Game Jam Winner Spotlight: Millions Of Cats
We're closing in on the end of our series of spotlight posts looking at the winners of the sixth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928! We've already featured Best Visuals winner Flight from Podunk Station and Best Adaptation winner Mickey Party, Best Remix winner The Burden Of Creation, Best and Deep Cut winner Solar Storm 1928, and today we're looking at the winner of Best Digital Game: Millions of Cats by Javi Muhrer, Chris Muhrer & McCoy Khamphouy.
Most of the submissions we receive in these jams come from solo designers, but this game is a powerful demonstration of what a small team can accomplish. By splitting up the tasks (Javi Muhrer did the programming, Chris Muhrer designed the levels, and McCoy Khamphouy created the art) were able to achieve something fairly rare in the jam: a complete video game, built from the ground up with all original elements. Based on the early American picture book of the same name by Wanda Gag, Millions of Cats is a classic puzzle platformer that offers everything you'd expect from such a title: a clever core mechanic that's easy to understand and seems simple at first, but which must be used in increasingly creative and thoughtful ways through a series of increasingly challenging levels.
As the player, you control the character described in the original book only as the very old man", who is plagued and/or blessed by avid followers in the form of unlimited cats. With a button press, you can spawn more and more cats to trail behind you and copying your actions, and though you can't control them directly, with some clever movement you can maneuver them to press buttons and help you reach the end of each level. Your score can be increased by using as few cats as possible, adding a great find the true solution" challenge that gives puzzle games like this more replay value.
After a couple of levels, it quickly becomes clear how this mechanic can easily serve as the engine for all kinds of puzzles. That alone would be a satisfying prototype and more than enough for a game jam entry - the kind of thing a solo developer could pull off too. But this small team didn't stop there. By having a dedicated level designer, they were able to include a pretty full slate of levels (I'm not quite sure of the final count, as I didn't get to the end!) that explore several aspects of the core mechanic. Level design is so critical to puzzle platformers like this, so it really pays off. And while all this could have been presented with placeholder graphics or something generic, instead we get handcrafted original sprites and backgrounds, and even a custom title treatment for the game.
Overall, this is probably the most ambitious video game project we've had as an entry in these game jams, and it absolutely lives up to that ambition. That's a testament not just to the skill and talent of the individual designers, but also to their ability to organize and coordinate a development project like this while each focuses on their area of expertise. It's no surprise that Millions of Cats is this year's Best Digital Game.
Congratulations to Javi Muhrer, Chris Muhrer & McCoy Khamphouy for the win! You can play Millions of Cats in your browser on Itch, plus don't forget to check out the other winners as well as the many great entries that didn't quite make the cut! We'll be back next week with the final winner spotlight.