Project Overview
Project manager / Game UX - Mika
Concept artist / 3D Modeller / UI Design - Lola
3D Animator / Lead programmer - Johnson (me)
Researcher / programmer - David
*SPECIAL THANKS TO*
Jater and Wayland for helping out.
In this fun, light-hearted platform-maze experience, the player takes on the role of a male cat named Ted who is trying to collect the items he needs for his date Robin before she’s not available anymore. So, the goal of each level is to reach your date before time runs out and you lose the level. And the more items you collect, the better the date will go.
To do this the player must both navigate through a maze with doors and keys, and avoid enemy dogs who do nothing but chase you as you enter a certain distance from them and make you lose items. The ever agile cat Ted avoids them by hiding in bushes or boxes and moving at just the right time, but he also gets distracted and can’t help but play around if he happens to run into an enticing wool ball or fish toy.
As Ted and Robin go on more dates, the standards get higher. So, the mazes become more intricate and complex, and more enemy dogs are placed throughout. The order of the levels is set, and the player simply restarts each level when it is not completed in time. After successfully preparing for all the dates, a successful ending will result in Ted and Robin tying the knot and getting married.
Game Play
Controls: The player movement uses a console joystick where up and down move forward and backward, respectively, and left and right turn.
Camera: The camera is a 2.5D perspective at a 45 degree angle. The camera focuses on the player in the centre position, and as the player touches walls that obstruct the camera’s vision, they become semi-transparent.
Game Logic
The player moves faster than the enemy dogs, and so needs to strategize how best to use the hiding objects to navigate around the enemy dogs to collect keys and collectable items without getting touched. The following are the three possibilities for each dog encounter:
The player has a fairly limited line of sight, and so needs to be able to navigate efficiently through the maze. This comes mostly into play when figuring out which doors need to be unlocked first and where their corresponding keys are located. As the game is seen from a diagonally positioned 2.5D perspective, walls and objects become semi-transparent when the player comes near walls that block the view, which is where game objects may be found.
The time limit for each level is 300 seconds, and the player loses whenever the timer is up and they have not reached the date, and wins if they reach their date before the time is up. In addition, for each level the player can earn more bonus stars the more collectable items they get. If players don't get enough stars, they will be unable to unlock next level. The following table indicates how many stars the player can earn relative to how many collectable items are obtained.
Players need to not only navigate through a traditional maze in a time limit, but also find keys corresponding to same colour doors in the right order in order to reach the goal.
Besides the navigation the player needs to strategize how best to avoid territorial dogs who cause them to lose items when touched through the logic described above. The AI dogs are using raycast function, which will chase you only when ray connection is clear and no obstacles.
The initial level has three doors and keys. As the game progresses the mazes become more complex and larger with more doors and keys that the player needs to navigate and collect items in. Thus, reaching the date and collecting all five collectable items will become increasingly more difficult to accomplish with the constant 300 second time limit.
Art & Design Direction
Ted and Robin were lonely cats who roamed around the city they live in. Then one day Ted metRobin and they hit it off, as cats do, and Robin agreed to go another dates with Ted. So, Ted needs to collect items for future dates and meet Robin at different locations around the city.
Each level is the precursor to a date with Robin, and as the game progresses the expectations for the date locations become higher and higher such that Ted needs to navigate through more and more difficult and complex areas to reach Robin in time.
Cat-Chup’s environments explore various famous sites around New York City, including Central Park, Yankee Stadium, the Guggenheim Museum, the Empire State Building, the Tiffany Store, the Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, and Rockefeller Center.
Since the perspective is that of a cat, objects found in the game are those common to cats, including bushes and boxes t o hide in from enemy dogs, wool balls and cardboard boxes that distract the player for precious seconds, fish cans to provide food for dates, and milk bottles to provide drinks for dates. As it common for maze and/or puzzle games, each level contains a number of coloured keys that are used to unlock doors with the corresponding colour. The key aesthetics resemble generic cartoon keys.
The cats Ted and Robin and the enemy dogs are minimalist characters, given the light-hearted low-poly feel of the game. Because they are to be feared and have a brute, non-reflecting attitude to defend their territory, the dogs have menacing “X” eyes and pointy teeth.
Cat-Chup employs simple affordances and metaphors to provide a gameplay experience with minimal text. Accordingly, when Ted is distracted by a wool-ball or fish toy, confusion rings appear above the character for the duration of the pause. And when Ted comes within the 200 pixel radius of a dog, a red, high energy colour, box with an exclamation mark appears to warn the player of danger. For each level completed, a “well done” message appears, where up to three stars maybe earned, according to the table given above. At the beginning of each level, a panel will display indicating what and how many of each item the level contains, which will be indicated in the UI during gameplay as well.
