For week 9 we have quite possibly my silliest idea yet: a game about literally herding cats!
This week actually started out pretty rough, in that I ended up need to scrap my initial concept and start over. Originally, I was planning to make a puzzle game about mirrors, where the player would interact with their reflection and the reflection of key objects in order to achieve certain objectives.
However, something I quickly discovered is that creating reflections, particularly reflections across an arbitrary plane, while also being able to control what is and is not reflected, is not a trivial problem. This is especially problematic when trying to set up mirrors that can reflect other mirrors. So unfortunately, after spending over half a day trying and failing to get a prototype working, I had to switch gears.
Enter this idea, which was one I came up with more or less out of nowhere a couple weeks ago. In Cat Herder, your job is to move all the cats in the level into the target zones, which is complicated by the fact that the cats have no interest in staying put. What results is a game that is silly and fun, but also kind of frustrating, which I suppose is the point? If I were to expand this game concept, I think I’d have to provide more ways for the player to actually control the cats to a degree.
At first, I was a little intimidated by modeling and animating something that is not a person. However, I mostly got around this by leaning into a super cutesy, cartoony style, which gives me a lot of leeway to have derpy animations. You’ll note that the “legs” of the cats are just little tubes, with no bending at all. I was largely inspired by the cute and simple design of Pusheen.
Despite the rough start, this week turned out pretty well. Just one more to go!!
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