(narrative game elaboration project for intro to game development, spring 2021.)

Cat House is a short game about being a cat in a house. Alone once again, the cat must find a way to pass time today.

Warning: the sound effects & music for the 'endings' is pretty loud. Please note there's also a bug where the cat can get stuck on the corners of the wall tiles. I have yet to fix it, so please take care of the cat for me in the meantime.

controls:

Arrow keys to move

Z to interact/confirm/progress text

Hold Shift to move faster (may cause getting stuck against objects)

reflection:

I tried to find a more elaborate way of doing fixed textbox-style dialogue in this elaboration, and ended up with a dialogue system that I'm pretty satisfied with - it has a typewriter effect, a nice background, an options system that links to other things in the game like room transitions or variable changes, and a sound on option select.

I also wanted Cat House to feel like a game that has its own atmosphere despite being such a small project, so I made a few different items to interact with and added some music to enhance the cutesy but slightly lonely feeling of the game. It's simpler than what I originally thought of for this project, but I'm happy with how the game feels and the things I learned while coding it.

credits:

code

dialogue system: Peyton Burnham

bgm

start screen: https://freesound.org/people/ShadyDave/sounds/262259/

main bgm: https://freesound.org/people/ShadyDave/sounds/321496/

sfx

option select: https://freesound.org/people/Fupicat/sounds/471937/

locked door: https://freesound.org/people/BenjaminNelan/sounds/321087/

unlocked door: https://freesound.org/people/angelkunev/sounds/519065/

sleep end: https://freesound.org/people/sound_designer_from_Turkey/sounds/613178/

outside end: https://freesound.org/people/Setuniman/sounds/149926/