Javier Cano - Bubble Cat

Bubble Cat is a short platformer game made for an university subject called Projects I. We were meant to create a videogame using Unity. The main objective of this project is the creation of a game using Unity, a well-known engine with lots of documentation, tutorials and assets. In this page i will explain the most interesting part of my contribution to the project.

Bubble control

When the player makes a bubble, they stop controlling Yuno and control the bubble. It doesn't have gravity, so they can move it in any direction of the plane with the same buttons as moving Yuno. We wanted it to be difficult to control, so it has lots of inertia, as if we are blowing to it. The bubble can store some objects inside it, which glow in pink. With this, you can reach and move keys, throw enemies and projectiles away, with the same velocity as they came in. You can rotate the bubble with the mouse buttons. The bubble can also go throw racks, which glows with green light. If the bubble goes too far, an icon of Yuno's face marks his position outside the camera.

2D lightning and shading

I experimented with 2D lightning with the goal of pointing attention to important parts of the level, such as keys, soap or water, which is dangerous in the game.

To help the player, interactable objects have a shader that glows when the bubble is active, to hint them what they can do only when it matters. Objects that glow in pink can be stored inside the bubble, and the green glow is a hint to do something with that object, either destroy the block with a projectile or pass trough racks.

The bubble itself is made with a shader with multiple layers, which allows the bubble to slightly "breathe" and also turn it flickering red when the bubble is about to exit the control range.

Designing the cats

I designed and drew both Yuno and Bastet. The ideas for them were cleanliness versus dirtiness, so I chose a clean white and cyan cat to distinguish him from other non soap-controlling cats. He had all a bubble cat could have, a bubble helmet, a bubble wand, a bubble gun and soap ammo. His name comes from a character of Black Clover, without any reason. At first, I tried imitating other games' styles, such as Night in the Woods, Pokémon or Yo-Kai Watch, but I kind of mixed them all as I wanted.

The next year, I made a clay figurine of him!

Bastet is the final boss of the game and her main inspiration besides dirtiness is the Egyptian goddess by the same name. She's not an evil goddess, we just chose her because she's a black cat and we though Egyptian gods are cool. I gave her golden details and set trash on her body to make her the perfect antagonist of Yuno. She's hiding in the beach, with a giant trash robot that the player has to dismantle piece by piece. As a curiosity, her collar is the plastic of a can pack, which are a hazard in the sea, and she painted it golden.

Storyboarding

The lore behind Bubble Cat is that Bastet steals Yuno's food, but when he is away, a bleach bottle falls on his water. After drinking it, he turns into a bubble cat and decides to chase Bastet. I draw a comic, but we had little time, so my mate colored it digitally.

Fighting Bastet

Bastet's bossfight takes place in the beach, were she launches a set of attacks depending on the phase of the boss, including fists launching, trash projectiles, spawning boxes, rising spikes, lightning beams and an exploding butane cylinder which can be deflected with the bubble to deal Bastets a lot of damage. I wanted to make Yuno's abilities the key to beat Bastet, so all of her projectiles can be catched and returned to her with the bubble. When her HP reaches 0, she becomes vulnerable for some seconds, and one piece of her robot starts to glow. At this moment, Yuno has to use the bubble to detach the piece from the robot, disabling that attack and making her weaker.

Download Bubble Cat!