Play catformer
mode nine's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation (graphics, audio) | #96 | 3.923 | 4.083 |
| Originality | #266 | 2.962 | 3.083 |
| Fun | #292 | 2.562 | 2.667 |
| Theme | #422 | 2.002 | 2.083 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game represent Mode?
our protagonist nine may or may not be a common housecat (Felis catus), that is a matter of some heated debate, but what is undeniable is that whatever his true nature might be, he is operating in CAT MODE, and he is fully committed to the bit.
the final game's story will explore this concept of biological modularity further.
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Comments
Great Concept! I love the art and overall vibe of this game, It's great losing a life and playing again as a different cat is a great touch! Great work!
This game has got really nice music and art but there are some issues telling the foreground and background apart.
I do feel it could control better still the charge up animation for the cats jump was nice. The level design has some blind jumps, there are scenarios where the platform I should be aiming for isn't on screen or a jump launches me into an enemy just out of view. The game can be quite punishing as well, I thought it would be nine lives per level and having to reopen the game and go through the dialogue again can be a bit frustrating.
This project is really impressive if you leant a new game engine during the jams time period as well but there are technical problems present like I got stuck in the floor once and had to restart the game and wall jumping feels really unreliable (doesn't always work, just sort of glitches in and out of the wall sometimes).
Thanks Lerg! The feedback you have here echoes a lot of what I've heard before. I feel like most of these issues have been addressed or at least improved in the current build, which in addition to not being available anywhere just yet won't replace the version being judged for the jam cuz them's the rules.
I did not learn Godot over the course of this project, I've been learning the engine for several months now and still am learning it, to be honest.
One thing that won't change about the project even as it hopefully gets finished and makes its way to Steam is the hard limit of nine lives per game with no one-ups. Nine lives and nine levels. I will continue working to make it harder to die and so that when you do die, it doesn't feel "cheap" and you don't feel cheated. I've already added an autosave function and will soon implement a proper gameover rather than the joke now where it literally just quits you out of the game when you run out of lives.
The art and setting are cool! I find the platforming to be a bit unruly, I keep expected the cat to slow down faster when I release the keys. I also find some of the platforms to be visually confusing. I think it's important in a game like this for the sprites that represent collision always be brighter than the ones without. Overall, nicely done!
Yep, that seems to be the consensus! I've been working on addressing this feedback since I plan on continuing this project outside of the completion of the jam. I oversaturated the tileset and the cat sprite so they pop more against the background in chapter one, and used a shader to add a bright purple outline to the black cat skin so nine is more visible when he looks like that. I've also fine tuned the player controller a lot, although I'm still not 100% satisfied with it.
Thanks for playing!!
Really love the art in the opening, it sets the tone super nicely. I appreciate how much spirit this game has, and how much it nails its tone with all the dialogues. Controls-wise I definitely had some trouble. Having that explosive jump only trigger on releasing spacebar gave the movement a simultaneous sticky and unwieldy feeling that tripped me up a bit. Also the wall jumping felt more bouncy than I was used to in platformers. Still, the overall experience felt pretty polished and the packaging of the game was one of the most complete I've seen this jam. With some tuning I think you could really have something nice. Good job!
Thank you so much for the feedback! I've fine-tuned the player controller and "cat physics" a lot since then. "simultaneously sticky and wieldy" is honestly a perfect critique of the issues with the chargejump on build, although for what it's worth I personally found it MUCH easier to control with a gamepad than keyboard.
Like I said, I've improved it since then but I'm still considering either disabling chargejump entirely and just replacing it with a regular Mario style jump that maybe gets a little higher if you hold the jump button down longer or including a setting that does that.
I've gotten used to it so I don't have many issues with the controller, but I feel like some players will always hate it.
Dang, this game looked and sounded great! It felt really atmospheric, and playing as a cat was a really neat twist! The momentum of the player character was nice, and I really enjoyed platforming through the levels! The main thing that I think could be improved is the camera; there were many times when the next platform was off-camera, so I often had to guess (sometimes inaccurately) where to jump. I think a wider field of view or adaptive camera would help telegraph those jumps better. Regardless, this is awesome for a first Godot game! I can definitely see the potential in this project; good work!
Thank you!! I will make a note to tweak the camera and tile map design so that there are less "leaps of fath", this something I observed to myself just last night playtesting level two.
the art is gorgeous and the music is great. i like the level design and i enjoy the gameplay. however, i unfortunately wasn't able to get used to the charge jump, i also found the wall jumps to be finicky, and i encountered a bug that soft locked me. the bug was that i died as i was going down a vent and when i respawned i kept going down into the terrain and got stuck. this game has lots of potential, with some polishing, this could be great. keep up the good work!
thanks so much for playing and thank you for the feedback!
I recently (just last night) fixed the bug where sometimes after respawning you just fall forever through the terrain. I don't think I'm allowed to upload the fixed version during the voting period, however.
The opening sequence and animations are amazing! The controls could use some more fine tuning. Sometimes the cat gets stuck in jump pose and have to jump again to remove, and often slide off platforms thought that might be my skill issue. Another thing is the background and foreground seems too similar, or like it's hard to tell where is a path and where the cat is.
thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! actually a disproportionately huge part of the development time has been spent finetuning the player controller, but I'm still not happy with it. I'm aware of the issue of getting stuck in the charge pose and this messing up the precise jump timing needed, I'm not sure how to fix it as this is my first ever Godot game, but I'll keep trying. I hope you were able to beat it, regardless!
This is the second time I've heard that finding the character on screen can be tricky, so I'll look into clarifying that visually and try to adjust different on screen elements so that the tileset elements you can actually stand on "pop" more against the background.
thanks again Leyza!
Great art. Lots of cool stuff moving.
Thank you for playing! I feel like I need to point out that I didn't make any of the art m'self (except the >3 headed cat logo, that's mine) but I did edit the heck out of all of it and I'm glad I got all the moving stuff to look cool! May I ask: did you "beat" it (the two whole levels that exist heh)?
I didn't. I died a lot on the part where you have to long jump over a electric part and land on a platform and then jump again. I got on the platform a few times but then died. I also missed jumped just short of this platform like 5 times, so got a game over.
Very engaging from the start, the controls just need some polishing, but apart from that I love the art. Fantastic work!
Thanks so much! Did you beat it (well, the two whole levels that exist)?
The visuals are crazy good! I really like the core concept and I think the audio design is great. I also like the foundation that was set up for the game. The title screen and intro were really fleshed out too.
My main critique would be that the character was a little hard for me to control. Because he is so fast, I would jump places that I did not want to go. I also think the black cat sprite was a little hard to see in contrast to some of the backgrounds.
Great work !!
thank you for playing it and for your kind words <3
I need to get screenshots up literally yesterday, I suck at managing my time!
what I have definitely spent the most time on is programming and tweaking the player controller, it's my first time coding something like this outside of like, following along with youtube tutorial projects. the cat physics are really tricky, I definitely wasn't going for a precision platformer feel, closer to NES Mario, you can jump extremely far and fast with full charge and there's air resistance to make it a little slower to redirect in mid-air because cats aren't aerodynamic, and you deliberately fall really slowly because cats have a very low terminal velocity so I wanted the jumping physics to feel floaty. but jumping can still be unpredictable and nine kind of freaks out on slopes, still. I don't know how to solve the second problem but I can play around with the air speed and acceleration data.
as for the black cat, I hoped the glowing eye trail would make him easy to keep track of on screen, but it does disappear when you're not moving.