The raw insanity of 2020 drove me mad. Eventually, I decided to try my hand at game development. Something small and manageable. The hook?
"I'll make a silly horror game with literal cats as the enemies. Not demon cats or zombie cats. Just cats."
The goal was to pitch a demo to different companies and hope they would see some potential in the USP (Unique Selling Point). Buuut... I lost faith after a few rejections, and decided to complete the game myself.
From conceptualization (jotting down notes) to actualization (version 0.9), Kittens Of Fear took about 5 months and a budget of somewhere around $350. However, with zero marketing plus the game having placeholder graphics, it didn't sell well at all.
I don't consider this endeavor a failure.
A failure would be 5 ***years*** of development time, and a total budget north of $350 ***thousand***. . . and then it flops.
This was a learning experience... as well as something to help pad my tech resume / CV 😀 And so, that's what this game will be from now on.
Changes From 0.9 to 0.9.1
Some game play tweaks were made in December 2021 and January 2022. Here's a select few:
- Deleted the Cultist Room's northeast "Voices of the Damned" speed reduction. There was a bug that permanently slowed down the player... and I couldn't reproduce the bug. That section was already too hard (nothing but Shadow Cats), so no more speed penalty.
- Made the Cave stage much smaller—by about a third. It was too much walking / a Walking Simulator.
- The blinking phantom cats were tossed. They could Game Over you, didn't make a sound when nearby, and were hard to see. Just a bad enemy design overall. (There's still one in the Forest stage, but it can't reach you.)
- The Ghost Cat / Cop Cat has the same chase speed regardless of difficulty.
- The Shadow Cats were slowed down a bit. It makes a "No Flashlight" run a lot easier.
(Fun Fact: I never made a change log. Real professional stuff right here.)
And Lastly...
If you actually bought this stupid game, please refund it at Steam. I don't know how that works so hit up the help pages or something. Keep yo' money.
A lot of the game will remain unfinished. For example, the score tally could use some work in balancing between loot taken and stage clear time. But at this point I'm kinda sick of tinkering with variables...
Special thanks to the reviewers who gave me much-needed feedback when it was still in Early Access. The game was a hot mess back then. (I didn't even "catch the mouse" on a first-person game! 😲 Total newbie mistakes, really.)
Not sure if this will be my last attempt at game dev, or the last attempt until like 2030. Whatever.
F E A R
Attributions
[tabby cat] https://www.pexels.com/photo/adorable-animal-baby-cat-290164/
[logs] https://www.pexels.com/photo/wooden-logs-prepared-for-production-of-lumber-3750777/