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A jam submission

Kitty's QuestView game page

A kittyful retro platformer / metroidvania game.
Submitted by Colleen — 3 days, 13 hours before the deadline
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Kitty's Quest's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Presentation#64.0004.000
Design#93.4553.455
Overall#183.2273.227
Enjoyment#222.9092.909
Metroidvania#272.5452.545

Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Engine
Custom (GalaEngine - www.galaengine.com)

Team/Developer
Just me, Colleen.

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Comments

Submitted

Nicely designed game. I struggled with the difficulty, so wasn't able to complete. But good retro feel with clean graphics. Checkpoints and save were well designed.

Submitted

This game has a very nice, professional look. I think if the level design is improved and the hitboxes more generous, this will be a really solid platformer. In addition to what was already mentioned, using dash to jump slightly higher was not intuitive to me. Some of those early levels that require it seem a little too difficult for early game. 

Developer(+1)

thanks! i'll keep this feedback in mind if i release a game in the future :)

Submitted(+1)

Very nice looking game. 

Platforming is very tough here for me. Gave up after >300 deaths when there is no save between two difficult locations both with moving platforms and spikes, the second having disappearing ground platforms. To go through the first location I need near 10 tries each time only to reach the second, and it becomes very costy to try different ways of solving the second.

I understand this complexity is intentional in this kind of game. So, it's just my personal wish it having even more checkpoints in some particular places. E.g. like before chasm with spikes it was very convenient to respawn immediately and try different key combinations. 

The most pro of this game is overall presentation. May be only music is a small want.

Submitted

It is Fun & simple, I like these kind of game

You have done a great job at creating a classic. Really loved the pixel effect of screen transitions

Developer

thanks!

Submitted(+1)

The presentation here is pretty charming and I (mostly) enjoyed myself. There is a stage near the mid-game that had a room I found unusually difficult to time and execute, and it was right after a rooms that was interesting the first one or two times but sort of became a bit of busy-work timing after that. I did not go for 100% collection, but if I were more in the retro direction I could see getting into that.

I still had quite a good time, a 4/5 good time too be clear, but:

  • Crumbling platforms in my intuition are only supposed to crumble after you stood on them. These ones crumbled when being passed through, making at least one screen involving those platforms more difficult than you may have intended.
  • The hitboxes for the cat and the projectiles in particular seemed smaller than the visuals would have one expect. To be clear, I think the hitboxes themselves were fine, but I wish the sprites had matched them a bit better.
  • The timing of various platforms and movements required sometimes felt more random or even punishing. (I realize it's hard to get moving platforms right, especially when people have multiple opinions about these sorts of things and mine is probably on the picky side.) I will say at risk of contradicting this in a small way, that I liked the platform and projectile timing being consistent upon room re-entry every time.

The presentation is incredibly charming and the world is pretty well-designed. It doesn't do much as far as new mobility abilities, but it makes you learn the ones you start with pretty well. Good show overall, likely to be on the more difficult end, but there's plenty of folks like me who don't mind such things in themselves. With some post-jam improvements on design, I would probably pay actual money for this.

Developer(+1)

thanks kkairos! yep, that crumbling platform thing was supposed to be patched before release. my bad! i too find the hitboxes and platform timing to be pretty bad. hitboxes had last-minute fixes (they were all originally too big). i think i focused too heavily on platform timing and stuff, because there wasn't a whole lot i could do with the limited room size.

thanks for the feedback, though! i plan on revisiting this game concept when my engine improves. i definitely plan to have larger rooms, more interesting mechanics, less punishing gameplay, multiple "worlds"/"planets"/what-have-you, etc..

would you mind being notified if/when i release a next kitty's quest-esque game?

Submitted(+1)

Please do! I should be clear that I enjoyed my time with this one!

Submitted(+1)

Ive downloaded the game but sadly I can't get it to open. Im on windows 11. When I click the application a box pops up for a split second and then closes immediately, even tried opening as an administrator :( the screengrabs look awesome though hopefully I will figure out whats up and can give a review :)

Developer (1 edit)

Oh that's interesting. Do you have a dedicated GPU, or just an integrated one? I'm not sure how safe it is sharing a full dxdiag log (for privacy reasons), but if you can paste some specs into a pastebin file, that would be great.

Submitted(+1)

Not much of a metroidvania, but this really took me back to my Amstrad 6128 days. Especially the crt feature! <3

I loved the pixel art.

Submitted(+1)

Managed to get to the end with 201 deaths, 7 gems and with half an hour of playtime!

I enjoy hardcore retro games so this was really fun. If only there was music during the game itself, not only in the menu and the end. There were a lot of challenging parts, but the last area was way too easy. Not that many metroidvania elements but an enjoyable game for platforming enthusiasts anyway.

Submitted(+1)

Hi!

Love the aesthetics, and the precise but kinda slow controls give it an old timey retro vibe, like the OG castlevania. I was not able to get very far into it, as I do not have the patience for timed precision platforming (I recently finished celeste so all my tolerance for that has been drained for the foreseeable future lol) but the niche for it is there and I am sure fans of that genre will enjoy this!

Submitted

I mean, it plays nice, everything feels polished (except animations), but god is this boring

Developer (1 edit)

thanks for the feedback! yeah, i knew going into this that the gameplay is pretty niche. i like platformers that dont require a lot of brain power, ie just jumping and dodging rather than combat - so that's what i went for. im surprised you didn't point out the imbalanced difficulty, as that's what i would consider the weakest aspect.

do you have any constructive criticism? like stuff you would have liked to see, but didn't? i think combat and variably-sized rooms would have made a big difference, but i was working within time and technical constraints. definitely would implement those if i make a sequel on a future version of the engine :)