art; - New (and a lot bigger) map; - New and updated UX/UI; - New logo + title menu + new game over / victory screens; - Some cut-scenes and illustrated instruction screens

For a teaser, here is the concept art of our main character and cat lady overlord, Gertrude:

Link for our game entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/kittea-party