Cat in the Bag by JoshH
Cat in the Bag is the world's first adventure game from the perspective of a cat in the main character's inventory.
Or maybe not, we didn't check.
As the main character in an adventure game your owner is, of course, doomed--but hopefully you can delay the inevitable at least long enough for them to feed you.
Ratings
| Given | 93🗳️ | 129🗨️ |
get someone to hire you asap ,you have talent
A complaint not related to the game itself exactly, but if I click out from the game I can't seem to get it to focus / capture keyboard input again. I have to refresh the whole page (and start over) for the spacebar to advance the text once more. That should be something you're allowed to fix if you can figure out how. (EDIT: I'm on Windows/Chrome if that matters.)
Some of the dialogue made me confused exactly what it was asking for, but after some trial and error I managed to get through. 👍
- It would be nice if you could select an item and then confirm it as separate actinos, because right now I ruined a run by accidentally missclicking a number. Could also use that selection phase to say a little bit more about the item, like inspecting the item or something.
- It was a bit hard to understand why I lost at times. The narration was too broad, I didn't understand what happened.
Overall, game looks cute and is quite funny! Kudos!
I didn't saw many of games like this one in the jam, lots of reading! I'll be later calmly trying to avoid death of my human, fantastic work! :v:
Some feedback I can give is to add a sound effect to the dialogue text animation to make it seem like the characters are talking.
Also it would be cool if spacebar made the text in the dialogue show up fully first instead of continuing and only when it was fully shown to make spacebar continue.
The gameplay itself is possibly the weak link here, but only insofar as there is so much more potential. The connection between the object chosen and the way the scenario plays out seemed a bit arbitrary at some points, and the puzzle-solving was not too satisfying as a result. I know fully how impossible it is planning out detailed decision trees and dialogue managers, but I think this game needs it to fully execute on the concept. Even in the very first encounter, why doesn't Dracula kill all the Llamas? Why do the Tiger shark and the squid soup succeed where the needle fails? Another interesting element I expected but missed was that some tools may be useful in more than one encounter. So, if I use it during the first one, I can't use it during the third. Maybe even new tools that are found in previous encounters based on how they are approached.
That, however, is a criticism that comes with the selfish desire to play through a more fleshed out version. I wanna read more of your writing and play through a more expansive game where I take my human on an adventure! With more dialogue trees, more impact for my actions, more varied storylines, and endings. (Full disclosure, my human died every time. I got through three scenarios and then he fell down the stairs. Not sure if I missed an easter egg that would've kept him going, I really wanted the big man to survive)
Yes, totally agree about branching dialogue. Our hopes and dreams list looks a lot like your suggestions, heh.
The good: The art is great. The sound is great and fits the style. The dialogue is clever and funny. Its intuitive and a fun little game.
The art style was absolutely beautiful, I really liked it :)
The story was also cool and funny.
One criticism I have is that for me the text speed was much too slow. However, you can't skip to the end of the sentence, because if you hit space it starts the next sentence instead of completing the current one. This would be a small fix that would make the game much more enjoyable for me :)
Oh, and the bit where there was no ending is a known bug, but it's intermittent, sorry.
Unique and interesting idea with beautiful art.
It appeared to softlock during the ending sequence, though according to other bits of feedback this is quasi-intentional. I enjoyed the game!
I don't know if this is a bug or not but in the story they spoke of items that were found or gained however, no new items appeared in the inventory.
Appreciate the kind feedback!
Jokes apart, loved the art and the dialogues. Really fun!
But I have to adimit I'd rather click the itens instead of choosing numbers from the keyboard.
I had a bug at the ending where the text would simply disappears :o
Anyway, good job, it's a nice little game :D
I really missed having mouse input!
Great work!
Very cute art and fun little game.
-Tim
Strengths:
- Visually gorgeous, and great main theme
- Fun writing, full of surprises
- Easy to pick up and have fun through the various endings
Possible improvements:
- Pressing space allows you to skip the current sentence, but I would have loved to be able to have a button to display to current sentence immediately (think text scrolling in Pokemon games).
All in all, great game!
Spoilers:
The human dies no matter what, as befits the theme. If we expand it outside of LD we might give him a slim chance to live, but no promises.
As people already said, would be nice to be able to select with mouse/touch, and maybe be able to have a confirm button with a small "explanation" of the selected item
Great job!
That aside, I LOVE the concept, humour, music and art style. Top marks for sure. Would love to see this expanded further and I'll be checking back for a bugfixed version ^^
Super charming. I appreciated (per discussion) that there are multiple solutions to each moment, so the player is more likely to feel smart/rewarded and less likely to get into the "ok I'm just reloading until I figure out what the designers wanted" cycle. Also means you can still play after watching someone else play and have a satisfying experience if you know there's more than one solution.
Cute cat sprites :3 wish the cat wasn't covered by the darkened overlay during dialogue.
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1450143040?t=8h39m32s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
We hope in the next iteration to give more hints and, crucially, individualized text for each of the items.
Want more!
Good game!
This was really cute, a nice idea, I really liked the graphics and animations of the kitty, so cute 🥺
Also, the old cat bard narrator, lol so cute and funny.
A really nice, fun game! Good job guys!!
Here's a bunch of little things I would love to see if you were to continue to work on it :)
(but just minor things, really impressive content for only 3 days!)
Okay, here goes:
1. I would make Demos way bigger, like scale him all the way up (with a padding to the sides obviously :)) but next to all the items so he is more visible, since he's the main character, extremely cute and from time to time you realize you haven't looked at hime for a while :3
2. It would be nice if the text animations were skipable, some of us read quite fast ;D (so not skip the entire text, but just the writing animation)
3. Upon prompting to choose an Item, it would be nice if the current situation would get a little summary instead of just "choose an item" for example: What kind of item are you giving Sir Spaciouspants (hilarious btw lol) to defeat/distract/get away unharmed from the cannibal shorthair llamas?" or something like that :)
4. Although the stories were really charming and cute, I feel like there could be a liiiittle more context with the items chosen :) So like maybe add a bunch of hints within the story so the player must be a little Sherlock to figure things out (this probably is a bit hard to do with a gamejam deadline)
5. Minor UX thing, but: I would start with 1 and not 0, since zero is next to 9 :3
6. Would have loved if new items would have popped up (whenever the story said they did) you probably just didn't have time for this, but it would be so cool if you continued to work on it and then there's even more routes :D
7. it would be really cool, if there maybe was a change of scene (so like a drawing of, say, the mountains or something) to get a bit of a glimpse of the outside world :) think that would be really cool in that cute drawing style
btw, I really loved the FMA and Shovel knight references, hehe. (or did I just imagine that? xD)
well done team :)
All in all, it was a fun playthrough and a pleasant surprise!
P.S. Seen recording of playing my game, Decay Season. Thanks. You gave interesting point.
Graphics and music were well done. A bit of humor in the dialogue, although maybe less dialogue would have been nice.
A bit confused that even though I thought I should have won, my human still died. After reading through the comments I get that this was your intention, but still might have been nice to have a way to win.
Appreciate your thoughts, thanks for checking our game out!
The concept is really neat (cat inside a bag of holding who gets to choose what to give the adventurer). I liked the variety of wacky items available in the bag, although I wish there were more scenarios written out for them (I would expect more extreme reactions to someone pulling out an entire shark, for instance). That said, game jam timelines are tight.
I will say that for similar games I've made for jams I've found it useful to put the dialog into text files parsed by the game. This means the writers can create, test, and modify the script without it being a bottleneck for the programmer. Not sure if this would have helped you get more writing in or not!
The art was fantastic, especially the characters. The UI was mostly nice --- my one gripe is the number keys for selecting items, and particularly the fact they're labeled in the top right corner which sometimes led me to hit the wrong one. I'd personally put the number above or closer to the center so it's very clear which number goes to which item (and maybe put 0 at the end since that's how it's laid out on the keyboard).
The dialog was nice and had a lot of character! Other than the fact that it would have been better with more content (as would all jam games), I don't have much criticism here.
The music was very pleasant! Simple sound effects for the UI would have been nice.
Great work for 72 hours and congratulations to the members of the team for whom this is the first Ludum Dare!