Bath Time by DDRKirbyISQ
The meomwies are lining up for bath time. Wash them quickly, or you'll run out of space!
- Swirl the dirty meowmies in water to clean them.
- Tap clean meowmies to hang dry.
Tap or swipe dry meowmies to put them away.
Some meowmies might be extra dirty or a bit offensive in odor. No need to panic -- tap the soap button to add soap!
Some extra tips for those who might have some trouble getting those meowmies clean:
- Playability tends to be best on a phone touchscreen! Feel free to try out the mobile version!
- Large, circular motions in one direction tend to work best! It works even better if you circle the mouse cursor outside the screen!
- If your hand is getting tired, you could try using a smaller zoom on your browser window to make it easier to swirl!
- The post-jam version has better balancing -- try it if you're getting stuck!
Post-jam version (v1.07): http://cocoamoss.com/bath-time/bath-time.html
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bath-time-by-cocoa-moss/id1427147878
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cocoamoss.bathtime
Compo version (v1.02): http://ddrkirby.com/games/bath-time/compo-version/bath-time-compo.html
Soundtrack download: https://ddrkirbyisq.bandcamp.com/album/bath-time-original-soundtrack
Changelog:
``` v1.07 - Fixed an annoying bug with multiple touches that caused the scrubber to disappear when using fast movements on some touchscreens
v1.06 - First mobile release! - Fix wrong icon for deep cleanser during cooldown - Make level 10 slightly easier - Fixed first part of all sfx being played incorrectly
v1.05 - Add DPI tracking to make the game a bit easier on large screens (e.g. tablets) - Replace music with new soothing lullaby-like tunes - Add deep cleanser soap, used specifically for extra-dirty meowmies - Extra-dirty meowmies are now very difficult to clean without deep cleanser - Rework dirty meowmie visuals to make it more obvious when meowmies are dirty vs. clean - Rework levels and difficulty again - Add another tutorial with a tip to use larger circular motions - Make soap tutorial wait until you manage to actually get a good current going - Add a visual effect when soap cooldown is done - More performance enhancements - Fixed saved progress going backwards when you replay earlier levels (oops) - Added an ending screen once you beat level 10 - Reduced the awkward delay before fading to the gameover screen - Slightly increase the circle radius for the washing/scrubbing tutorial - Slightly tweak when the background water swirls (requires a circular motion now) - Slightly reduce volume of meowmie swipe meow sounds - Change menu confirmation sound to a softer woodblock sound
v1.04 - Reworked the tutorial to make some concepts more clear - Game over now triggers when meowmie count > 30, instead of being based on a timer - Reworked levels and tuned difficulty, taking the new game over condition into account - Made soap swirling require less motion (especially for large touchscreens) - Improved swipe handling (should lead to less missed meowmies when swiping) - Added a credits screen - Added a pause button and pause screen (allows you to quit mid-game) - Fixed level 4 button taking you back to the main menu - Fixed most sound effects having a slight delay at the beginning - Replace cheesy "bling" sound for drying finished with nicer pitched bell sounds - Small performance improvements
v1.03 - Adjusted difficulty of later levels to be a bit easier
v1.02 - Many more performance improvements - Fix meowmies being affected by soap even before dropping - Fix meowmie limb glitching sometimes during gameover
v1.01 - Fix some serious performance issues with the soap particles - Fix music not looping properly - Fix some slight text color mistakes - Add version number on the title screen
v1.00 - First release ```
Ratings
| Overall | 23th | 4.199⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 89th | 3.859⭐ | 94🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 75th | 3.902⭐ | 94🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 82th | 4.134⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 17th | 4.57⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 6th | 4.366⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 54th | 3.961⭐ | 92🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 28th | 4.178⭐ | 89🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 40🗨️ |
I also feel like the "swipe controls" for taking the cats off the drying rack isn't consistent with its response at all. I tried this in earlier levels of the post compo version, and it seems like even if I wait for all the cats on a full rack to dry and swipe to the right, making sure my cursor is on all the cats, all but like two or three get picked up most of the time. And this, in later levels, makes things extremely irritating because you'll have to swipe twice or three times when the cats have all fully dried because the game doesn't recognize that I swiped across the screen to try and pick up all the cats for some reason?
The indication that the bathtub was about to explode also felt somewhat strange because it seems like there's a delay once the kittens pile on, rather than the bathtub exploding the moment a kitten is added. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that I was cleaning cats and none were coming down and then all of a sudden, the tub just combusts.
The art style is pretty cute, and I love the calming colour palette. I also enjoyed the sound effects - you always make such nice chiptune-ish cat noises that make those animals 10x more adorable, I swear. I like what was done with the music, too, what with the chiptune arps kicking in whenever you swirl to the music getting faster and more intense when your bathtub starts to run out of space. If anything, I guess the music was a bit repetitious, but I'm guessing this was done because it's affected by what you do or what happens in the game. This kind of composition wasn't really what I would expect from a game like this either. But it's fine for what it is.
Given the screen size, I can only imagine that this will become a phone game, and I'd certainly be interested in seeing how that would play out. This really seems like it would play a lot better with a touchscreen.
Some of the later levels are still a bit more hectic than we'd like; still working on toning that down.
Good call on the swiping detection! Especially at lower frame rates it indeed drops inputs, the next version will have improved behavior for that.
You're also 100% right on the game over behavior! Right now it's based on a timer that starts counting down once you have over 25 meowmies, but aside from the shaking growing more intense over time, that's pretty much invisible/nonobvious to the player. We're changing the entire system so it bursts once you get over a certain number of meowmies, and reworking the levels around that. We're also redoing the tutorial a bit to communicate that more clearly.
We've also been already testing (and bugfixing) on mobile -- hopefully we will get that submitted sometime in the near future!
I have rated your game, but all of my feedback was captured in the stream. It was in the middle.
You can hear my comments in the archive at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/299357576?t=01h56m01s
I found it very adorable.
Althought at first I thought it was a nice relaxing game until I got to level 5 when all of a sudden the difficulty curve just mounts :smile_cat:
It looks awesome and feels almost like meditation but a little more game mechanics or events would make it a little more challenging and intresting
It seems you paid a lot of attention to making the game feel juicy and polished and it paid off, awesome job!
PS: No team I know of could make this game without constant, immature jokes. Respect on still finishing it. :innocent:
Balance between washing and putting them up to dry is fun. The added soap is good, but perhaps one or two more tools to help with the kittenscubbing could help make it feel more complete.
I also playd the Post-Compo version. I really like all the changes and improvements that you made, well done! Especially the more detailed tutorial and visual clues are nice. I managed to finish this version of the game. :smiley:
The sound is also great at providing cues for the various state changes that need to be managed. The art has many nice details as well, for example I love the way the water looks, with the flat layers at first, but then the round circle when I'm cleaning correctly.
I played the compo version first, and hit a wall at level 5. I eventually forced my way through. I'll try to detail a few of the points of struggle, in case that is interesting.
I lost a few times trying to experiment with different modes of scrubbing, trying back-and-forth rapidly instead of around in a circle, for example. Or concentrating in a small area rather than spreading it all around. I didn't really learn much from these experiments, and it felt a little un-transparent to me when/if I was being more/less effective. Eventually I returned to the round-and-round and didn't concentrate on any specific cats, and I finally bulled my way through to level 6.
That rabbit-hole of experimentation aside, the place where I still lose time is definitely the moment where I transition from scrubbing to clicking the clean cats. For example, in this moment here: https://imgur.com/b4XCwJD I have a hard time visually parsing and then hitting the target. It's not that it's unclear or unfair or anything, it's just that this becomes the hole in my game where I leak time. My strategy for handling it became spam-clicking indiscriminately and trying to wait until I had a few extra clean cats to move into that mode. But that might explain why I struggled to get through the full compo game.
I went back to check out the changes, and was able to beat the post-compo version from the start without any game overs. Without really understanding the rules for cats becoming clean I simply obeyed the instruction to use broad circular motions in one direction. I think another nice aspect was making it cat-count based instead of time-based.
This is a cool attention-splitter game that balances a nicely conflicted feeling of relaxing panic. The post-comp version better achieves that mix, whereas by my fifth retry of level 5 I was no longer chill.
Really nice entry.
Have fun out there!
@g11: Yay, meowmies <3
@papaver: Thanks for trying both versions of our game! Seems that we did something right with the post-jam changes!
@pkenney: Thank you for your detailed write-up! Seems that level 5 in the compo version is generally agreed upon to be the place where things get hairy. Not being clear about how to scrub the meowmies is something that we also realized we needed to be more clear about in the post-compo version, as that could make a pretty big difference. I'm glad you were able to finish the new version, and that it achieves a better balance in those things! Thanks for playing :)
:thumbsup: This game was super cute! The graphics and sound effects created a very pleasant feeling. The music was awesome, and fit in perfectly, it was cute while I was relaxing washing some cats, and then got intense as I started **running out of space**.
:point_right: The gameplay was not super novel, as it played similar to the mobile game "ideal form." The victory image was a bit rougher than the graphics for the rest of the game, but I guess that's a good use of your time, since only a few people are likely to play that far.
:question: Will the Meowmies continue? (If so I hope they stay cute, this experience was a lot more rewarding than Goodnight Meowmie.)
:star: Overall great job. Thank you for making this!
I am really gonna scrape the barrel to find things I'd improve on because I try and always leave some kind of constructive critique in my reviews and I'm struggling, so I'll say: I think maybe it could do with some level based gameplay elements that mix up the design.
Fantastic entry guys!
If I had to find something to be improved: I had a little difficulty telling when the extra dirty kittens were finished being extra dirty in the end levels, when you were sure to have cats of varying stages of grunge.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to subject all my non-developer games to this cuteness overload.
Played through the whole thing. My finger hurts but it was worth every second. I'm not sure this is a good way to be bathing kitties IRL but in game form it melted my heart. From graphics to music, sound effects and gameplay, transitions and tutorial… It was just… a complete game. The only thing really differentiating it from a fully fledged non-jam game would be a lack of additional levels, TBH. Absolutely top notch. Besides being physically exhausting to play I really can't say anything negative about this! Fantastic work. 😍
Complete the game (beat level 10).. :thumbsup:
Overall really cute and well suited addition for mobile game.
Aesthetically I'm getting this vibe its got this physics charm similar to like the Disney Tsum Tsum mobile game. :dizzy:
Optional Suggestions:
- For mobile: somehow have option to shake mobile device to dry the Meowmies ("Shake/Wave to Dry"), or blow to the microphone to air dry..
or when circle touch gesture to give a bath a whirl, you could further spin by Accelerometer/tilt on device to mimick stronger faster wash cycle.
- looking forward to see if you'll come up with thematic seasonal promotional themes:
- Holiday (Halloween, Christmas, etc..)
- Android Anniversary
Cute! :star2: