Devlog #1 - Of Cats and Jams

Cat Island is a game about photography, exploration, and cats. From the very beginning, it was a big idea; an open world with photography scoring mechanics, diverse cat AI, and beautiful art inspired by our favourite cozy-style games. Much of our work at Team 8 since Game Jam #2 has been refining our ideas and incorporating feedback from our pitch presentation this past Tuesday.

Our biggest failure in Game Jam #2 was integration. Once time was up, we had many prepared 2D, 3D, and Audio assets that we simply didn't have the time to integrate. Our team is light on programmers and heavy on artists and musicians (reflecting the content-driven nature of Cat Island), so more attention will need to go to this.

Our completed tasks and ongoing objectives are listed below. But a major goal that encompasses all of production is a clear division of responsibilities: this is a large game project, and it will not come together unless everyone has a specific and articulable area of responsibility, a domain which they themselves are accountable to.

Completed in Week 3:

Design

• Rethinking core mechanics
  • Focus on finding cats, not photo composition
• Decided the unique value proposition: interesting and unique cats with their own personalities

Programming

• Established a fresh project repository
• Set up player movement and interface framework for main components

Art

• Refined art style
• Began work on cat and fur assets
• Defined style for island setting
• Began work on environmental assets for scene decoration

Audio

• Refined assets for demonstration purposes

Objectives for Week 4:

Design

• Begin design of the level properly
• Create an organised asset pipeline to make it easy to request 2D/3D/sound assets

Programming

• Rebuild Minimum Viable Product from Game Jam #2 - walking, photography, cats
• Integrate assets as early as possible to avoid production bottlenecks

Art

• Focus primarily on cat models and textures
• Begin work on cat animations

Audio

• (None currently)