Introduction: This post is the fourth part of a series we’re running. We always wanted to give developers a chance to showcase their games even before they are finished. This should help developers build a fanbase and also get valuable feedback from their audience.

The Rainbow Cat Dev Diary will show you all the hard work that goes into developing a hilarious platform game.

If you want to know more about Thomas Evans or read the whole story, go here: first part, second part, third part.

Off to Thomas now!

[Game Progress of Rainbow Cat]

This weeks’ update marks a definite turning point for the feel of the game with the implementation of the ‘rainbow’ blast in a much, much cooler way. There’s only a video demo this time, as the game is not really in an easily playable state right now.

The major change is for the rainbow blast mechanic – when the cat jumps up into the air, you can pull the right trigger or hold control to kick the game into slow-mo mode. The cat gathers energy, you aim in any direction, let go, and bam! The cat explosively barfs a white beam of light that propels it a short distance. It is a much more visceral feeling now to have the cat slow down and then explosively propel itself with energy. Especially with an xbox 360 controller, it feels pretty cool (special thanks to my creative consultant Yann Christopher for the idea).

The cat can only shoot itself through the air at angles that are multiples of 45°, which whilst making the game less twitchy to play also makes it easier for me as a game designer to plan and predict the paths that the player will have to travel along in the levels.

For some reason with the arrow-keys, I can’t make the cat aim diagonally to the left and down. It is a really annoying bug, but probably with a simple solution.

For a brief time as a placeholder graphic the cat actually turned into an arrow in slow motion before it launched itself. It seems silly, but it worked surprisingly well.

The cat has to collect little pills (like coins) to gradually fill up its blast meter, which has a limit of 3 blasts right now. This will probably change, and perhaps could even be increased with unlockable upgrades. So when the player goes through the level, they have to aim for and collect these smaller pills to get anywhere.

Still no real progress on the name of the game, but I know it should probably have cat and drugs in the name somewhere, so ‘Trippy the Cat’ is looking more and more appealing. I’ve decided it’s not especially important to name the game just yet though.

I have a two week break coming up, so expect a lot of progress on the game soon. My current priority is just to make the game as fun as I can – that and cleaning up all the redundant code! I may try to implement an enemy NPC for the cat to smash into, which could be super fun with explosions and sound effects. But at this point it’s difficult to nail down short term goals as the game continues to evolve into something a little bit different than what I initially imagined. But that’s a good thing!

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