FurBall by Plutonium Powered
STORY
An adventurous housecat breaks free for some wandering in the wild... It's all fun and games until someone's paws get wet—or worse! Lucky for kitty, bears in the wild are inventive and kind. Use your racket to prevent this reckless furball from losing its nine lives by volleying it out of treacherous landscapes and getting it to safety.
CONTROLS
WASDE = jump, left, underhand swing, right, overhand swing
OR
Arrow keys = left, right, jump Forward slash "/" = underhand swing Period "." = overhand swing
NOTE: hold the overhand swing to charge up power!
TITLE ART

| Youtube | https://plutoniumpowered.itch.io/ld46 |
| Youtube | https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oQgLjIJUxVu1YDogVLbJ04jX-k3XS02q |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/furball |
Ratings
| Overall | 1927th | 3.18⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1682th | 3.1⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1702th | 3.042⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1548th | 3.5⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1106th | 3.712⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 1033th | 3.22⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 466th | 3.543⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1300th | 3.357⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 12🗨️ |
The problem with this one in my mind is that its just not that fun, with most of the game being spent waiting for the cat to fall back down. Levels also took a long time
Controls were odd, WASD + space would make it very easy to play with one hand. My entire left hand was dedicated to one button.
Also, it didnt seem to make a difference whether you caught it or not. Bug?
I didn't like the controls you picked though. Seemed very non traditional. I would stick with classics as PolyPickle mentioned.
The "charge" didn't appear to have much of an impact to me also.
After a while the gameplay loop gets a touch stale, but limited time to make it so whatcha gonna do.
Good job!
When I was able to keep a cat up, it usually got caught in the far right side of the screen which gave me very little time to dodge the birds. Maybe making the cats bounce the direction the bear is facing would help with this, or randomize the direction. In any case, it's a good jam entry! Good job!
I played all the time on the far right side of the screen because the direction I was facing when hitting the kitten didn't seem to have an effect and it was always going on the right until it bumbed into the edge. Maybe that is something I would improve.
All in all it's quite fun.
With a few more elements, it could be a mobile game, imho.
I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen but if you spam jump you will actually do a double jump and go outside the screen. I believe maybe you could fix it in your ground checking function. I've had this problem myself many times hehe :)
Overall pretty fun game, well done!