Keep It Up Kitty by richjbaron
https://games-by-rjb.itch.io/keep-it-up-kitty
Launch balloons into the sky to keep your cat afloat while helping them grab tasty treats. But beware! Birds, lightning, and gravity are all trying to hurt your precious tiny baby. Keep them safe and go for the highest score you can!
My entry for Ludum Dare 56, I got the idea while trying to come up with a game design and my cat kept jumping on my lap haha. I figured cats are tiny critters in their own right, and this simple game is meant as a cute twist on the game we used to play as kids with leftover party balloons. Hope you enjoy!
GAMEPLAY:
Launch balloons to stop your cat from falling thru the bottom of the screen
Knock treats into your cat to increase your score, and to fill up your treat meter
Once you have 5 treats in your treat meter, you'll gain an extra life
Hitting birds and/or lightning will make you lose a life
CONTROLS:
mb left - click or click and drag to launch balloons
'm' - mutes audio
SCREENSHOTS:
My high score :) 1.48 billion
Ratings
| Overall | 178th | 3.478⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 185th | 3.306⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 217th | 3.086⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 300th | 2.726⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 104th | 3.796⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 50th | 3.837⭐ | 94🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 115th | 3.293⭐ | 89🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 108th | 3.61⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 18🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
The pixel art graphics were probably my favorite part of the game - the gameplay was a bit generic but its very impressive that you made a complete game!
Specifically, I still don't really get the number at the top---it seems to be my altitude or something, but also my score? I seem to get the highest number by just letting the cat fall, which is definitely not the intended gameplay... The treats also looked too much like gears to me, so I was confused about what to do with them (I think those are treats, right?)
it is your score. you're probably spamming balloons too much bc they cost points. It's a mechanic to prevent balloon spamming since that's the obvious way to prevent the cat from falling and dying. It's possible to score >1,000,000
Maybe too messy with displaying treats, but showing HP around the cat - nice trick!
gameplay is clean and satisfying. I like it a lot
The game is pretty challenging which makes me want to keep playing.
I got far enough that the background transitioned to night time which I thought was a really cool touch.
Overall very good.
I do wonder what happens if you collect enough treats--I could never get more than one or two before the meter reset
my score:
The gameplay is nice, but a bit too challenging for me when played with a mouse. Maybe, as someone else also suggested, you could try to lower the gravity, so the game would require you to shoot balloons less often, allowing you to focus / think more when to shoot. Right now the best strategy seems to be spamming balloons just to be kept afloat :)
The audio and graphics are wonderful, the game has a nice relaxing/casual mood.
Congrats on this great entry! You should release it on mobile stores, players will love it!
this was good man!
It's a bit hard to play with the touchpad, especially on a small screen as you can't really fit the whole screen in there.
It's far from being easy, considering that you are not supposed to spam the balloons and sometimes those treats are really getting in the way at the wrong time :smile:
Cool entry!
@designernap high scores happens to be a native feature of gamemaker haha, so that one barely requires any work from my part :)
Enjoyed this little crazy ballonfest for a fair bit!
Pixel art is my jam (uh uh), so I loved the cute cat and balloons. Well done <3
I think i need to try this again on my cell phone..
really cosy game
