Cats & Yarn is a 2D Causal game where the player uses a cat puck to push a ball of yarn around, avoiding obstacles such as gunshots and landmines. The longer the yarn survives, the higher the player will be on the leaderboard.
I have made this game alone during my free time for a 3 Day Game-Jam on itch.io, it won 4th out of 120 submissions.
Theme: Cats and Guns, Highscore
Below I talk more about Cats & Yarn
CORE MECHANICS
The player, playing as a cat has to protect a ball yarn from different weapons by pushing it around, similar to a air-hockey table.
Different fire-powers such as bombs and landmines will appear overtime, each serving a different purpose to challenge the player.
OBSTACLES DESIGN
Gunshot, make players to move around
Bomb, make players move around a larger distance to make them lose control
Landmine, make players control the yarn carefully
Gunshots and bombs spawn randomly around the play area, but will also sometimes spawn near the yarn as a balancing act.
SHOP & LEADERBOARD
Players can equip different skins for their cats by breaking high scores, and leaderboard encourages players to try again.
Instead of having a 'Game Over' menu, this Shop-Leaderboard menu replaces it, reminding the player when the game ends of the different incentives to play again.
Friction to restart is also minimized by allowing the player to right click anywhere to restart, this makes replaying easy as it only 1 click away
COVER ART
When the game was first published, it was not gaining clicks.
I discovered the reason - the original cover (top) was not interesting.
After making changes (bottom) - strings in the background, yarns for eyes and making it a GIF, it generated more plays, allowing it to be the highest played and rated game in the game-jam
Original Cover
New Cover
WHAT I'VE LEARNT FROM THIS PROJECT
Ways of making a good cover art, leaderboard and shop implementation, as well as time management to develop a game in a short timeframe.