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Find your Cats!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Metroidvania | #7 | 4.125 | 4.125 |
| Execution | #15 | 3.875 | 3.875 |
| Overall | #24 | 3.594 | 3.594 |
| Enjoyment | #30 | 3.438 | 3.438 |
| Sensory | #48 | 2.938 | 2.938 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
No engine, no libraries (besides Emscripten to make it work as WebAssembly), just C. :)
Team/Developer
Just me.
External assets
Not sure what qualifies as an external asset. I only used and adapted some stuff (a few sounds and default Nokia 3310 font) from here: https://phillipp.itch.io/nokiajamresources
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Comments
Really like the graphics and limitations. The music is a bit repetitive,m and the platforming + low health felt really punishing. I really like the UI and map, thought it was a really great touch. I also think there's an enemy that looks too much like save fire, leading to taking damage when you just want to save. Great project though, wish I could make it further!
Really good job buddy, You must to be proud of your work, your game works properly, has an interesting system (where you convert enemies in blocks), checkpoints, menu, ranged attack and collectable items working properly as well.
I just felt sad because I really want to play this game with a more complex art and sounds.
Thank you very much for your feedback. :)
It is a small/short game, mostly because I made it for a game jam (actually, for two game jams), but I will consider making a "richer" game similar to this one in the future. :)
Thanks for checking out my game, Ill play yours later today and give you my thoughts!
Thanks! :)
I had a fun with this! Im really impressed that it was programmed in C, I'm learning C now for a class and its pretty unforgiving so props to you on that! I liked the ice ability, im always a fan of abilities that contribute to both combat and mobility, most of the abilities in my game do the same. I think the overall map design and level design was great except for a section or two where you might fall on enemies without being able to see whats below you. The sfx were fun. After the ice climb boss i expected there to be a heart at the top of the room in the middle but i didnt find anything so that would be a great spot for a heart, unless i just missed it. One small level design gripe I had was after the ice ability it seems like you are supposed to go up in the next room over and you can until you are met with a dead end at the top, that didnt seem very necessary to me. And idk if this was a software limitation or design choice but it seemed like it would save after a boss fight and i lost a bit of progress after dying after beating a boss which was a little frustrating but its a pretty short game so not too big of a deal. Overall it was charming and enjoyable to play, great work!
Thank you for playing and for the comprehensive feedback! :)
Yeah, I deliberately made some things to indicate that something might be in places where it is nothing and also some things on less obvious places. If you collected all hearts, you should have a total of nine of the, i.e. six additional hearts are scattered throughout the map.
Regarding loosing the progress, my idea was that saving the game is the only way to save the progress (i.e. all relevant game variables are copied into their copies when saving and copied back when "loading", i.e. when you respawn after dying. It is not a software limitation, I could had easily programmed it differently, it is just a save mechanics decision I made while making the game.
Love the GBC aesthetic. NICE.
After starting, I thought the game was broken because it looked like a screen shot. Tried pressing some buttons, but it didn't do anything. I almost quit before accidentally hitting the spacebar and progressing the dialogue. I think you could get around this issue with idle animations, some sort of sound (music, ambience, etc.), and a button prompt in the beginning that teaches how to progress dialogue.
The spike things look too much like save flames. As such, they don't read as dangerous and leave me confused why I'm getting hurt.
I appreciate that your layouts don't feel haphazardly thrown together (a common issue with jam games). That said, I truly have no idea where to go. Every path seems blocked out of the gate.
Thank you for playing and valuable feedback, I will keep that on mind for my future similar projects. :)
You bet! Best of luck on your next game dev adventure!
You've programmed this whole thing in C? Nice work!
I got killed by the boss. And found no cats. Sorry kitties!
Thank you. I actually find it strangely easier to program everything myself than to use a game engine, because that way I feel like I have a better control of what is going on. :)
Very impressive! The new powers added by each ability are perfectly spaced out, and I like how the enemies that walk back and forth are part of the puzzle to use as blocks instead of just being obstacles. Very cool ideas and great design!
Thank you for playing and kind words, I am glad you liked it. :)
Very well executed 1-bit metroidvania, cheers! Especially considering how few tools you used for this. It's nice to see boss battles too, even though they were very similar and in the last one it was kinda awkward how you had to climb the wall to get past the spikes unhurt. Not really the game's fault but playing in the browser was sometimes rather annoying because the page kept scrolling down as I was ducking (love the duck upgrade btw).
Thank you for playing! :)
Yeah, I forgot to take into consideration that playing in non-fulscreen in some browsers may produce that undesired behavior (which I could had prevented using event.preventDefault() and event.stopPropagation() in JavaScript part, in keydown event handler function). However, it should work fine either playing with WASD (and J for jumping) or playing in fullscreen.
Nice to see the duck joke I inserted (which arose partially out of necessity because I was running out of ideas how to represent that upgrade with 8x7 1-bit pixels). :D
Great game! This would definitely fit both Gameboy Jam and Metroidvania Jam. The game is compact & well designed. There is a good number of ability & stat upgrades to find. It was quite challenging, and I beat the final boss but couldn't figure out how to get past the spikes. I had issues with the movement controls not being as tight as I would like. Also, the boss battles could use some improvement. I would just sit in one spot, shoot, and hope the RNG was in my favor.
Thank you for playing and for the kind words. :)
You can get past the final spikes simply by double jumping over them, it is enough to not take any damage. Or, if you are up to a challenge, you can try to scale the wall (which also takes some double jumps, but it takes some skill to time them properly) and then jump off of it when up high. The bosses were the last thing I did and I did not have enough time to polish them properly, so some of them turned out to be cheesable.
I did not know about the Gameboy Jam, so thank you for letting me know it exists. :)
awesome execution of the minimalist design. would be easy to make a game in that style boring but you really brought it to life. I do wish there were maybe a couple more saves.. the map was a little hard to navigate in spots just because of visuals but I love the frost bullet mechanic for getting around the map.
Thank you for playing and for the review! :)
Yeah, there are indeed some "leap of faith" places. I did put them intentionally, to add to difficulty by encouraging the player to figure out and remember where and how is the best way to move around.
Honestly, really impressive, I myself am always baffled by people who can make fully working games with no help of proper tools.
Everything seemed to work seamlesly as well, gwaphics, sounds and gameplay are all as perfect as they can be within the thematic (and technical, I assume) limitations, altought that means that, as an actual game, there's really not much to comment on here due to the simplicity, but I still think you did a great job at everything game design wise. (This is definitelly way better than any platformer I could see being released for an actual brick phone, that's for sure lol)
Anyway here's a gameplay vid if you wanna see it
Thank you very much for the review and the gameplay video! :D
I also see that you quickly figured out what to do while playing and did it skillfully, well played! :)
Great project for Nokia game!
Sound design has its limits, it is understandable, but some sounds and music are too loud.
Powerups do matter, you can feel your character getting stronger. Map is maze-y, but in a good way.
Bosses are cheesable, I killed all of them by standing in the corner of the arena and constantly shooting.
Great game, good luck!
Thank you for playing! :)
Yeah, I did the bosses in a rush, so I did not put as much effort as I wanted to in improving their mechanics or checking if they allow for a too easy strategy.
Really nailed the phone game vibe. The level design is pretty good; I actually didn't need the map to finish the game. Liked the power-up. When you jump up to another map, sometimes there will be a block just to knock you back down. Other than that, it is pretty good.
Top-notch small-scale metroidvania! Love the 1-bt art, and very impressive building this from scratch. Good level design and use of upgrades. My only nitpick is that some of the jumps felt a little too difficult/frustrating.
Thank you for playing! The occasional difficulty in making jumps is intentional, I did not want to make it too easy. :)
Here ya go!
Thank you very much for the review video! :)
A bit hard sometimes, but very nice 1bit graphics and enjoyable gameplay. Good job on making it "pure" :D
Thank you! :D I did not want to make it too easy. :)