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Laser 'Purr'cision's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of the Limitation | #12 | 4.244 | 4.244 |
| Concept | #15 | 4.024 | 4.024 |
| Overall | #16 | 3.933 | 3.933 |
| Enjoyment | #19 | 3.610 | 3.610 |
| Presentation | #26 | 3.854 | 3.854 |
Ranked from 41 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team members
Cpt. Coffeepot
Software used
Unity
Use of the limitation
All artwork was made to the 8x8 limitation, or matches the style (in the case UI and Cursor)
Cookies eaten
2, with 4 pots of coffee.
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Comments
It's a really fun game, the controls are a bit odd to get used to but after that it's pretty good
Hello there, I appreciate the feedback!
Glad to hear you managed to work through those nuanced controls and had a good time with it.
Thanks for playing! :D
I liked how the cat has 9 lives!
Hahah, how does one even go about making a game about cats without having 9 lives?
Thanks for stopping by to give it a go! :D
Thought it was a nice idea for an arcade style game and enjoyed how it looked, but I personally did not really like the method for controlling the cat. Even after I read all the text and I figured out that wobbling the mouse made the cat jump faster I still felt frustrated by them, but it could just be me being bad.
Heyyo, I appreciate the feedback!
I'll be the first to admit that the controls are very nuanced and highly experimental, and as such, are prone to discomfort. I'll take your experience into considering when reapproaching the system in a post-jam update. At the very least, I intend to have an interactive tutorial, but we'll see what else I can come up with to help streamline the experience.
Thanks for giving it a chance by digging a little deeper, and taking the time to jot down your thoughts! :D
The game is fun, but no one is reading a wall of text at the start of a game.
Hey there, thanks for the feedback!
I'll be the first to admit that there's a better solution to text instructions.
In lieu of the tutorial there wasn't quite time for, it serves to acquaint the player to controls that might be misunderstood by experimentation alone. Rest assured, I intend to implement a more streamlined approach in a post-jam update, making the 'lore' text completely optional.
Thanks again for your thoughts, and I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the game nonetheless! :D
Really love how fresh the game concept is! I'm very entertained by the idea of controlling a cat with a laser pointer. The game is quite challenging but also very fun!
Well done!! :D
Greetings, and thanks for playing! Glad to hear the laser pointer mechanic turned out alright, and that you had a good time with it! :D
Concise concept, and surprisingly challenging gameplay -- that dog is difficult to maneuver around :) Nice contained little score game!
Hello there, thanks for stopping by to give it a go! Post-jam updates are planned to help make the difficulty curve more beginner-friendly, and difficult to master, so there are some improvements to look forward to :]
Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for playing! :D
Very interesting concept, once you get the hang of the jump the game becomes rather trivial however (my first try only scored 4 points, but on my second I got bored after about 40). Perhaps this is due to my hardware setup (I run a fairly high mouse sensitivity compared to most people), but for me clicking pretty much on the cat and flicking to any desired point on the ceiling causes the cat to jump almost instantly (after a very consistent delay) to that precise location. With that being the case, avoiding the dog is trivial so one just has to watch out for the occasional plague mouse, alternating between sitting over the left most and right most traps.
Heyyo, thanks for playing! I appreciate the feedback, and already have something in mind (by recommendation of other players) to ramp up the difficulty in a performance-sensitive way in a post-jam update; more dogs and plague mice! I'm also playing with the idea of ways to counter-attack Waffles (jump on his head), and other power-ups (instant laser charge) to compensate for the new difficulty curve.
Trivial or not, 40 points in no small feat. Would you say, higher than the Dev Score? 43, perhaps? I'd post a link to your jam submission on the game page for the remainder of the jam, if that were the case. Something you'd be interested in?
Well I only had 38 on the second run, so I did a third playthrough and here's an 80 score =P
Those ideas sound good, it'll be interesting to see how the game develops.
Two further things I noticed on this run:
1. You can catch a mouse while in tired/sleep state but doing so does not bring you out of the state prematurely, and I would suggest that either it should, or that you shouldn't be able to catch mice (of either type) at all in this state.
2. There are certain spots near each corner where being hit by the dog will result in you bouncing off the wall and landing on the dog again losing two lives in the process, so a limited invulnerability state after each hit might be a good idea. I got caught out by this three times on this recent run because I kept messing up when I entered sleep mode >.<
80?! Absolutely smashing! You're officially Supreme Mouse-catcher, posted for all to see :D
To your first point, I absolutely agree, and have plans to implement your second suggestion :]
To your second, that is a problem, and an excellent solution. Post-dog-bite temporary invincibility should be easy enough to implement. It's on my hit-list! Many thanks for all your thoughts! :D
Oh, also another suggestion that just came to me: maybe add birds flying across the top as an additional catchable?
Great minds think alike; I was gunna add bats! :D
This is way too addicting.
Hey there, I'm glad you think so!
Happy to hear you enjoyed it, and thanks for playing! :D
liked the concept, it combined very well with the theme and generated a very interesting mechanic.
Greetings, and thanks for playing! Glad to hear you enjoyed it, and I appreciate your thoughts :]
the concept overall was great, it was extremely hard for me personally though. i think if you were able to stun the dog by jumping on top of him it would add an additional challenge for the player as well as a way to stay alive longer, but take that with a grain of salt. again great concept!
Heyyo, thanks for taking the time to play my game, that's some great feedback!
Makes perfect sense to me, too. After all, why punish the player for an already difficult to control movement mechanic? Stunning the watchdog takes the sting out of living dangerously quite nicely. That's definitely going into consideration for the post-jam update!
I appreciate the insight, and I'm glad you enjoyed the game nonetheless despite the difficulty. Happy Jammin'!
Great game! Once I read the description of the mechanics, it became a lot of fun to play. The shaking mechanic really gives the game a great feel. After a handful of tries, I got up to 49. However, I feel like playing very cautiously tends to be the most successful strategy, especially with the sleeping mechanic. You can camp out in the corner and wait for a conveniently placed mouse to pop up. The being said, it is very fun to control once you get the controls down.
Hello there, and thanks for stopping by to give my game a whirl. Glad you liked it! :D
49?! Dayumn, that's some impressive stuff. Caustiously, you say? Hmm, might have to add more dogs and plague mice to the mix over time, shake things up a little! To commemorate the occasion, how about I link your submission on the game page for the remainder of the jam? If that's alright with you, of course :]
Yeah adding some time-sensitive element would spice it up. Sure you can put a link if you'd like, thanks!
No worries, you've earned it!
Thanks for playing! :D
this is the perfect idea for a cat game, move the cat indirectly with a laser pointer — even works in real life!
Huzzah! That's precisely what I was going for, so I'm thrilled to hear I was able to deliver it as a gaming experience :]
As for 'perfect', I'm not so sure, but am nevertheless flattered at your kind words.
Glad you liked it, and Happy Jammin'! :D
Good game, liked the movement mechanics. I did not beat your score I got to 9. Its very hard but in a good and challenging way.
Hey there, 9 points for 9 lives is pretty poetic, so well done! I only got my score cause I had three days of practice :]
Happy to hear you enjoyed the game and found it appropriately challenging. Thanks for playing!
An interesting game mode! But it's a little difficult to control... Maybe it's because I didn't fully understand the method.
A good game!
Greetings, and thanks for playing! The controls are a little nuanced, and are best thought of as an attempt at further gamifying the experience of messing with a cat using a laser pointer; the more you jitter it, the faster the cat makes a move on it. I appreciate the feedback, and I've updated the game page to provide more clarity on the controls.
Glad to hear you otherwise enjoyed it, and Happy Jammin'! :D
So kind of you! I'll try it later.
Cute game with an interesting and somewhat addictive mechanic, maybe it was just me who misunderstood, but I didn't feel shaking the mouse helped speed up the charge time
Hello there, thanks for playing!
By default, the laser pointer takes 2.5 seconds to fully capture Oscar's attention if you only hold down the mouse and don't move (as indicated by a slowly enclosing red circle). Once it does, Oscar jumps towards it.
Behind the scenes, time is taken away from that timer proportional to the difference of the mouse position between frames. As an experiment, try holding down left click, and swiping across the screen. Though you won't have much control over where Oscar jumps toward, he should do so almost immediately. Wiggling the mouse should give the benefit of control and charge efficiency. If not, that's a bug, and I'd like nothing more than to squash it! :D
You have an interesting game! Unusual concept and good implementation! The images are clear and interesting sounds! I got a bug in the left corner. I lost the ability to jump. There were 4 more green circles but I couldn't jump anymore. A dog came and squeezed me and I died.
Oh no! In a game about dungeons and rodents, there's bound to be few bugs, right? Thanks for bringing it to my attention, I've added that to my notes for post-jam fixes. Glad to hear you otherwise enjoyed it, and thanks for playing!
Happy Jammin'! :D
Simple, fun game. Works well, the music and art fit nicely. Got 13 points after a few tries :)
I hold 'a few tries' as a compliment of the highest degree, so thanks for sticking it out and congrats on the score! :D
Very nice game and cool concept !
Heyyo. Thanks for taking a moment to give it a go, and I'm happy to hear that you liked it!
Happy Jammin'! :D
What a cool concept for a game!! I liked how you had to interact with him like playing with a cat to get em to move -fun and very challenging -great work! :D
Hello! Getting that bit of functionality to work was a bit of a head-scratcher, so I'm thrilled to hear you liked it!
Thanks for playing, and Happy Jammin'! :D
Really lovely game, the simplistic music and charming graphics really brought it together to give a cutesy vibe. I also love the mechanic of using a laser pointer, which I found was quite unique, and it made for some interesting gameplay.
Though the only thing I'd like to see is a sense of progression as you get farther, to hook me in to play longer. However understandably, as with game jams time is of the essence.
Really great game, I got a score of 14 :)
Hey there, thanks for the feedback! You're quite right with time being of the essence, but I totally hear ya there; Unlockable hats & skins would have been awesome! Among other bells and whistles, of course. Alternate level layouts, perhaps, or more dogs and critters... Who knows what post-jam updates will bring? *Feature creep intensifies*
Glad you liked the laser pointer; I was a little worried the charge and wiggle behavior wouldn't quite connect with a few players, but thus far the response has been beyond my expectations, and that's pretty awesome. Luckily, most people who have had a cat and a laser pointer in the same room all come to the same inevitable conclusion: fun & mischief.
Congrats on being the commenter with the highest score thus far!
Thanks for stoppin' by and taking a crack at it. I'm delighted you enjoyed it!
Happy Jammin'! :D
I really liked the charge behavior, it made for some intense moments where I wiggled my mouse like crazy to get rid of the dog. It's one of those features that are easy to learn but takes time to master. But when you pull off a charge perfectly it felt awesome.
Warms my soul to hear that. Even better than coffee! :D