Don't Give Up the Cat

[eri0o]

Don't Give Up the Cat

Download it on itch.io

game source code available on GitHub | Game on AGS Games DB

Tonight, you are out in the woods. As a cat.

A short game intended to be played at night, using headphones. In this first-person game you use your mouse to look around and scratch things, and WASD keys for walking, shift to run, and you use Esc to show the menu.

After you run you may sit around to breathe a bit and listen to the forest.

Game by eri0o
Music by Jon Paul Sapsford
Ghosts, graves and icon by Haloa
Gameplay Testing by Morgan Willcock, Heltenjon and Newwaveburritos

AGS Script Modules
Tween by Edmundito
Timer and Typed Text by  Crimson Wizard

Additional assets from itch io, opengameart and freesound
Forest trees, stones, flowers and base palette: Trixie (trixelized) - STRINGSTAR FIELDS
Clouds: ansimuz - Sunnyland,  recolored
House: Lanthanum - 3D Model House (PicoCAD),  recolored
Save cat: kotnaszynce - kitka.gif,  recolored+resized
Smoke: KnoblePersona - Smoke & Fire Animated Particle
Title Screen Cat: Ben - Camp Cat (PicoCAD), modified
Forest crickets and atmosphere: LokiF - Swamp Environment Audio
Cat Footsteps: melle_teich - Animal footsteps on dry leaves
Cat Jump: FOX2814 - Cat jump
Game Font: Fibberish by  Nathan Scott

This is a MAGS entry for the theme "Ghost", see original submission here.

The OST

[lorenzo]

I was really impressed by what you accomplished! Everything works really well. The 3D view and movement are really fluid and the game feels slick. The fog effect creates a nice Halloween-y atmosphere.

The exploration part is also well-designed: I never felt too lost (while having the feeling of being in a big forest) and the "blocked" parts made sense. The smoke from the chimney of the house is a nice touch and navigation help. Plus, the 3D effect when going around the house is incredible.

Gameplay is simple, but fun.

Spoiler

I especially liked the hidden tomb! Finding it was a cool puzzle.
The ending was sweet.

[close]

Also, it's really nice of you to release the code! It's probably way too complex for me, but I'm sure more intelligent people can learn a lot from it

As with I Rented a Boat, another really cool game from you that uses AGS in an "unintended" way, creating something unexpected, but good! Congrats!

[eri0o]

Thank you for the kind words Lorenzo! And the rating too ❤️ About the navigation on the forest there was some effort in making it feel natural and possible to navigate, but what really made it possible was the many builds of the game that the people testing relentlessly tried it out. I am working on a small little write-up to talk about it non-technically on this iterative design.

And yes, the chimney was intended to work as a way to guide you home, in a way that you should be able to get back there and reorient yourself before exploring again. It was in my mind a better way to accomplish what I intended with the radio tower in I rented a boat, but for me it had not really quite work there.

I briefly thought about having stars in the sky too, so that could work, but I could not figure any way to do it so it worked properly with everything and did no performance hit. As you noticed here, there was a focus on letting the game be fluid - my cat is young and he moves really fast, so I wanted that speed! 

[eri0o]

Some quick notes on the development

Almost two months ago a little cat appeared in my home, all hungry and thin. We have adopted him, and now he is healthy. He was with me the whole time of making the game - on my lap, or feet, quietly sitting near the monitor or trying to pull all my USB cables. He was the inspiration for making the game.

After I Rented a Boat, I wanted a game where you were able to look freely and smoothly, so a good time went into speeding things up. This was possible because Crimson Wizard improved the flexibility and performance of Overlays in AGS. Additionally, Khris's math from AGS Kart made the camera here possible. I early on decided the game would be locked in a forest with a home at the center as a return point between tasks. This small scope allowed me to polish the forest geometry to work best with the renderer.  In total, Haloa, Morgan, Heltenjon, Newwaveburritos, and Jon Paul Sapsford tested fourteen different versions of the game and kept me motivated!

In an initial sketch of the game scope, it was about photographing ghosts to show your owner why you were meowing, but I had a hard time scripting it. Haloa suggested guiding the ghosts home instead. This lead to the dialogues, which prevented an information dump at the start.

A lot of details arose from conversations with Morgan and Heltenjon, like the smoke in the house to help to find it and scratching things as breadcrumbs, navigation nudges in the forest with the flowers, plaque, and dandelions, and improving the dialogues so that the ghosts ask to be brought home. Newwaveburritos, who asked about adding fireflies, understood my vision of a game more about the atmosphere than the objectives and motivated me to improve the forest sounds.

During the middle of development, I listened to various music assets and couldn't find anything that sounded like it fit the game. Years ago, I worked with Jon Paul Sapsford on the soundtrack for Tea for Two, and the last thing he told me was to reach out if I was making a new game. So I did! He was lovely and quickly figured out what would work with the game. The final music was made before the game had an ending, so that scene's mood and timing are from it.

I wanted to do technical-oriented write-up, with some design too, but I am having trouble figuring out what to write, so if anyone has questions, please ask! Also, to whoever sent me the 2 USD in the game itch page, it made my night! Thank you!

[heltenjon]

It's always really cool to hear what the other betatesters noticed or suggested. I guess even though I understand instinctively that this is a mood piece, I'm more geared to suggest or notice the more practical parts of the design.

Slight spoilers if you haven't played the game yet:

Spoiler

I still think the ability to mark the trees with your claws is a good idea, even though it turned out not to be necessary in this one. At the time, I still hadn't found all the ghosts, and I believed I had to navigate through the thick of the forest. In there, I often lost my bearings, and I thought it could be cool to mark the trees to see where I had gone, what EriOo calls "breadcrumbs".    But I didn't really think he could pull it off...and I was proved wrong.

Finding your way, and especially finding one of the ghosts, was a lot harder in the earlier builds. I'm curious as to what the new players say about this balance. We testers knew the routes by heart in the end and could speed run the game. But taking your time to explore and experience the ambiance are the highlights of it, I feel.

[close]

[Shadow1000]

I completed the game in about 25 minutes.

Overall, the idea is excellent and the interface is outstanding! I did find myself wandering a bit but ultimately I did solve the game without getting too lost.

Gostei muito; parabéns!

[lorenzo]

I enjoyed reading the notes on development! Also, the part about the adopted cat was heart-warming (but where are the kitty pictures?!).

Feedback from testers can really improve a game, so great work to everybody involved! I didn't have too much trouble finding my bearings but the forest still felt big, so the approach really worked well for me.

[Creamy]

Very cool title screen. Finished it without much trouble. I would have loved to enter the cabin with them.

[eri0o]

@lorenzo, here is the kitten when I was submitting the game on the forums.



@heltenjon, I am pleased with the gameplay specifics feedback, I think it helped to balance so it's playable, and I don't think I would be able to polish the forest design towards orienting the player in it without your help! I think it helped a lot with shaping it and your feedback was amazing as you are very patient to write things very specifically.

@Shadow1000 thanks for the play time information! This is something I had no idea since I knew the map beforehand and I asked the testers to play too many times until they eventually knew too the map.

@Creamy thanks for playing! I wanted to play more with the title screen but this was the idea I ended up going for - wanted it to be demosceney.

[eri0o]

Holy cat! Someone played my game on YouTube! Kinda fascinating to watch! The player also picked up the SNES graphics intention!

[Kini Games]

I haven't played yet, but I checked out the first couple of minutes of that GSDBoxer video and, well, colour me impressed! Very cool of you to share your code, too.

I'll return here to give feedback, once I've had a chance to play the game myself.

[eri0o]

I showed the video above to someone and they asked me about the effects on the graves. It appears the screen distortion effect can be dependent on VSync being active or not in some computers to render properly, I had no idea. I know some computers runs AGS games slower when using VSync, so perhaps a thing to test when using winsetup here.

[lorenzo]

That cat is so cute, thank you for the picture eri0o! 

[eri0o]

Hey, so far, desktop only, but I added a web playable version of the game. Hopefully it helps if people can't run the binary on desktop for whatever reason. It can only be played in fullscreen.

[Nahuel]

This is awesome, this is really awesome, excellent job absolutely awesome!

[eri0o]

Thanks @Nahuel ! I really want to write a bit how everything works at some point, just been a bit short on time recently, but hopefully at some point in the next month.