Hiya everyone! It has been a long, long time since I've posted much about CatboyZOOM, but I have some great news! Development has nearly finished for our full release, and I'm anticipating being able to get the game out the door by November!!!
A note on why things have taken so long~
It's no question CatboyZOOM has been in an idle state for the past while, about 1.5 years without an update. After the early access release, I felt so incredibly burnt out of development and lost nearly all my motivation to finish up the last bit of my vision for CatboyZOOM.
I had so, so much incredibly positive feedback for the game from everyone, it blew me away. Unfortunately, the game didn't do as financially well as I needed, and that decoupled me from why I wanted to make the game originally - to just make a really fun, approachable speedrun platformer. During this, I had to move several places and just a lot of life happened. Thankfully, I've gotten through the worst of it, and have found a place where I can refocus on finishing CatboyZOOM, and am looking forward to seeing you guys play through all the new things we've got cooking for ya.
Thank you all so much for believing in our silly game, giving all your kind words and enjoying what we've made. It means so much more than what I can say in words.
Also! After CatboyZOOM, I've many more plans for future projects that I am SO excited to work on and share with y'all. If you're a fan of Shadow of the Colossus, Soulslikes, Metroidvanias and expressive movement (duh), then I think you'd be interested~
Anyway, despite all the ups and downs of development, we do have a myriad of features that we're excited to show off to you guys soon! Here's a tease at some of those features -
On release, there will the new world New Kat Central to explore and complete! It is chock full of breakneck-pace levels on an enormous scale, featuring new booster pads and billboard panels to play around with.
Coming 1.0, you will find other competitors around the island to rival with. If you can convince them, they will join your team and become a playable character! Complete each character's quests and you will unlock more outfits of theirs to play with.
Each level now has a hidden collectible Sodapop drink, which when picked up will give you a short burst of speed. Pick one up then complete the level to add it to your collection. Sodapops provide an extra challenge to old levels, and come with their own leaderboards as well!
We have also been working on a much-requested replay & ghost racing system. New leaderboard times post-1.0 will upload with a replay that any player can watch and race against live. This was a doozy to figure out, but we're so proud of this system.
I'll be showing off more of these features over the coming weeks leading up to release, so definitely stay tuned to see more of the game!