Awesome!

Interesting use of the theme, and a solid mechanic for a puzzle-platformer! The puzzles in this are nicely designed, though it is frustrating that you are sometimes able to softlock yourself, as some of the later levels are decently long.

As an aside, I played the web embed version and the music worked fine. Did you possibly fix the issue but forget to update your description text to reflect that?

I beat it in 512s, but I'm pretty sure I used an unintended solution or two :)

I love to see a new platformer mechanic that I've never seen before, great job!

@maybeagoose Thanks!

@python-b5 Thank you! Ye, softlocks become kind of the unintentional mechanic with two different total timers one counts resets and other doesn't.

Yes, i just fixed and was updating description. Timing!

@frogtownmatt It's quite quicker than my testers were able to do it first try! 👍
Thanks! Perhaps not so unintended 😏

This game within a game is very surprising... I didn't expect that... I like the graphics in this style too... cool

I love the cat design and how long it is when moving :D
Strong use of the water as a mechanic which makes for some fun and challenging puzzles. Well designed and fun!

banger game, I really enjoyed playing it

funny game and watch mood

Very nice, polished and I enjoyed the puzzles. They werent overly easy, but could be done in a minute, which is perfect for LD jam

Love the animation on the cat. Almost makes me want to bounce him for the heck of it ;)

Great mechanic, though towards the end the levels became a bit repetitive. That might also be a result of this being a jam game; it's hard to add complexity in 72hrs. Would be fun to explore this puzzle concept further, with some extra twists on the core idea.

Aside from the lack of diversity in the puzzle solutions, this feels polished. Great work in so little time.


I really enjoyed these puzzles. The mechanics are clever, and the difficulty curve just right. Great game!

It took me some time to realize that the difference between the box and the key leads to the solution, really good mechanics.

The cat animation is great. Puzzles are good. Nice variety of mechanics. Minor frustration was not knowing which item I would pick up when they were close together.

Really nice puzzle game! I like the virtual console design and being able to press the actual buttons with the mouse is a great touch! It also has a really nice variety.

WATER CAT! I really enjoyed it. Mind-blowing moment when I realized you could throw items while the cat is bouncing on water (which is also hilarious, by the way). It took me a bit longer to finish the game because once I discovered that, I just had fun playing with the mechanic. I even managed to clip through a wall, speedrun strat, except I got stuck after doing it haha. By the way, I also loved the fact that I could just throw a key into a door and it would unlock a lock, small detail that added quite a bit of fun for me, I found myself stopping just before the doors to have Water Cat hit a keyhole with a key from afar.



(READABLE) Solid puzzle game, loved the mechanic. Great job!

Nice game! Loved the cat animation on water hahaha Took me a few to fully understand the mechanics but when I did was a smooth gameplay! Congrats on your entry!

The penultimate level made me think a bit, nice audio and style! Good job!

Super well done, really enjoyed playing this. Style is great and the throw prediction arcs are super helpful.

I am loving the mechanic of this little puzzle game. I'm not sure if I've seen something like that, but the overall execution and the (most importantly) gameplay is top notch. This is the most important thing in a game and IMHO it works very well. I especially liked the reasoning - cat dislikes water (obviously!), and therefore it jumps over it, and the funny graphical representation of it. Awesome.

If I had to nitpick - there are very small things to point at. First, the tutorial is spread, but I'm not sure on the order of the key introductions. The R (reset) key should be communicated right at the beginning, because it was possible for me to get stuck before it was shown to me that I could reset (to be fair, there was info about it on the page). The other thing is the minor graphical inconsistencies in resolution: some text is hi-res, some lo-res, the button on the right pixelated vs the in-game graphics. IMHO consistency would make this game even better.

As I've said though, these are minor things and the game already feels pretty great. Awesome work, congrats!

Super solid and polished game - especially impressive for a jam! The cat’s animation is absolutely charming.

This poor cat! Had to be drenched over and over again to make progress! I found the levels a bit repetitive after a while, but I really enjoyed the polish, and you can even play just with mouse by clicking on the buttons! Super impressive!

Nice game, good job!

Loved the cat animation! :joy:

Surprisingly complex games from simple mechanics. Liked the retro style.

Clever and funny take on the theme. Nice puzzles. This is my favorite entry so far!

Love the fact that self-torture is required to complete most of the levels.

Cool that you managed to make so many levels and come up with a unique puzzle mechanic. Very nice.
At some point, it got a bit repetitive but still very enjoyable.

@piero-pbes-studio Thank you!

@ansible Thanks! The cat is a longboi. Or longgirl. Longcat anyway !

@sangheli I am quite fond of it, can't you tell :-)

@jadener Thank you, I also feel this is an appropriate amount of time for a GameJam.

@mikemikemakes Thank you, yes, it's result of a jam, but we are all under that time constrain and it's part of the fun!

@ghettobastler Thanks and appreciate posting results!

@drfoxxx Thank you and i actually wrote a post about non text communication about difference between box and key here it is if you want to read it: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/game-and-physics-water-cat/the-things-i-learned-during-this-jam-part-2

@harmadillo Thanks, its something I struggled with, not wanting to create more complexity in controls. There is a priority system that in theory should prioritize certain items (per level) but it's not entirely reliable unfortunately.

@larsievl Thank you, I was not sure if I would be able to make control with mouse/touch possible in time, but managed it.

@leparlon Thanks and I appreciate you posting the results!

@willianfhs Thank you, do you by any chance remember what was not clear?

@a0405u Thanks, i quite like this level specifically and even wrote about it in this post if you interested :
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/game-and-physics-water-cat/the-things-i-learned-during-this-jam-part-2

@gordo-mcschnordo Thank you, yes, playing without arcs is frustrating, so they were implemented very early.

@yancharkin Thanks!

@carraka and @zettelkasten Thanks, I was afraid that this aspect would come out as mean or even sadistic and not humorous, but i think in the end animation and retro sound effects helped to make it right.

@deformhead @oliver-day Thank you.

@prvaak WOW, thank you, I am flattered!

@marudziik Thank you and I really appreciate your detailed feedback with constructive criticism.
Yes, the R tutorial really should be earlier, it's possible to softlock yourself before this information is shown, my plan was to mitigate it by making a softlock detection system, it would light up the reset button (on device) and highlight text (R - RESET also on device) but unfortunately I ran out of time and didn't implement it. And i do agree, game could be more visually coherent.

Also i want to specifically comment about repetitive feel that @zettelkasten, @carraka and @mikemikemakes mentioned. I do think that more mechanics could have made the game and levels more enjoyable, i feel there is a certain lack of variety of mechanics, perhaps? 🤔
I also think that part of it is that I maybe put too much attention in hammering mechanics through level design and overdid it, I wrote a blog post about it here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/game-and-physics-water-cat/the-things-i-learned-during-this-jam-part-2

Maybe this feeling could be somewhat mitigated if game had less levels, since some of them have similarity between them and also some levels take much more time to beat (even if you try yo speedrun, when you know solutions) comparative to others.

Thank you all for feedback!

Really cool puzzle game. Enjoyed it a lot. Simple graphics that fit the game perfectly. Good work!

I love the puzzles, the difficulty rises perfectly with every level, which is very motivating. The graphics are a bit too minimalistic for my taste but work perfectly for this kind of game.

This is a really well-constructed game! The mechanics are simple but creative, and there were some pretty cool little puzzles. I also like that after you solve the puzzles, the focus on speedrunning adds another layer to replays. It's like two games in one. Love the fake retro console too :)

I thought some of the puzzles were a little basic, even near the end. It makes sense that they shouldn't be too time-consuming, in order to facilitate speedrunning, but I never felt like there were "clever" solutions to any of them - I kind of just threw things onto each button as I needed them, and everything worked out. I don't think you necessarily need any new mechanics to make them more interesting - just try to think of out-of-the-box ways the player could interact with the game systems. It's definitely tricky to design puzzles that are both interesting to solve and able to be done fast, but I'm sure you can do it! (To help with that, I would suggest increasing the speed of changing water levels/floating objects. It's sluggish right now and gets in the way of the speedrunning.)

In general though, this is a really concise package that does a great job at integrating multiple styles of play - that's not too common in jam games, which tend to be one-trick ponies. Nice work!

Really enjoyed the puzzles, and the mechanics worked really well together. Considering how much time you have to spend floating in the water maybe it would be good if the cat was easier to control when in water and just swam along the top? Other than that a great great with good potential for even more levels and mechanics :)

Cute little game! Glad I saw your comment on mine with enough time to play yours and give it a rating! I really enjoyed it! Puzzles seemed pretty well thought out, nice difficulty curve. Cute pixel art, even had animation for when you were moving and jumping out of the water.

I'm nowhere near the top score, but I didn't have to restart, so that's got to count for something, right? :rofl:

Great job!


Commenting after the rating ended, but thankfully, you had more than enough ratings already. :slight_smile: Not sure if there's something I can say that hasn't been said before, so I will just say that this game was super easy for me to pick up and the amount of levels here is pretty amazing for the jam game. And I absolutely loved the animation of the cat in the water, it's super fun just to look at it, haha!

Difficulty scaled up very reasonably and as some people mentioned above - levels in general were on the easier side, but at the same time, that's what I really prefer when playing jam games. So, well done and congratulations for your score!