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[catsrcool]

Heya!

We're a team of 5 students working on a game about a house cat. The bulk of this post is describing our game itself, but there are some tidbits here about the development process itself. Hopefully it's at least interesting to read about some of the rookie mistakes we make as we get our paws wet when it comes to indie game development!



The Core Game:
The Box Dimension is a 3D isometric turn-based tactics game. Things kick off when a house cat jumps into a box and ends up in a realm full of fantastical foes arrayed on a 2D grid. Players can enjoy a well-rounded cat life of smashing swarms of rats, clawing through cardboard boxes for powerups, and dodging robots armed with water sprayers! Use a variety of attacks to outflank your opponents. Enemies telegraph their next move to you, so take your time in the turn-based combat to plan the best course of action to ultimately help this cat escape from the box dimension.



Recent Changes:
Starting with the above baseline, we've recently added cutscenes and a main menu to communicate the story of how the cat ended up in the box dimension and how enemies keep entering the levels. We have also added gameplay progression by unlocking new attacks as the player completes levels. A minimap keeps track of enemies while keeping the camera close to the custom-made animations of the game's characters--it's been especially fun to learn 3D animation for this project!



Future Ideas:
In future, we'd like to refine the story presentation so it's more clear that the cat is in a fantasy of sorts. We also have planned some idle animations for the player and enemies, so the game still has some movement going on even while waiting for the player to take a turn. On the gameplay side of things, we're going to keep iterating on the control scheme to get something more nimble and cat-like.  

If anybody's curious about our game, you can view a showcase of our most recent build here:
https://www.indiedb.com/games/the-box-dimension

And here's a hard-learned lesson from us to anybody using git LFS to share larger files: GitHub's free plan has a 1 gigabyte data cap on LFS, after which your repo will suddenly stop accepting commits and your LFS pointers (and therefore your files) may become inaccessible. Don't be like us and accidentally store raw assets on the cloud

[catsrcool]

Hey there -- that game with a buncha boxes and a cat is back with a sleeker coat of paint!

Highlighted Patch Notes:
1: Enemy Animation Update! Enemy attack animations more obviously indicate a damaging collision between the enemy and the player. Idle animations draw the player's attention towards enemies between turns.
2: Level Redesign! Redesigned levels more smoothly introduce the player attacks, enemies, and powerups effects.
3: Control Scheme! Players now only double-tap an attack key, cutting out an awkward press of the enter/return key to confirm an attack.
4: Limited Lives! Players now have 3 lives, in order to encourage more strategic play with the turn-based system.
5: Portal-based Level Transitions! The player moves around the box dimension by utilizing portals, as seen in the below screenshot (was fun to fake volumetric lighting):



Future Changes:
1: Level Transitions: We'd like to make it clearer that the player is moving from box to box with each level.
2: Defeat/Victory Cutscenes: Cutscenes would help communicate the goal the player/cat is working towards (such as defeating a final boss?)
3: Final Boss: Add a final level with a boss enemy...

[catsrcool]

Hey there -- cat-in-box game (where the cat is very much alive ) is back at it again!

As a quick refresher, this is a game about a house cat who gets sucked into an alternate reality where they battle foes such as dogs and vacuum-cleaner robots armed with water sprayers! Development is wrapping up, so for those curious in playing the game, see the link in this thread's first post.

Highlighted Patch Notes:
Level Transitions: Polished the level transitions by having the fade to black be less jarring and making the cat turn to walk towards the exit/entrance point of levels.
Powerup Explanations: We've added tutorial popups and UI trackers for the powerups, to help explain what the powerups do and when they are active.
Ending Cutscene: The story set up in the intro cutscene finally has some closure.
Particle Effects Rework: Damaging enemies results in some feedback with a particle effect emanating from the enemy, so we made these particles unique to each enemy type and scale with the player's attack power.


Thanks for reading!