kumabotz 2018-08-14 01:17
Love the art and the mood! 5/5!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Bath Time
By ddrkirbyisq and Xellaya
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 23 | 4.19 | 95 | |
| Fun | 89 | 3.85 | 94 | |
| Innovation | 75 | 3.90 | 94 | |
| Theme | 82 | 4.13 | 95 | |
| Graphics | 17 | 4.57 | 95 | |
| Audio | 6 | 4.36 | 95 | |
| Humor | 54 | 3.96 | 92 | |
| Mood | 28 | 4.17 | 89 |
Love the art and the mood! 5/5!
Really well polished and works well, good job. Although difficulty gets very overwhelming past level 8 and requires some pretty ridiculous APM. I couldn't beat the last level and the 8 and 9 took a long time.
Very clean (just like the cats now!). I didn't beat it... I don't think I can move my hand fast enough to get through the later levels. Great job!
I also got stumped at level 8, even in the post compo version. :joy: It's a fun concept that feels like it was designed with mobile in mind. That's good, but it wasn't exactly a joy to play with on the mouse. I would have liked it if you were able to click and hold in between transitioning from the bath to taking the cats off the drying rack. I guess like "it isn't a huge deal" since it's one button you re-press and all, but...in such a frenzy, smaller details like this would at least help make later levels a bit more forgiving, I think. :joy:
I also feel like the "swipe controls" for taking the cats off the drying rack isn't consistent with its response at all. I tried this in earlier levels of the post compo version, and it seems like even if I wait for all the cats on a full rack to dry and swipe to the right, making sure my cursor is on all the cats, all but like two or three get picked up most of the time. And this, in later levels, makes things extremely irritating because you'll have to swipe twice or three times when the cats have all fully dried because the game doesn't recognize that I swiped across the screen to try and pick up all the cats for some reason?
The indication that the bathtub was about to explode also felt somewhat strange because it seems like there's a delay once the kittens pile on, rather than the bathtub exploding the moment a kitten is added. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that I was cleaning cats and none were coming down and then all of a sudden, the tub just combusts.
The art style is pretty cute, and I love the calming colour palette. I also enjoyed the sound effects - you always make such nice chiptune-ish cat noises that make those animals 10x more adorable, I swear. I like what was done with the music, too, what with the chiptune arps kicking in whenever you swirl to the music getting faster and more intense when your bathtub starts to run out of space. If anything, I guess the music was a bit repetitious, but I'm guessing this was done because it's affected by what you do or what happens in the game. This kind of composition wasn't really what I would expect from a game like this either. But it's fine for what it is.
Given the screen size, I can only imagine that this will become a phone game, and I'd certainly be interested in seeing how that would play out. This really seems like it would play a lot better with a touchscreen.
A very cute and relaxing (at least in the beginning) game! The sound effects and the art style are very nice! the dynamic soundtrack is a nice touch as well. Obviously this game is targeted towards mobile, which is probably why it's so difficult to finish with a mouse. The difficulty got the better of me so I rage-quit at level 8. Level 8 was the one i got stuck on and couldn't go any further. Other than that, great job as always, DDRKirby(ISQ) and Kat Jia! I can't wait to see what you make next!
It's easy to make, but it looks very cute. Very nicer game / good job!-=3
Very fun and cute, I'm used to 400 DPI on my mouse so this was some intense mouse spinning :laughing:
@random-storykeeper Thanks for writing all that out, your feedback is all spot on!
Some of the later levels are still a bit more hectic than we'd like; still working on toning that down.
Good call on the swiping detection! Especially at lower frame rates it indeed drops inputs, the next version will have improved behavior for that.
You're also 100% right on the game over behavior! Right now it's based on a timer that starts counting down once you have over 25 meowmies, but aside from the shaking growing more intense over time, that's pretty much invisible/nonobvious to the player. We're changing the entire system so it bursts once you get over a certain number of meowmies, and reworking the levels around that. We're also redoing the tutorial a bit to communicate that more clearly.
We've also been already testing (and bugfixing) on mobile -- hopefully we will get that submitted sometime in the near future!
The atmosphere in this game feels very zen (largely thanks to the music), but the gameplay ramps up crazy quick. I agree with others that a mouse is harder to enjoy this game than a touch screen would (at least it feels that way), but it's very charming. Impressively polished feel.
Very cute time reaction/management game. I liked the art and audio! The circular motions with a mouse were a bit tiresome, but I'm sure they'd feel at home with a touch screen. I feel a little bad for the kitties being swirled around :P
Nice art! Pretty fun, though after level 6 or 7 is just furiously spinning my mouse. I played level 10 on the post compo because it was too hard on compo version (was able to beat lvl 10 on post-compo, though still pretty hard). Might be more fun to do on a touch surface (I tried on my laptop screen as it's touch, but seems like mouse works better for scrubbing). As a suggestion if you continue working on this, it probably will be too hard for some people who don't have good motor control - if there ends up being a story or cut scenes perhaps having an easy mode so people can enjoy that part of the game. Good job!
Nice game, quite fun to play. Although the later levels are a bit hard.
Big update! With v1.04, the post-compo version is now quite improved from the original jam version. We've put in some much-needed improvements to input handling and the tutorial, and tuned the difficulty to make it more of a calming experience rather than the frantic scramble that it used to be.
Cute! When I tapped the cats in the tub and the made notes on the beat, I felt impressed! If you continue to develop this, it wasn't obvious to me at first how long I needed to swirl the cats.
I like the organic art style and the fact that you control the game with gestures. A timer mechanic would be nice to challenge the player a bit. It doesn't have to be clock it can be running out of water.
I never thought that a cute cat washing game can become intense! Very great concept. It's pretty original too because I haven't seen any game like this. Good job! It would be a nice mobile game to play on a trip. :smile:
Nice art style, lots of polish for a jam game.
So, so cute. I loved it. Good job!
This is adorable! Good use of the theme and your graphics and music are great as usual. I like the bit of dynamic music too. Gameplay is pretty fun and it generally feels good to play, though the swipe at the top didn't feel as responsive as it maybe could've been. I didn't notice the drying timer at first so that may have been the issue. Level 5 was pretty tough though, it's not clear how to get better at the swirling motion aside from just raw speed. Maybe would feel better on mobile? In any case it seems like you fixed some of that in the post-compo version so nice work! Overall really solid, great job.
Thank you for sharing your game with me. I played it on my stream tonight at https://www.twitch.tv/saoigames
I have rated your game, but all of my feedback was captured in the stream. It was in the middle.
You can hear my comments in the archive at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/299357576?t=01h56m01s
I found it very adorable.
cool game. I really loved it. The graphics and audio and the adorable mood are excellent. This would surely make a nice mobile game. :smiley:
Althought at first I thought it was a nice relaxing game until I got to level 5 when all of a sudden the difficulty curve just mounts :smile_cat:
really adorable game. definitely can see this as a phone game. It felt really polished! great job guys!
wow, one of the best games I played this jam! while at the beginning the premise was a bit funny, I really enjoyed cleaning kittens for the whole 10 levels! the cats are extremely cute and the game is super polished, which really adds to the overall experience. I played on the web but of course this makes much more sense on mobile. great job overall!
Is there a way to fail in this game? It looks awesome and feels almost like meditation but a little more game mechanics or events would make it a little more challenging and intresting
Simply adorable and very well crafted game. As has been mentioned already, the game over condition is a bit hard to understand, but that's all I can really criticize. It seems you paid a lot of attention to making the game feel juicy and polished and it paid off, awesome job!
PS: No team I know of could make this game without constant, immature jokes. Respect on still finishing it. :innocent:
Really funny ! The graphics are soo great ! Great and innovative idea ! (I don't succeed the 5th level.. but I still like it !) Really good job !
Ha cute kitty fun! Gentle curve at first, but at lvl 5 some tension strikes. :) Balance between washing and putting them up to dry is fun. The added soap is good, but perhaps one or two more tools to help with the kittenscubbing could help make it feel more complete.
Adorable! Lovely art style and fun! I could definitly imagine this being a mini-game mobile game :)
this is so nice and cute idea and graphic style! complete mobile game... bravo!
I'm not sure if it was actually fun or if I was just smiling because of how cute it was, but I gave you 5 stars in almost every category, including fun.
I remember you guys' work from Samurai Shaver! This LD is no different, stellar job on all fields!
A fun and cute use of Unity Rigidbodies in a game geared toward the mobile platform. It still kinda works on a desktop, though! Nice.
Nice art and fun physics, very polished result and clever use of the theme. So many work in really few time..
Now I have to visit every game I rated for graphics and lower my mark. Cats are huge success!
What a cute and clean game! While I was playing, I suddenly recognized the awesome art style, nice music and smooth tweening from Samurai Shaver from LD40. :smile: I got stuck on level 5, playing with mouse doesn't seem to be optimal...
I also playd the Post-Compo version. I really like all the changes and improvements that you made, well done! Especially the more detailed tutorial and visual clues are nice. I managed to finish this version of the game. :smiley:
There's a huge amount of charm and polish here, with cute art and really nice sound and music. Really well done.
The sound is also great at providing cues for the various state changes that need to be managed. The art has many nice details as well, for example I love the way the water looks, with the flat layers at first, but then the round circle when I'm cleaning correctly.
I played the compo version first, and hit a wall at level 5. I eventually forced my way through. I'll try to detail a few of the points of struggle, in case that is interesting.
I lost a few times trying to experiment with different modes of scrubbing, trying back-and-forth rapidly instead of around in a circle, for example. Or concentrating in a small area rather than spreading it all around. I didn't really learn much from these experiments, and it felt a little un-transparent to me when/if I was being more/less effective. Eventually I returned to the round-and-round and didn't concentrate on any specific cats, and I finally bulled my way through to level 6.
That rabbit-hole of experimentation aside, the place where I still lose time is definitely the moment where I transition from scrubbing to clicking the clean cats. For example, in this moment here: https://imgur.com/b4XCwJD I have a hard time visually parsing and then hitting the target. It's not that it's unclear or unfair or anything, it's just that this becomes the hole in my game where I leak time. My strategy for handling it became spam-clicking indiscriminately and trying to wait until I had a few extra clean cats to move into that mode. But that might explain why I struggled to get through the full compo game.
I went back to check out the changes, and was able to beat the post-compo version from the start without any game overs. Without really understanding the rules for cats becoming clean I simply obeyed the instruction to use broad circular motions in one direction. I think another nice aspect was making it cat-count based instead of time-based.
This is a cool attention-splitter game that balances a nicely conflicted feeling of relaxing panic. The post-comp version better achieves that mix, whereas by my fifth retry of level 5 I was no longer chill.
Really nice entry.
Meowmies are so cute, fantastic work! I liked everything about the game: gameplay, art, sounds, and music. The game is so polished!
This game was so cute. Aesthetically it is very pleasing and the gameplay itself, while not terribly inventive, is quite solid. I couldn't get past level 7 on PC but I can see how it would be easier to complete as a mobile game.
Have fun out there!
@saoi-games: Thanks for playing our game! The video really helped us finetune the post-jam version, so thanks for sharing!
@g11: Yay, meowmies <3
@papaver: Thanks for trying both versions of our game! Seems that we did something right with the post-jam changes!
@pkenney: Thank you for your detailed write-up! Seems that level 5 in the compo version is generally agreed upon to be the place where things get hairy. Not being clear about how to scrub the meowmies is something that we also realized we needed to be more clear about in the post-compo version, as that could make a pretty big difference. I'm glad you were able to finish the new version, and that it achieves a better balance in those things! Thanks for playing :)
I'm glad I did not get to this game sooner (I would have missed out on playing it on my phone)! It was nice being able to tumble wash cats with one hand, while using the other to send the dried cats off to bed (I couldn't manage to tap cleaned cats while swirling though).
:thumbsup: This game was super cute! The graphics and sound effects created a very pleasant feeling. The music was awesome, and fit in perfectly, it was cute while I was relaxing washing some cats, and then got intense as I started **running out of space**.
:point_right: The gameplay was not super novel, as it played similar to the mobile game "ideal form." The victory image was a bit rougher than the graphics for the rest of the game, but I guess that's a good use of your time, since only a few people are likely to play that far.
:question: Will the Meowmies continue? (If so I hope they stay cute, this experience was a lot more rewarding than Goodnight Meowmie.)
:star: Overall great job. Thank you for making this!
Probably the best game I've played this Jam, absolutely fantastic Aesthetic, the gameplay was excellent and pure in it's design and implementation. The mobile version of this was the superior of the two for sure, but that's to be expected. Graphics were adorable, and the sound effects too!
I am really gonna scrape the barrel to find things I'd improve on because I try and always leave some kind of constructive critique in my reviews and I'm struggling, so I'll say: I think maybe it could do with some level based gameplay elements that mix up the design.
Fantastic entry guys!
Awesome game! loved the energy and mood of this entry!
Nice work guys, pretty polished game for a game jam.
Great cute game! 5/5 in everything. I managed to complete all levels on the first try.
Beat the game! I can't resist those cute kitties!
My husband shared this gem with me, and I had to hunt it down to give you guys a review. I'm astonished at how much cute you managed to fit into this game. The sound was just enough to add to the cute without being noticable (which is a very difficult threshold to find).
If I had to find something to be improved: I had a little difficulty telling when the extra dirty kittens were finished being extra dirty in the end levels, when you were sure to have cats of varying stages of grunge.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to subject all my non-developer games to this cuteness overload.
Brilliant! Oh man. That was a joy to play. I'm really happy that you continued development on this because it's really fun. Great Job :D
Great mood an gfx, a very relaxing experience to clean the kittens :)
Easily the cutest game I've played this Jam! Well done.
Oh man, this is so cute I gotta check my blood sugar. The art style is very pleasant, and the concept of washing dirty ~~kitties~~ meowmies is adorable. It's fascinating how such simple gameplay can be so appealing! The game was a bit hard - it took me a long time to get past level 5, but even then, it wasn't really frustrating. Overall, this is a very, very solid entry. Amazing job!
Polish is on point as usual! My only gripe was since realistically - the game plays exactly the same later as how it starts out, except you just need to do the exact thing faster - it gets a bit dry (sorry couldn't resist :p ) after a while. The rest of the game got me playing till the end, so props for that!
MEOWMIES!!! ;cccc; You're going to make me cry right here on the spot. I _just_ got a new phone and it even has a cat cover, so I couldn't resist playing the mobile version—it's so cool that you even have one!
kattefon-kopi.JPG
Played through the whole thing. My finger hurts but it was worth every second. I'm not sure this is a good way to be bathing kitties IRL but in game form it melted my heart. From graphics to music, sound effects and gameplay, transitions and tutorial… It was just… a complete game. The only thing really differentiating it from a fully fledged non-jam game would be a lack of additional levels, TBH. Absolutely top notch. Besides being physically exhausting to play I really can't say anything negative about this! Fantastic work. 😍
One of the cutest games on this jam. Mew!
Adorable Meowmies.. :cat: Complete the game (beat level 10).. :thumbsup: Overall really cute and well suited addition for mobile game. Aesthetically I'm getting this vibe its got this physics charm similar to like the Disney Tsum Tsum mobile game. :dizzy:
Optional Suggestions: - For mobile: somehow have option to shake mobile device to dry the Meowmies ("Shake/Wave to Dry"), or blow to the microphone to air dry.. or when circle touch gesture to give a bath a whirl, you could further spin by Accelerometer/tilt on device to mimick stronger faster wash cycle. - looking forward to see if you'll come up with thematic seasonal promotional themes: - Holiday (Halloween, Christmas, etc..) - Android Anniversary
Cute! :star2:
Amazing game! One of the top 5 I played this jam. Couldn't pass level 7. Good job :)
Really cute game with peaceful music.
Taking a bath in a clean and beautiful bathroom is a pleasure. I can get it too, because my old bathtub is now new again, thanks to the specialists from https://azreglazing.com/. I don’t know what I would do without them, because I don’t have the opportunity to buy a new bath.