Cat Crawler

Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tF6ZXwD6BiuvngfthCipK3QrnNdBJh69/
(Controls: WASD to move, Left Click to attack, Right click for projectile, E for tornado attack, Q for temporary buff)

I led the development of Cat Crawler, a rogue-like with an evolving player character. It was designed primarily to explore the idea of a League of Legends-like character in a dungeon-crawling environment, but due to time constraints, the dungeons were instead made to be procedurally generated. I designed and programmed all systems, while organizing team meetings for me and 2 other team members, the UI artist and sprite artist.

With every floor, the player has the choice of upgrading any one of their 3 special abilities, reminiscent of League of Legends' ability upgrade system. Upgrading an ability will lower its cooldown, along with other unique effects based on the ability -- the tornado attack will grow larger and do more damage, the buff will last longer and be more potent, etc. The abilities were chosen to make a basic well-rounded character while also making the player's choices change their playstyle. The projectile slash allows players to play safe early on to poke enemies from a distance, while a fully upgraded one essentially turns it into a machine gun. The tornado effect is meant to assist players with groups of enemies, while a fully upgraded one allows them to wipe out entire hordes. The buff gives a speed and attack boost, with a fully upgraded one allowing players to speed through dungeons and turn any attack into deadly one-hits. The player can also choose to upgrade multiple abilities to have a more balanced moveset, or a mix between builds. Just like League builds, this is meant to give the player control over how they want to play the game, which along with the rogue-like formula, is meant to keep the game interesting for multiple playthroughs.

The dungeons are styled after Cat Quest, which has a 2.5D style, but was made to be procedurally generated. This was achieved by creating several prefabs of path routes, and choosing random paths that connected based on their exits, until there were no longer any open ends. Random tiles are chosen to spawn the floor exit and the enemies. Enemies increase in number based on the floor, so that difficulty scales with the player's power. After several floors, a new type of enemy spawns that shoots projectiles. Based on feedback to make dungeons feel more populated, multiple non-enemy structures were also added -- crystals have to be attacked to pass through, while chests reward the player with EXP. Players also receive EXP by defeating enemies, so they are rewarded for exploring dungeons to the fullest and taking the risk to fight enemies. Players can only heal and upgrade abilities by reaching the next floor, which acts as a separate reward. A vignette effect was added later in development to make it more difficult to find the exit with the camera angle.

Cat Quest was created for the Academy of Art University's Prototype Game Production Studio class, so it features some art elements from existing games. It is fully playable as a finished prototype, and has been received well by the class.