How Cat Saver came to be

I wanted to make games for a while, but I've never had confidence in my programming, game designing and other crucial skills, BUT this kinda changed when I've managed to make Jungle Fever, my first game. Around the time Miz announced that he's hosting jam I still haven't completed JF yet, but I thought that now I have enough brainpower to give it a shot.

When I saw the art kit I was overwhelmed. One thousand sprites, what the hell am I gonna do with that? So I've spent around 5 hours on the first day making basic player 2D movement and tilesets. 

On the second day I saw a sprite of a cat, and it struck me: I NEED TO MAKE A GAME WHERE YOU NEED TO PAT ALL OF THE CATS! But I didn't come up with any interesting gameplay ideas for it, so I dropped it and continued thinking. Also, I've made main menu and was trying some different things, so I've spent around 6 hours that day on basically nothing. 

On the third day I've come up with basic gameplay of opening chests with cats, and staff that will help you by giving signals under strict time limit. I was thinking about how to program all this, and it turned out to be the easiest part, So I did it in about 3 hours. 

On the fourth day I've made layout for level 2 and 3, and dropped the game to some of my friends for them to test it. Turns out, on some PC's, there was some crucial bugs, that were quickly fixed. So I've spent around 2 hours on the game that day.

On the fifth day I've created levels 4 and 5, and threw a bunch of different pictures in the chests (in case if anyone wanted to open them all). I was thinking about adding jokes here and there, like if you open chest with the girl she will scream something like "MARRY ME" or you'll open someone and he will state that he liked his chest more than freedom and so on and so forth. But after a while I forgot about it. Spent around 5 hours that day, and the game was basically done.

I've never tried to make cutscenes in games before, but always wanted to. So I've composed little silly story about a guy that wanders through space, saves cats or something like that, and gets bothered by some weirdo with big love for chests. Also I've made a simple save system that calculates your time spent on all levels, and an ending screen, that shows that time. Also, on every level, Chestmaster said something before and after you opened cat chest, so I've made pause state on start of the level. (before that it was only on the end) 7 hours well spent.

On the seventh day I've downloaded some free music from opengameart.org and took few sounds from my other game (they were also downloaded from opengameart, or from gamesplusjames kit for FPS course, I took the font from there too). Also, I've fixed some bad timings on the first cutscene and remade level 4 and 5 animations, they weren't good. Made first draft of ending cutscene. Spent only 3 hours!

On the eight day, fixed bad timings in ending cutscene and decided to add a few more levels, so 3rd level became 4th, 4th became 6th and 5th became 8th (Only 3 days after release I've suddenly realised that random pictures in new levels are the same as they were on old levels, I just forgot to change them...) Spent around 4 hours and the game was complete! So I've spent around 36 hours out of 48.

I think that I did very good, considering time constraints and the fact that this is my first jam and only second game! And I like the result very much!

Github link if you're interested.