PuffyCats by Iacopo

[raw]
made by Iacopo for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

IMG_3148.PNG

(Play fullscreen for a better experience)

Help feed your fellow kittens by shooting bouncy pufferfish at them!

Each furry friend has a unique color preference, so aim carefully to match their appetite.

Score points with each successful delivery, or by throwing pufferfish at pesky seagulls.

But beware: some pufferfish have special abilities that can either help or hinder your mission.

Keep an eye on the leaderboard to see if you can reach the top 5 Puffy Cats!

COMMANDS:

-A or D to move your cat.

-Left mouse click to choose arrow strength and then release to shoot.

-ESC or SPACE to open the pause menu from which you can check the leaderboard.

Note: If you don't see the updated leaderboard after submitting your score at the end of the game, simply start a new game and check the leaderboard from the pause menu. It should be updated by then.

TEAM MEMBERS:

-itsLizzyArt - Art

-icyyw - Sounds

-Iacopo - Game Design and Programming

-MicheleLeva - Game Design and Programming

Thank you for checking out our game, we hope you had fun! Feel free to leave a comment! :)

Ratings

Overall 390th 3.75⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 452th 3.575⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 328th 3.65⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 838th 3.625⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 111th 4.45⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 252th 3.778⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Humor 334th 3.5⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 662th 3.447⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 11🗳️ 8🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 356534
02. May 2023 · 16:41 UTC
Hey, it may be marked as unfinished, but it really plays like a complete game :)
Love the graphics and everything and loved playing the game. Even though it made me sad to see some cats go unfed :(
MicheleLeva
02. May 2023 · 16:56 UTC
@philocode It actually is a finished game. I forgot to set it as Jam like a total noob :( Thank you for playing the game though, we appreciate it.
BezedH
02. May 2023 · 17:10 UTC
Nice game! art is beautiful, the cat are super cute and would fit nice with our little mouse :D simple but fun and intuitive, i think the woosh audio effect of the arrow (or needle? ) is a but too strong and distractive !
MisterKeefe
02. May 2023 · 17:11 UTC
This is a really cute game, nice job :grin:
LDJam user 196812
02. May 2023 · 17:12 UTC
Cute! Especially love the art, the cats, fisherman, and backgrounds look amazing
BmanStudio
02. May 2023 · 17:12 UTC
Very nice and cute game! It took me a minute or so to understand the mechanics, but then I started gaining points (crossed 2K points haha). It feels however like I did mistakes sometimes, but the game didn't panished me enough for it. It felt like the game will keep going even if I will shoot randomly. Awesome game overall!
Game-mon
02. May 2023 · 17:13 UTC
Cool game! Great visuals. Liked the gameplay a lot, too. Great you had time to add a leaderboard!
Blueanoli
02. May 2023 · 17:13 UTC
This is one of the best entries I've played so far! Love the art style, love the music...and of course I love cats!
Iqoribou
02. May 2023 · 17:13 UTC
Very cool entry, looks very polished, but i feel the gameplay itself could use a bit of a redesign, i feel the game is a bit hard/confusing.
Diamyn_V
02. May 2023 · 17:15 UTC
a great and cute game! love the graphics! SFX could be more diversified but otherwise amazing job!
dk5000p
02. May 2023 · 17:18 UTC
Lots of fun. The leaderboard didn't seem to update for me, but still enjoyed feeding the cats and it played well.
manogugas
02. May 2023 · 17:19 UTC
looks really good and plays it too, a bit hard to hit the right fish to the right cat but with a bit of luck is manageable. Mostly i was just shooting randomly and just after some time noticed that the cats want something specific to eat. The game is polished but needs a few tweaks to readability to make it clear for the player which cat wants which fish and some hints in gameplay even though there are instructions. Overall a great game
MicheleLeva
02. May 2023 · 17:28 UTC
@dk5000p Yes the leaderboard on WebGL is sadly not perfect, if you start another game and check it from the Pause Menu (ESC or SPACE) you should see it updated.
LDJam user 356534
02. May 2023 · 17:36 UTC
@micheleleva In this case, it is even better :D
One of the best games I have seen in this jam :)
🎤 Iacopo
02. May 2023 · 19:29 UTC
@bmanstudio thank you very much! We tried to face the problem of "you can just shoot randomly", but it is not an easy enemy to defeat!! From an external perspective, do you have any suggestions on how to tackle it?



@iqoribou There are a lot of unexplored design paths we can take, we might indeed redesign a bit the gameplay after the jam. We went the "mayhem" path since a complete redesign would have taken too long.

if it's not too much to ask, during your playtest did you come up with some interesting ways that could rework the gameplay? (even completely!)



@manogugas I personally agree with the readability issue, and it was a mistake on my side to overlook it a bit in the design phase. I apologize if it has compromised the fun of the game D: I hope you still had fun though



@philocode We are sad too that the cats went unfed, we nearly changed the whole winning conditions to a game where you had to feed N cats as fast as you can to win. A time attack game. Maybe it would have been a better choice? Who knows, we might prototype it! Thank you for your love :D



@bezedh Thank you, noted, the audio effect will be equalized or changed with something more subtle (post-jam) I hope you and your mouse stick around for more :)



@misterkeefe @connorgrail Thank you both for your kind words :D Do you have any suggestions?



@thomas-bringer Thanks, it took a lot of caffeine to implement the leaderboard xD We're glad you enjoyed it.



@blueanoli We love cats too. We serve cats. As it should be. (No cat is threatening me while I'm writing this)



@diamyn-v Thanks! We have loads of SFX for this game in our assets, we had to remove some because it was too chaotic xD But we'll try the best of our ability to add more in the future



@dk5000p Thank you very much, we're very happy that you had a good time and we apologize for the leaderboard issue, if restarting the game does not show it you can message me and I will add your score on the server ( this could be your ticket to the first spot xD )
BmanStudio
02. May 2023 · 20:07 UTC
I would start a new scene and use/modify the existing code to build a new balanced level design system which allows the player to focus on just a few targets at a time, or make it increasingly go crazier, but just once the player has good control of the mechanics.
Good luck!
WeirdBitGames
03. May 2023 · 21:47 UTC
Very cool. I like this game a lot! Though I don't think I quite got the hang of it. It felt like I was firing randomly a lot of the time. Cute cats, cute sounds. That makes this a win for me!
PotatoCouch
06. May 2023 · 00:45 UTC
This is a nice game, I really liked it. It's quite challenging as well, my personal best score was only 520. Also, small detail, I really appreciate the music not being set to the maximum possible value at game start, every game should do this, it's so annoying when I boot up a newly purchased steam game and have to immediately go into the settings to adjust the sound volume.
Gardenovena
06. May 2023 · 00:53 UTC
Beautiful visuals and audio, as others have said! I really like the idea for this game, I had fun and eventually got a score I was happy with.

It was definitely a bit tricky to get a hang of, I'm not sure if I ever did. I really like the concept, but I started to get a bit frustrated because I felt like I couldn't reliably hit anything. I think this is mainly because of the lamp and those darn seagulls. I don't think it's a bad idea to involve those as obstacles to increase the difficulty, but perhaps a bit intense to throw those in from the start.

The aiming mechanic is interesting enough, especially with those puffers bouncing around, I think those together are a tricky-but-satisfying challenge. The gulls being moving obstacles doesn't really gel with that dynamic, in my opinion—typically with moving obstacles, you want to skillfully wait for an opening, but when the puffers you're aiming at are franticly wiggling about, the player has to calculate more variables at an unfeasible speed, so at least for myself, I ended up just aiming and praying.

I'd be curious to play a version of this that lets the player get some practice without those to start, I really like the concept and theming, and overall really enjoyed this game!