| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #1 | 4.389 | 4.389 |
| Overall | #1 | 4.347 | 4.347 |
| Metroidvania | #2 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Design | #3 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Presentation | #3 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
Godot
Team/Developer
Team MELZK
External assets
Alice Opensource Font under OFL
This is a great and super complete entry! The level design is great and the unlocks all work well!
A smalll thing, when I first played I got stuck at the very beginning. I think the steps are:
- Walk to the right, /skipping/ the save point
- Die
- Now you are locked in the starting area.
After that first bump, though, I really enjoyed this one! Great work!
So, easily one of the best entries of this jam, and it has a few things that I quite like:
The mapping was quite good, I never really got lost, and it was nice to have generous checkpointing.
It’s quite neat to see all of the ways the art style pulls from Hollow Knight, while still being very much it’s own thing.
The main thing I’d say is that the music compression seems a bit high, at least in the web build? It’s not super noticeable when you’re playing, but I’ve had the game paused for various reasons, and I can hear a bit of a low hissing noise in the music then.
Damn, that’s a full metroidvania for ya! It has new abilities, it has new areas to explore and even has the save function.
My only complain for keyboard users is “how can you actually play it with arrow keys + ZX and not WASD + some other keys”
Haha okay you're gonna get my whole thing. Though keep in mind we do have gamepad support and are gonna add wasd as an option. People have convinced me that it's necessary.
1. Not everyone plays a lot of fps. People who primarily do retro gaming actually don't use wasd very much.
2. 2d platforming is usually different than 3d and requires more frequent and precise left/right/jump movements (often requiring all three in quick succession). Assigning moving and jumping to different hands improves accuracy for these movements, especially when you consider 90% of the population is right-handed. Does it really make sense to load up the non-dominant hand with three or four jobs at once (e.g. in games that have a weapon and dash or something, you need to move, jump, fire, and dash all with the same hand)? I even have left-handed friends who play a lot of precision platformers who prefer zx+arrows precisely bc it separates movement from jumping and improves accuracy.
So in sum, my personal opinion is wasd is less well suited for 2d precision platforming, and although it makes sense to include it as an option bc so many people are trained on fps games, zx+arrows is a better option for demanding 2d platforming.
Is that lady is a witch or something!
Damn the game was good, I have recently played celeste. this game has the same vibes with metroidvania topping on it. Really enjoyed, A very well-designed game.
Suggestion:
Only one thing that felt missing was player death animation whenever I die it felt odd a little dying without animation
Cool game! Smooth movement and good, intuitive level design. I really like the plot twist with 7th cat, which was really fun to manage to do some time limited parkour to escape it. Also love the graphics, and the simple story that fits metroidvania genre.
I had lot of fun playing your game. Keep it up.
Love it. Love it love it love it. Wonderfully polished movement, very "grippy" and the character never moved in a way that didn't make sense or felt unnatural (at least inasfar as a kid in a Davy Crockett hat climbing a thirty foot wall can seem "natural"). Fun mechanics, very polished and tight world with each room introducing one or two new design ideas apiece. Bravo. This is the game to beat.
I think this might be my favorite game I've played so far this jam! The art is very nice and has a unique style, and it reminds me a bit of some of the pc games I played as a kid.
The character is a bit slow but I don't think that's a bad thing by any means, the game feels very chill and relaxed and it fits the mood. The powerups also feel great to use. The moveset makes the game feel like Celeste but a metroidvania, and who wouldn't enjoy that? (Especially the final boss, whew) The difficulty also feels juuust right. Although I was a little confused at first why there were both bright white spikes and then harder to see thorns.
There's also a small bug where when I rescued the cat in the hall with the 4 ceiling spitters in a row, I died and came back, and the glass had respawned despite the cat not being there. I broke it and it yippeed anyways lol.
The map was also somehow perfect, I never felt completely lost like I needed a map but I also never felt like it was too small.
I think the sound that plays when you discover a hidden area is really nice, I don't think I've seen that in metroidvanias I've played and it definitely adds a layer of satisfaction!
Last thing I'd add is that I don't think there's a reason to lock the player in place when the game ends if there's no ending, I wanted to go find the other two yarn I missed :(
Super fun game!
Very hollowknightish:) Final boss is a big good (or rather evil?) surprise:)
The game will benefit from adding a map. But even without it there are not so many locations and they're mostly well distinguishable.
Music and sounds, controls, graphis are just fine! Only in one place in boss fight dash often was not working in one critical moment. That may be due to my laggish laptop and browser play though.
Excellent submission, congrats!
Really cool game! I love the theme and how it fits in a Metroidvania. Well done!
really good entry still trying to find that elusive 6th cat (I swear I have been round the whole map many times, I must be missing something) was happy for the save, but a map would be useful (especially as picking up after a second sitting was a bit disorientating).
Art, sound and atmosphere show a certain influenced (of course) but are beautiful and still have a character of their own.
Fabulously polished show by the whole team!
I've put up a spoiler-tastic location list here: Missing Cats Cat/Yarn Locations
OMG I really lost track of time playing this one! Atmospheric graphics and music, creative lighting, smooth animations and a really elaborate level design.
Some notes though:
- What does the ball of yarn do? I found a couple of them, but nothing happened...
- I'd personally like an on-screen indicator of how many cats I've saved so far, as well as a map feature (your world is quite large, which I loved!)
- "Press [SPACE] to unlock gate" means you can do it right now. It wasn't until I found my first key that I realized my spacebar was not actually broken... XD
- Some upgrades/findings you keep when you respawn (ie claws, dash) and some you loose (lantern, keys, idk about yarn, see above). I guess that was intentional, but sometimes it gets frustrating. The very reason I gave up was having to find the lantern again and again, every time I died in the dark cave... which btw is no walk in the park!
All and all, very, VERY good job guys. I only managed to save two cats, but rest assured, I AM coming back for the rest! ;)
Thanks for your feedback! We have posted this list of item locations in case it's needed, though it will have spoilers naturally.
Apologies for getting so technical in the below.
The intended item/upgrade loss behavior is:
* If the player's health after hit is > 0, respawn at last soft checkpoint and lose nothing.
* If the player's health after hit is = 0, respawn at last save point and lose all items collected since the last save
Of course either of those is a respawn, but hopefully that helps explain what's supposed to happen "under the hood."
I will add that sadly, the first upload DID have a bug which caused some save weirdness similar to what you describe. I've since inserted failsafe code that I hope will keep it from happening in future versions.
If you're seeing behavior otherwise with version 0.9.7 ( and you're able and willing, please find me on the MVM Discord as kkairos and DM me your most recent save file, which should be under AppData/roaming/missingcatspleasehelp/savegame.sav or a similar folder for Windows.
Sorry for all that. Thanks again for your feedback and your kind words! As we look at a roadmap to 1.0 we will cherish your suggestions!
Just to clarify, by "respawn" I meant going back to the last _save_ point.
So the lantern falls into the "collected item" category rather than the "upgrade" one (like for example the claws)?
Finally... ...um... what do the balls of yarn do?!? I'm dying to know! Unless it's part of the plot, in which case, don't tell me.
Personally, I think this is an almost flawless entry. I love the art style. The player looks like Bobby Hill which is hilarious to me. The music sounds great. Movement mechanics didn't throw me off. They felt pretty natural to me. And its a cute and fun idea for a metroidvania. That said, the things that stick out are:
Overall, I can see this game being in the top 5, no doubt. Congrats to you all!
Thanks so much! I didn't even think of the Bobby Hill connection but you're right 😆. A map is definitely something I want to add after the jam. We just ended up prioritizing other gameplay and aesthetic things. We'll definitely have controller support once the rating period is over. I guess we just forgot to check that box when exporting at the 11th hour...
character is a bit too slippery and dash is a bit too long imo, but this game is at least top3 for me in this jam
Very solid and chill game! Original art style, relaxing music and tight controls. I enjoyed the chase sequence at the end too. I don't have anything bad to say about this really. It's not that big of a game that I would feel map being necessary.
This is a pretty strong entry! I felt a bit lost at times, so I think a map screen might be helpful. The green thorns could stand out a bit more from the environment and background, I walked into them a lot just from my eyes glazing over them. The ending sequence was a bit of a surprising difficulty spike, I feel like it could benefit from checkpoints considering three mistakes sends you back to the start at present.
All in all, I liked it a lot! The visuals are fun, the platforming is mostly tight (there's a bit of floatiness with left/right movement) and the controls feel good. I noticed some hollow knight inspiration in the bottled crying cats and the grandma humming as she spoke, haha. And I found all 7 pieces of yarn, as well!
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