Cute game! The baby was pretty creepy
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Lullaby's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Audio | #3 | 4.154 | 4.154 |
Originality | #13 | 4.192 | 4.192 |
Graphics | #24 | 3.692 | 3.692 |
Overall | #33 | 3.396 | 3.396 |
Theme | #35 | 3.923 | 3.923 |
Accessibility | #61 | 2.731 | 2.731 |
Fun | #73 | 2.654 | 2.654 |
Controls | #93 | 2.423 | 2.423 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.1.3
Wildcards Used
Arch Nemesis
Game Description
A less-than-mobile cat vs a sociopathic baby. The only way to peacefully resolve this miniature conflict is for an obese cat to perform a lullaby on a sentient floor-piano. As the faraway guardian of the house, you must remotely guide the cat through the dark to find and perform the lullaby; sparing the cat from the mortal threat of a delinquent baby.
How does your game tie into the theme?
You use a laser pointer to make the cat run around trying to avoid a baby, and play the piano by making the cat jump on the keys to play a lullaby to make the baby fall asleep!
Source(s)
https://github.com/Sooshimi/fat-cat-lullaby
Discord Username(s)
Soosh, Ramazir
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
0
Comments
Cute game, with charming graphic effects and calming music. The concept was fun. The baby was, uh, pretty creepy, which I guess is kind of the goal.
Though, there wasn't nearly enough feedback to know you were doing things right, and the jumping mechanic really needed to be explained better, because I didn't figure it out until after I had beaten the game.
It felt weird to have to constantly click to move around rather than holding. I guess it makes more sense with the context of the jump mechanic, but since that wasn't explained well, it just didn't feel like the right control scheme for this game.
Relying on the mouse exclusively isn't great for accessibility, but with a game jam game, that's just how it works out.
Well done on the game!
Thanks so much for the detailed feedback!
You're right, we needed to establish that you could only jump/bounce at the end of the roll - we just needed better instructions for controls in general, which sadly became an afterthought. The initial intention for the jump mechanic was to home in on the keys you click on and leap over obstacles (i-frames), but that was never fully realised.
We were set on including the laser pointer for the sake of concept, which forced us into the point-and-click control scheme, but perhaps we could've included a little 'cross' animation upon clicking so you know where the cat will end up (like LoL or Runescape). Going with the basic WASD controls could've made this much easier, but we were set on the cat being lazy/immobile (plus laser pointer). You're right that this limits the game's accessibility too; we never considered that this game only working on PC/mobile would be an issue, but it's our first jam/game so we were just concerned about making a game that works haha.
Thank you :) We will probably rework this in the future with your comment in mind.
I have to hand it to you guys, the laser pointer controller was a really great feature to add here.
Didn't quite understand how to play or finish the game, or maybe because I just jump right into the game without reading any instructions.
Cheers!
I really like the concept here. I felt like a weary cat at the end (when the baby finally 'dozed off') and while the difficulty was tough, I think the length of the game matches the learning curve very well.
I think because there's so many entries this jam that it can be tough for people to have the patience to spend much time with each game if they want to rate as many games as possible (which is what I used to do for our early jams which meant I probably missed out on solid entries like this one).
I like all the little touches with the baby-cam shader and the laser pointer effect and it's fun to play a music/sfx focused game. I did want to hold down left-click so that the cat would 'keep following' the pointer (hopefully as easy as just polling the mouse position in _physics_process or something), which I think would have addressed 90% of my learning curve time.
Your title screen provides a lot of good info and after winning I can see clearly what you intended to communicate. One thought could be to tweak "Find Melody" to "Find Correct Melody" or "Choose Melody", but I kind of think that could have spoiled things. Another option to combat the learning curve could be to give a tip after losing (i.e. indicating you need to choose the right melody).
The music was really great and for a lullaby game that's pretty key. And wow, while writing this review I finally noticed the 'street noises' which was a really interesting 'white-noise' kind of sfx touch that I don't think I'd have thought to do.
I ran into one bug when I jumped near the bottom of the screen (I didn't really understand the strategy of jumping).
Overall very fun!
Wow, thank you for taking your time to play our game and leaving all this feedback!
We didn’t have time to make more than one level, so we didn’t want it to be completed too quickly - but we took it a little too far! My friend and I really enjoy games with deeper learning curves, as you can probably tell!
I’m glad you like the little touches too to set the overall theme! Ah yeah, so we had a tough time figuring out what was best for the controls. Linking back to the difficulty, we wanted the baby to be a constant threat, so limiting the cat’s mobility was an intentional decision. Still not sure whether it was the best choice, though. We’re already thinking about how to rework all this!
Good to know the key info page helped too! Yeah we didn’t want to give too much away about the aim with the melodies, but we could have been smarter about it and should have put it higher in our priorities. The tip after losing is a great and effective idea though!
Ohh no way, you noticed the background noise! I set it quite quiet as I didn’t want it to be distracting, so I’m happy it didn’t go unnoticed :D thank you for the bug report too, I’ll look into this.
Ah, yeah so the jumping was intended for something else which was scrapped last minute. We wanted the cat to be able to hop over furniture, as well as hop between piano keys, but there was a lot of issues and bugs that I didn’t have time to fix, so we ended up scrapping it :( we kept the jump in as a way for players to simply get away from the baby a little quicker.
Thanks again for playing and the write up! We really appreciate it.
I had a hard time figuring out what exactly I needed to do but I managed to win after getting used to the movement haha. I also really liked the concept, nice one!
I love the concept so much. The music pieces are beautiful and them being essential to the gameplay is an amazing design choice.
I must say I struggled a bit too much with the controls, I couldn't win a single playthrough haha. But I understand what the direction was and would love to see it in it's full realization.
Great work!
That game is really original. I love the general athmosphere. I am just wondering why not using a classical key bindings for the movement of the fat cat. It is more accurate. May be you are thinking of features not yet implemented using this point & click design.
Had a super hard time with the piano keys! But the concept is amazing and I love the use of the baby as the villain!
Thank you! :O
I'm really glad you like what we were trying to go for! May not have been executed as well as we had planned, but I hope it's enjoyable for what it is!
I'm sure you've already seen my comment, but I have to say it again - we absolutely love your team's game. It's our favourite so far. Whoever's reading this comment and hasn't played it yet, please do.
I really liked the graphics. The visual and sound were amazing but the gameplay was slightly too fiddly. It was hard enough to get the cat to hit the right keys but with the baby chasing it became way too difficult.
That's very kind of you to say, thank you :) You're right. The laser pointer, rolling and jump mechanics didn't mesh as well as we'd envisioned - it was hard for us to tell whether it would be a 'steep learning curve' or just straight up confusing (probably the latter).
I think the frustration of people playing the wrong tune was also something we were concerned about, since we didn't have a chance to introduce a more obvious indicator when the wrong tune was played besides observing the states of the baby (neutral, angry and sleepy). These states weren't always easy to notice as it's dark lol. I was thinking of reflecting those emotional states by animating the cathead on the bottom left of the screen, but that would've been a little tricky. Feature creep at its finest haha.
Thank you!
Haha! Originally we had a wholesome game in mind, and when I was messing around with lighting options and thinking about the setting of the environment (baby was put to bed by parents at night before leaving the two unattended), I ended up with this. And then after a rather short discussion, we leaned into it! Then added the shadows to the baby and suddenly it looks like a horror game - then cue the creepy looking cat piano!
Ah, yeah it’s not the most intuitive to understand the lullaby mechanic right now. So, when you hit a musical toy, a tune plays and the baby reacts to each toy differently - which one is the lullaby? In the UI, the 3 eyed cat at the bottom left of the screen will display the colour of the piano keys you should attempt to play in order. The red buttons on either side of the cat piano will reveal the piano key colours for a short time.
Thank you, I'm glad you found the concept compelling :)
Yeahhh we tried not to make the indicator of the lullaby too obvious, but since the baby was relentless and the mechanics were tricky, I think most players were more focused on being able to input the correct notes for ANY of the melodies without dying rather than figuring out the "puzzle".
Really enjoyed the concept of your game by the way, the art style was a treat.
Overall, I think this was a pretty solid entry.
I didn't manage to win, but I really tried to. The sound was good, the pixel art was really well done as well. And the controls didn't feel laggy or unresponsive.
As for the wildcard, my cat is still terrified of my son from how he used to be as a baby. Can confirm: baby = cat nemesis. :P
Really appreciate the comment D4yz and inspiring work on Catburglar, the pixel art animation was so impressive (I now know the pain of animating a roll).
We were borderline sadistic with the difficulty of this game it seems - we put too much emphasis on the baby moving like a little crackhead. We may return to this concept down the line and rework some of the core mechanics so that it feels more intuitive and cohesive. You will likely see us at upcoming jams, this was a blast.
Also, thank you for leveraging your cat's baby trauma to justify our wildcard <3
game is very hard, i know the puzzle but i can't pressing the black key in piano from crocodile toys jump is hard because i 'have move the character first and then jump it make me to press white key before i can reach black key.
btw your game using wildcard arch nemesis but the enemy is baby, it is baby human or baby warewolf?
overall i like theme and music
Haha our logic was that humans are the real enemy of cats (unethical genetic engineering and abuse). We figured dogs aren't necessarily the opposite of cats, but we're just reaching here let's be honest ;)
Thank you, so glad you liked the music! <3 the game turned out to be stupidly challenging, we underestimated it considerably.
The music and graphics are amazing! I liked the atmosphere and the crt shader to simulate the baby cam view. The controls are a bit confusing, I don't understand how to jump, even pressing the "space", seems it work at random. I tried the Web and Linux versions, but I can't jump properly in both. A curious fact is that I also used a laser pointer to control the cat in my game, although the controls and purposes are a little different... :-)
The game is really difficult to hit the keys and avoid the fast baby all the time, but I liked this entry! Really nice job and concept!
Really loved the music for this one. The controls are a bit fiddly, but I honestly think it makes the game work a bit better - the fact that it's harder to control the cat makes it more tense when the baby is bearing down on you.
Thank you, John! Hope you enjoyed it.
Yeahh we stuck with the idea of the baby being a constant threat early on when we came up with the concept, so we're quite happy with how it's turned out! In fact, we originally wanted the baby to be able to bulldoze through toys and obstacles haha! I'll work on the controls though.
That means a lot, thank you John. You nailed our original intention regarding the cat's lack of mobility, we needed the baby to feel threatening. Turns out the musical puzzle ended up being quite tricky to navigate in the midst of the surprisingly rapid baby.
(We absolutely loved your game, really inspiring work for just 9 days)
its pretty hard to hit the keys with that crazy baby always right next to you - really cool game concept, and the graphics & music are nice as well
Super original idea! The graphics and sound are great too. I wish it was a bit easier, I kept losing :')
Very fun and thematic! Just found the controls a bit difficulty to get and the baby is a bit too fast for my cat eyes
Thank you!!
Ah yeah, we were afraid the controls being a little difficult, especially with the jump which was intended for another purpose which ended up getting scrapped last minute :( We were trying to find the right difficulty (like baby speed and max roll distance) with the fact that we only had time to make one level, so we didn't want it to be completed too easily, but I think we took it a little too far!
We really appreciate that feedback though, and for playing our game!
The music is VERY nice! Whoever wrote it, can I ask if you post any other works or have socials I could follow?
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