Cat Summoning Puzzle

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.67

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.45

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.48

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.90

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.45

Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.00

You're a necromancer and a crazy cat person. After your five cats passed on, you found solace in summoning their souls when they were in the vicinity. Of course, a household of five cats is bound to have their squabbles and that does affect the summoning process. Basically, if you summon the wrong cats together (or alone), they'll become upset and reverse the summoning process. Three levels to master in this short, relatively simple Ludum Dare 55 (Summoning) game.

This game was inspired by the old riddle about getting a fox, hen and bag of grain (or some variation) across a river, but the boat only has two seats.

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Credits

Background
Parallax Halloween 2D Game Backgrounds
Author: Craftpix
https://free-game-assets.itch.io/parallax-halloween-2d-game-backgrounds

Music
4 Music Box Tracks (musicbox1_spooky_waltz.ogg)
Author: Aureolus_Omicron
https://opengameart.org/content/4-music-box-tracks

All other assets CC0 I did not have time to add.

Tags: #2d, #cats, #gdevelop, #magic, #meaningful choices, #pixel art, #short

Genres: puzzle

Tools: GDevelop

Comments22

Gnum_16 Apr 2024, 23:09

Vety cool game!

Kaedalus16 Apr 2024, 23:15

Got me thinking a bit! Reminds me of the old raft puzzles. :)

MontyMoneybags16 Apr 2024, 23:15

The cat sprites are so cute :sob:

Istade16 Apr 2024, 23:22

Very cute, C->B->D-E.

LDJam user 261037author17 Apr 2024, 00:00

@kaedalus You mean like the old riddle about the fox, the hen and bag of grain (or some variation) where you need to get them across a river, but the boat only seats two? That was actually the inspiration of this game. Meant to put that in the description, but forgot :\

velvetlobster17 Apr 2024, 13:20

at home we have 3 cats (or better they allow us to live in here lol)

so I can relate with this soo much and actually the three of them are a lot like if I had snowball, blackie and ginger

ariyassa17 Apr 2024, 16:09

This was cute! What a fun puzzle!

kanity18 Apr 2024, 13:28

I love the puzzle vibes here, and reminded me of a story with the wolf and sheep that need to be transferred across the river :) I wish we could revise the previous statements about the cats preferences when the third round rolls around ^^' As I expected each round to have different rules, I didn't think to keep in mind rules from previous ones :')

Yay! That was delightful. I love cats, the game looks cozy, and the music is sweet _>

LDJam user 261037author18 Apr 2024, 15:06

@kanity Congradulations was a typo. I always forget it's not spelled with a D and my software has no spellcheck.

What I had been thinking of doing after the jam, was adding the rules are displayed on a sidebar, with the variations being added each level. Thanks for letting me know I definitely should focus on adding that.

Jaxah19 Apr 2024, 19:33

Nice one getting this completed! The puzzles are fun, but could have been more challenging, or more of them, I had completed the game before I knew it!
The pixel cats should have been matched with a pixel background, they look a little too jarring. The music is nice and chill. Great job, well done!

LDJam user 35534419 Apr 2024, 19:35

I love cats. I really do. All of them. Cats. CATS!!!

Pacelin19 Apr 2024, 19:36

Thank you for this entry! I really enjoy it, can you add sound settings for me in later updates. And more interesting puzzles.

Tryam19 Apr 2024, 19:36

I liked the idea of the game. And a separate like for the cats)

IsacB19 Apr 2024, 19:46

I love puzzles! This makes you think before clicking and I love that xD And such a mood with the kitties having beef with one another depending on who they are. I love the art style of this, especially the cats!

LDJam user 261037author19 Apr 2024, 20:04

@pacelin That's a good idea. My software does have sound toggle switches I figured out how to use in other games, so it should be easy to add it to this.

LDJam user 261037author19 Apr 2024, 20:07

@jaxah Thanks. I did experiment with adding a pixilated effect to the background, but even small pixilation was just making the background look messy.

LDJam user 261037author19 Apr 2024, 20:09

@isacb Glad you enjoyed the game. The cats are a CC0 asset in the engine I used you can get here: https://luizmelo.itch.io/pet-cat-pack

Talif Moor19 Apr 2024, 21:47

Nice game! Though I do agree with previous comments that the order of cat summonings needed to be shuffled, though I imagine you couldn't do much with only the 5 cats.
One possible solution I could see would be to consider their moods on the other side as well, and make them unavailable to summon, based on who is and is not currently around (On the other side). That would certainly make it MORE like the old riddle, but I could see that trying to increase the scope in that manner could easily be a huge pain.

stamestratagem19 Apr 2024, 22:27

I like the idea of solving riddles, I would love to do some more difficult levels.

coconutWaffle24 Apr 2024, 12:55

I love cats. I love puzzles.

This is a great game for me:D

Thanks!!

bbaf2 May 2024, 23:14

Very cute and cozy game! I really enjoyed it.
Thou I guess a small cheating is possible, since player in not forced to close the Level instruction and can just summon cats while looking at message.

Also, a big plus to previous comments regarding the possible cat randomizer. It's gonna diversify the game a lot if by any chance you decide to make a post-jam version.

Overall, great entry!

LDJam user 261037author3 May 2024, 00:49

Thanks for playing and pointing that out. I guess it's actually a happy accident that I did not end up deactivating the other buttons until the info window was closed, though. As someone else noted, it was hard to remember the requirements, especially since the old ones weren't restated in the next levels. I had liked the idea of adding a side bar with the cat's requirements, but I guess this was the next best thing for the jam version.

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