Bubbles the Cat

Team Cats & Bears

Released: Apr 11, 2019
Platforms: Windows
Last updated: 09 Sep 2026, 22:19 GMT

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16 posts

13 Mar 2024Developer post
Bubbles the Cat 5th Anniversary
Hi everyone! Almost five years ago, I released Bubbles the Cat on Steam. I was really happy with how the game turned out and I had an enormous amount of fun developing it. I've always wanted as many people as possible to play the game. I kept the price as low as I could whilst st
09 Apr 2020Developer post
Bubbles the Cat - Anniversary Sale supporting RE-PLAY 2020
Just under a year ago today I released my first indie game, Bubbles the Cat onto Steam. I wanted to make a fun game with great accessibility options so as many people as possible could enjoy it. I've been delighted by the feedback I've received for it. One of the massive perks of
18 Sep 2019Developer post
Bubbles the Cat Version 1.0.0.16
Update 1.0.0.16 adds controller vibration and visual accessibility features to the game, as well as fixing some minor bugs. Controller Vibration If you're playing Bubbles the Cat with a controller with vibration functionality, you should notice this is now supported for most in-g
Update 1.0.0.16 adds controller vibration and visual accessibility features to the game, as well as fixing some minor bugs.
Controller Vibration
If you're playing Bubbles the Cat with a controller with vibration functionality, you should notice this is now supported for most in-game actions!

Controller vibration can be turned on or off in Options -> Control Options. By default, it's enabled.
Please note that this feature is only active whilst using a controller to play the game - this is to prevent you from jumping out of your seat when your controller vibrates and you're not expecting it!
Visual Accessibility Options
These options can be found in Options -> Display Options -> Visual Accessibility Options. These can all be changed mid gameplay without requiring you to back out to the main menu and take effect as soon as you select them.

Change Laser Colour - Should aid players with colourblindness.
Screen Flashes - Although used sparingly and never with a quick repeating pattern, some players may wish to eliminate all screen flashes entirely.
Background Detail - Colourblindness or being distracted by animated elements may make the game challenging to play for some players. Consider using this option to reduce background detail.
Food Animation - Some players may find the flashing cat food animation distracting. This will completely disable this animation without impacting gameplay.
Difficulty Balancing
A small selection of levels very early in the game have had their par times adjusted to be slightly easier to attain - these were a little out of step with the overall difficulty progression.

World 1-8 par time increased from 27.5 to 29 seconds.
World 1-10 par time increased from 31.5 to 33 seconds.
World 1-11 par time increased from 12 to 12.5 seconds.
Bug Fixes

Slightly widened trenches in World X-9 to make these less nightmarish to use.
Fixed an issue where pursuing spike walls were playing their sound at full volume. This now varies based on your distance from the wall.
It is now possible to use the keyboard to back out of the controller rebind screen.
Original post
14 Aug 2019Developer post
The Bubbles Breakdown
Hey folks, It’s been a little over four months since Bubbles was released on Steam; it’s now out on three platforms and that’s given me enough time to assess what I think went well with the game and what didn’t. With thanks to Jojoo for this art! Check out the rest of her work he
Hey folks,
It’s been a little over four months since Bubbles was released on Steam; it’s now out on three platforms and that’s given me enough time to assess what I think went well with the game and what didn’t.
With thanks to Jojoo for this art! Check out the rest of her work here!
What Was Bubbles’ Goal?
Before we dive into the breakdown, it’s important to understand what I was hoping to achieve by developing Bubbles. It was - first and foremost - a learning project for me. I was learning a lot about how to program a game on the job and I’d never released a game on Steam before. I was also managing outsource myself and performing daily, more menial business stuff.
That said, it was important to me that I made a good game - that is to say a critically well-received game. With no-one else to answer to, this meant I’m entirely responsible for ensuring whether the game is fun or not.
It was - crucially - not the game I had picked to make millions of dollars. Platformers are kind of notorious for being hard to stand out on any of the big storefronts unless you do something really, REALLY special; I certainly don’t have the budget or time to compete with games like Celeste!
I’m very glad that I picked this route, as I’d read many times that you should never make your first project your dream game as you will inevitably make mistakes.
What Went Well!

The game is - at the time of writing, at least - critically well-regarded. The game has received some fantastic write-ups from the gaming press, including Kotaku UK, TechRadar, 148Apps, Pocketgamer and Keengamer. It also has good reviews on Steam and other platforms and a lot of YouTube and Twitch content creators who play the game seem to be enjoying themselves! I’m really happy that I managed to make a fun game above all else.
The prototyping went well. I managed to come up with a fun game pretty quickly and iterate on mechanics that worked well (the different bubble powerups) and strip out those that didn’t (the Lemmings-esque puzzle/platforming aspect). Getting this right early paid massive dividends later on as it made level design so much easier. I’ve previously worked on projects where these elements weren’t quite right at prototyping and you have to resolve these gameplay elements around content that has already been built; suffice to say, this approach costs you time, money and sanity.
The project was a good fit for my goals - I got to develop a decent understanding of coding, learn about what was involved in publishing a game to Steam (and what to avoid) and found out just how much other stuff is involved around making games that isn’t er, actually making games - e.g. doing tax returns, contacting people, going to events, social media management etc.
Music was an amazingly good fit. Although I initially wanted a more pure chiptune soundtrack to fit with the rest of the game, I trusted Dan’s judgement and it absolutely paid off. Trust your experts.
The game is reasonably polished. Barring a handful of weird, relatively minor issues with the cat customisation options, the game seemed to launch without any horrendous bugs that caused crashing, lost saves or progress issues.
The game has decent level design (with some exceptions) - players seemed to by and large get what I wanted them to do and I think there are some levels that have a cool, fun and creative theme to them. I wish I’d cut some of the fat off a few levels and done more of them - perhaps having 30 levels per world, but have them be about a third to half of their current length.
The Boosts feature got a lot of love. I’m absolutely delighted with this as I’ve heard a lot of players say that they enjoyed the game when they might not have been able to do so. Accessibility was always a very important part of the game’s design and development to me and I’m thrilled that I’ve been successful here. I actually only wish I’d expanded this further with features like a rewind function, on-demand savestates or the ability to reduce the game speed. This will continue to be a core pillar for each project I work on.
What Didn’t Go So Well

Level design went slower than expected. I'd budgeted about a day per level, but that excluded difficulty balancing which happened later on and doing an art pass. These art passes took way longer than anticipated and didn’t factor into prototyping. I should have done at least one level with a full art pass and then re-evaluated my estimates here.
The game is too difficult in general. At the time of writing, I think something like 3-5% of players will see the end of the game in some form or other. This is supported by the game’s achievements breakdown (though it’s not quite the full story as it doesn’t include players who use boosts to complete certain worlds): I wanted to create a game that would get challenging towards the end, but it seems I overdid this with the World 3 levels in particular being a big, big spike in difficulty - only 7% of players finished it! This partly came about as I ended up committing most levels to muscle memory whilst making them. Unfortunately, this had the side effect of me being completely unable to judge difficulty. Luckily, I had some friends who helped me test the game, but I probably should have seen more alarm bells when people weren’t progressing much past World 3. I was able to tone down some of the more punishing aspects of some levels in updates to the game, but I also didn’t want to make sweeping structural changes to levels when the game has a time attack component to it.
This one is hopefully not visible to players, but my UI code is appalling. I’m hardly the best programmer as it is, but every time I wanted to change something in the UI, it was a serious headache and this probably added at least a week’s worth of work. I should have refactored this rather than trying and hodgepodge a lot of clunky fixes together.
As mentioned towards the top of this breakdown; from the point of view of picking a game to make an untold fortune, this wasn’t the game to pick. I think beyond being incredibly hard to stand out as a platformer on Steam (with incredibly stiff competition from the likes of Celeste and Super Meat Boy), the game was positioned somewhat awkwardly. Specifically, I suspect that more hardcore gamers would see the adorable art style and single button controls and think the game would be too simplistic for them. More casual gamers would see the terrifying World X levels and think the game is way too hard for them. Whilst this is validation of how hard World X looks, I think this is indicative of the fact some people might have been put off by the game! My trailers attempted to appeal to both, but perhaps it would have been better to release two trailers focusing on different aspects of the game. My marketing push didn’t go particularly well. I think I started it too late (I started pushing the game about a month before launch and sent out very few pre-release versions) and didn’t spend enough time looking into content creators to share the game with. I also think they needed a bigger lead time on making videos. I also don’t think I did a great job with the emails I sent out - whilst I tried to cut down on the text, I think embedding a few GIFs would have been a somewhat easy win and resulted in a higher hit rate. For the next project, I should aim to have a solid preview build ready well in advance with the caveat that certain features may be added or polished before launch. I should also look to contact and get the press interested at this point too!
Things I’ve Learned:

Continue to prototype gameplay early and rapidly, but don’t forget to do a full level to final visual quality for estimates!
Build on the accessibility options from this game and better control the next game’s difficulty curve.
Develop a UI framework ahead of time for the next game rather than make… whatever monstrosity I produced for Bubbles. Yuck.
Better marketing messaging - be more clear with what kind of game I’m making, get copies into the hands of content creators sooner, get the Steam page up earlier.
What’s Next for Team Cats & Bears?
My next plan is to do a bit of freelance work to build up the coffers and supplement the income I’ve made from Bubbles and then prototype the next game. Once I’ve got something visually presentable, I’ll be happy to show you all!
Thanks for reading! I hope this has been useful. If you've been linked this outside of Steam and want to check the game out, here's a handy little widget to do so:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/945580/
Original post
13 May 2019Developer post
Bubbles the Cat Version 1.0.0.5
Hello everyone! Today sees the release of version 1.0.0.5 which brings cloud saves and tweaks to the game’s difficulty, including some more notorious levels. Cloud Saves The game now cloud saves. Existing saves will be converted to this new format and your progress will be shared
Hello everyone!
Today sees the release of version 1.0.0.5 which brings cloud saves and tweaks to the game’s difficulty, including some more notorious levels.
Cloud Saves

The game now cloud saves. Existing saves will be converted to this new format and your progress will be shared across all your Steam-enabled computers!
Please note that the game will upload and use your save data from the first computer you load the game on. If you have played the game on multiple computers, to ensure your progress is correctly synced, please load the game from the computer which has progressed the furthest!
Difficulty Balancing

World 2-10 par time increased from 18.5 to 19 seconds.
World 3-7 par time increased from 37 to 37.5 seconds.
World X-23 par time increased from 38 to 38.5 seconds.
World 3-10 bonus area tweaked to be less obnoxious.
World 4-5 bonus area lasers slowed down.
World 4-15 middle section opened out to make it easier to dodge charge-lasers.
World X-21 tweaked in multiple places to make timing required less precise.
World X-22 end section tweaked by removing a troublesome spikeball.
World X-23 second half tweaked by slowing down the spike-wall speed transition.
Bug Fixes
Resolved an issue where hat options weren’t being correctly saved if the player didn’t complete a level.
Thanks for playing Bubbles - please let me know on the discussion forums if you encounter any issues with the new version or have any more feedback.
Original post
08 May 2019Developer post
Post-Launch Update
Hey folks - it’s coming up to a month after Bubbles launched and I’m really happy with the response the game’s received so far! I’ve taken a break after the game’s launch to recharge and work out what my next steps are (with some work on Bubbles here and there when I get the chan
17 Apr 2019Developer post
How GameMaker & Tom Francis Changed My Life and Might Change Yours Too
In early 2016, I was growing listless at my current game design job. I’d been making games in one form or another for most of my life and felt like I was drifting away from being able to get my hands dirty and craft something. Inspired by my friend Simon at Inexplicable Games who
03 Apr 2019Developer post
Devlog #8 - Welcome to World X
Okay, in the last devlog I talked about Boosts and how they could help you get through the game if you were struggling. Here’s the other side of that coin on how the X Levels will absolutely break you. Unlocking World X levels are unlocked in a different way to the regular levels
Okay, in the last devlog I talked about Boosts and how they could help you get through the game if you were struggling. Here’s the other side of that coin on how the X Levels will absolutely break you.
Unlocking
World X levels are unlocked in a different way to the regular levels - you need to have a certain number of platinum stars. Platinum stars are earned by getting all three stars in a level in a single, smooth run - usually meaning you need to find secret areas and take more difficult routes.
World 4-9 has two little bonus cubbyholes that requires tightly timed jumps to get all the food!
Fire & Flames
World X uses an angry, red version of each respective world to produce a very different looking level:
World 1 and World X-1
World 3 and World X-11
Mechanics from each ‘parent’ world are also used here, often in new, far more challenging ways.
Here’s some raised/retracting spikes from World 2. Lots of time to think about how you want to proceed and a generous window to hop up from.
Here’s the same hazard in World X. There is no rest, no safety, no sanctuary.
As such, the X levels are unlocked in tandem with their corresponding world. The difficulty curve is intended such that these are a significant step up from the main progression, but aren’t immediately oppressive - though it ramps up very quickly.
What Should I Expect?
Lots of hazards and lots of KOs. A LOT of KOs.
A goal I had in mind for the game from the very beginning was to keep the restart process down to a couple of seconds so you get straight back into the game if you make a mistake - moreover, there’s also a single quick-restart button (‘R’ on keyboard, back/select button on controllers) that allows you to instantly re-attempt a level if you miss some food.
As for more specific expectations:

Almost all levels will have a zero tolerance for any wasted bubbles - you’re expected to get the absolute most from each jump you make.
Most levels will expect you to know Bubbles’ platforming behaviour and won’t provide food to guide you - you’ll need your knowledge of the game’s systems alone to make it through!
Although there are quite a few levels that are about brutal precision and game mechanics, there are a couple that will get you to use your bubble powers in fresh, new ways - for instance, this level has you use the Waller to hold your jump over a laser.
And the Reward?
Well, hopefully this will appeal to and satisfy players who want a brutal, punishing challenge that will stretch their skills to the limit.
The game has always been designed to have a satisfying conclusion no matter how you play - but the game will note the efforts taken to complete these levels and there’s some special treats for those players…!
Will you be the first to obtain all 375 platinum stars? Good luck!
Thanks for reading! The game is due to launch very soon on April 12th, so if you like what you read and haven’t already, go wishlist the game! In the meantime, you can also follow the game's development on Twitter, where I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have about the game or game development in general.
Original post
31 Mar 2019Developer post
Bubbles the Cat releases April 12th!
Just a quick break from our regularly scheduled devlogs to let you know that Bubbles now has a release date. The game will launch on Steam April 12th ! Bubbles looks forward to seeing you all then!
20 Mar 2019Developer post
Devlog #7 - Boosts!
Hey folks! Today I’d like to shine light on a feature that I suspect many of you will pass over, but for some may make a huge difference to their enjoyment of the game - and that’s the Boosts feature. Difficulty & Being A Kid Back when I was growing up in the late 80s, games
13 Mar 2019Developer post
Devlog #6 - Super Slick Platforming
Howdy y’all! This time I’m going to show you the little tweaks I made to the game’s platforming logic to make it feel ‘just right’. Pre-emptive Inputs After I decided to go with the approach of making the game a single button platformer, a lot of elements from previous prototypin
27 Feb 2019Developer post
Devlog #5 - Why Did You Make a One-Button Platformer? (or: SpecialEffect are the Bestest)
Hi gang! Today I’m going to talk about my motivations for making the game a one-button platformer. I’ve certainly been asked this question a few times and hopefully this devlog will give you a good insight as to why I’ve gone with this control scheme. First things first; this has
12 Feb 2019Developer post
Devlog #4 - Content Complete!
Just a quick update this time around - but the good news is that I’ve finished work on what I anticipate will be the last level in the game. The game is now content complete; I’ve got all the stuff in there that I would consider a minimum for releasing. I can reveal that the game
19 Jan 2019Developer post
Devlog #3 - More Hazards!
Hey there, friends! This devlog continues to look at the game's hazards, explaining what they do and what kind of challenges I'm hoping to set before players with them. You don't need to read the previous part to understand this, but it'll probably help - plus there's more animat
05 Jan 2019Developer post
Devlog #2 - Hazard Mechanics
Happy New Year all! Here’s hoping that 2019 is a great one for you. I’m very excited to be bringing you Bubbles the Cat in a few months time! Continuing a little in theme off the previous blog post, I thought I’d start taking a look at the different hazards Bubbles will encounter
19 Dec 2018Developer post
Devlog #1 - Powerups and Flow (and GIFs!)
Hey folks, In the first dev log post before launch, I figured I would use this as an opportunity to share with you all the progress on the game as it stands so far as well as show off new features as and when they're added. Run, Bubbles, Run! Bubbles the Cat is a single button pl

Updates & announcements

Controller Vibration

Visual Accessibility Options

Difficulty Balancing

Bug Fixes

What Was Bubbles’ Goal?

What Went Well!

What Didn’t Go So Well

Things I’ve Learned:

What’s Next for Team Cats & Bears?

Cloud Saves

Difficulty Balancing

Bug Fixes

Cloud Saves

Difficulty Balancing

Other Platforms

“I have no idea how to program and it looks incredibly scary / I’ve bounced off previous attempts to learn.”

“Bad MSPaint drawings are the height of my artistic talent.”

“I’d love to make my own stuff, but I don’t have the time/energy.”

“I want make this really amazing game that does basically everything, but I find getting there too frustrating.”

“I’ve hit a roadblock and I might as well stop developing now, I clearly can’t do this.”

Unlocking

Fire & Flames

What Should I Expect?

And the Reward?

Difficulty & Being A Kid

Usin' the Boost to Get Through

The Other End of the Spectrum

Pre-emptive Inputs

Mantling

Keepin’ the Flow

Design Challenge

Accessibility

Buttoned-Up

Spike Walls

Ghost Slimes

Speed Pads

Oily Walls

Charge Lasers

Spike Balls

Hazards Clear!

Bubbles, Meet Hazard

Spikes

Fireballs

Slimes

Timed Spikes

Lasers

To be continued!

Run, Bubbles, Run!

You Have the Power

Flow State