A Cat, a Mouse, and a Piece of Cheese

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  main menu background

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  mouse sprite sheet

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Inspiration

We were inspired by Tom & Jerry's mouse vs. rat relationship, and wanted to make a cute, silly game playing on that dynamic. It's also partially inspired by popular 80s arcade games with more simple but addictive gameplay, á la Pac Man, Galaga, Asteroids, etc..

What it does

The game is a two-player local multiplayer game playable on the same keyboard. One user controls the mouse using WASD keys, while the other plays the cat using the arrow keys. Both have to avoid the fleas moving around the maze, which can slow them down by temporarily stunning them with their bite.

How we built it

After outlining the project, our first step was creating the sprites, backgrounds, and tileset to build the game world. These were created using Piskel and Canva. In Godot, we wrote scripts to connect our game components, restrict character movement to maze paths, and create randomized behavior for the flea enemies.

Challenges we ran into

This was both our first time using Godot and our first time building a game! At first, a big challenge was simply figuring out where to start. A lot of our time was spent doing research, which helped us draft the needs for the project. Once we found our footing it was mostly smooth sailing, though the fleas' randomized AI behavior was a significant challenge. Getting the randomized. behavior to feel fair required a lot of trial and error tuning variables so the fleas added more difficulty to the game without making it frustrating.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of picking up a completely new platform to us (Godot) and navigating its challenges to create a working game within the allotted time frame. It was a fun experience working together, and we got to make our first game!

What we learned

We learned the fundamentals of using nodes and scenes for 2D games in Godot. We discovered just how many elements are necessary to create even a small game, and to plan to take much more time than anticipated creating it. It was a pleasant discovery to find that Godot is so beginner friendly, with an active community that provided us with many helpful tutorials to help us learn along the way.

What's next for A Cat, a Mouse, and a Piece of Cheese

We'd love to smooth out character movement, add more animations, expand the map into multiple progressively harder levels, and eventually make the game playable on separate computers simultaneously.

Built With

• gdscript
• godot