Announcing CatStack

CatStack is a 2D puzzle game that I'm currently developing - it's a solo gamedev project in Godot. It's kind of a match-3 but not really - the grid is manipulated in a special way with a 'stack', like the stack in computer science or a stack of plates. You take things off the grid and push them onto the stack, then you can move the stack around and pop things from the stack onto the grid. Otherwise the rules are like a match-3 - if you match three or more of the same colour cat on the grid, those cats fly off into the distance with a trail of pretty stars (ooh ✨). Quite simple, really. But it leads to a lot of interesting potential puzzle-y goodness which as far as I can tell doesn't really exist anywhere else and so far I've developed three major modes for the game.

Modes

Time Attack: this is the most straightforward. You have to clear cats fast enough to accrue a given number of points before the time limit. It's just you, cats and the clock.

Bomb Game: this is the real puzzle, both in terms of gameplay and development I've found. If you match three bombs, the game is over. So you have to very carefully match the cats without accidentally matching the bombs, which can be easier said than done because when you manipulate the grid, it shifts the entire column.

Survival: this is more like match-3 crossed with Tetris, you have to clear the cats while more cats fall from above increasingly quickly. If any of the columns fill up you're done. Done I say!

And there will be a large number of challenges of increasing difficulty based around these game modes (and more ;)) to keep you busy for hours!

Background

This is an idea that I've had knocking around for years, The cat assets I'm using are based off some that I made in 2012 but got the inspiration to actually start developing it earlier this year after having played around with Godot, and realising what a wonderful tool it is I thought I'd realise this design! I guess you could say this game has been in development for almost 8 years but that would be woefully misleading. Graphically it's based on vector art which I've mostly drawn in InkScape and enhanced with GIMP.

Within striking distance

Which brings us to the reason for the title of the post, I'm within striking distance of delivering this. I'd decided not to talk about this too much until there was actually something to show off and potentially something that can be played with all the main concepts in place. The main game works, all the main game modes are playable - there's a lot of work still to be done but the main bulk of the work is done. I could technically upload a release right now and there'd be *something* for you to play with (even if it's not completely finished). So it's not here right now, but soon! If you're really interested in getting your hands on it now, I'm after play testers for anyone who'd like to give feedback!

What's the plan?

In terms of what to expect on release: there will be a free/pwyw version, this will contain most of the game including one or two of the modes and a number of challenges. This will be available at least on the web. This should still be a pretty good amount of gameplay. I'm really keen not to alienate people who can't pay, so you can think of this as a full if trimmed down version of the game. It will be ad free, and funded on the basis of donations/the paid version - assuming anyone ever actually buys it.

There will also be a paid version, which will hinge on the success of the the free version as to what's actually in it and where it gets released and this will have all modes and challenges in it. If the paid version is any good then I might be able to spend a lot more time developing the next game! The very long term aim is that I'd eventually establish a game dev co-operative or merge with an existing one, because games should belong to the developers and the players! But this is all a bit head-in-the-cloud and realistically it'd just be nice if this just nets me a bit of extra beverage money/self-actualisation.

The paid version, should it see the light of day, is most likely to be around £3 on PC. I will at least support Windows and Ubuntu, maaaybe MacOS. I'll probably give you a key for this if you've helped me with the project at all or if you just ask really nicely (at least up until the point I find this to be an administrative burden). That being said this is *not yet a commercial project*.

I will also commit that, at a minimum, 30% of the profit (i.e. post-cost/tax revenue from all donations and paid sales) from this game will be donated to the Trussell Trust foodbank in light of the pandemic situation until this game stops making sales.

If this sounds good to you and you like the concept of this game, I'm currently looking for people to playtest this. Get in contact with me either here or on Twitter and we can have a chat.

So lots of exciting stuff happening here! Don't forget to check back on CatStack progress!