A one button shooter based on a real WW2 secret US Navy squadron.
\nThe “Black Cat” squadrons were U.S. Navy patrol squadrons, primarily using the PBY Catalina aircraft, that conducted\nnight bombing operations against Japanese shipping and installations during World War II. These operations were notable\nfor their effectiveness and the distinctive black paint scheme of the aircraft, which helped them operate under the\ncover of darkness.
\nGraphics are really great, all the little FX added in are really excellent. Sounds are all good and the background music is well made. Its a really well polished game, I like how you gave continues, worth doing in a jam when people have lots of games to vote on, made me play to the end. The 7th level had me stuck for a while but I did beat the game.
\nThe controls were tough, I was getting fatigued at times and having to try and keep the plane up and spam click to shoot. That meant a lot of the time I was worrying about dodgying and staying alive and hoping I was hitting things. I did get used to dodging, shooting and making sure I was aiming at enemies.
\nMaybe autofire would have helped, will be interesting what others say, could just be me, I dont think I could play like this for a long time.
\nHaving said that I did really enjoy the game overall, Added to my list to share later!
\n","games":["Yarn Run"]},{"at":410374484,"author":"John Stimac","login":"jcubed111","gh":14258407,"url":"jstimac.com","text":"Absolutely loved this game. The graphics are great, the audio is great. I thought the monochromatic look worked really well, with the touches of orange to highlight explosions.
\nI liked how each level was unique, and the game got progressively harder as it went on. I did find the game difficult, but the instant restart made it fun even when I nose dived immediately.
\nThe one button controls were also really fun to figure out. It was nice to switch between holding to fly and tapping to shoot.
\nI also really like that you found a different interpretation of “black cat”.
\n","games":["Mewnbeams Adventure"]},{"at":410402912,"author":"Javi Agenjo","login":"jagenjo","gh":393515,"url":"http://tamats.com","twitter":"tamat","text":"Great entry! I also did my game based on the same squadron :D but my game was more of a simulator, which ended up not being as fun as yours.
\nLoved the presentation and the simple mechanic. Congrats!
\n","games":["Pacific Black Cats"]},{"at":410421888,"author":"Homer Dilpleu","login":"HomerDilpleu","gh":66157330,"text":"I like the “one button” control and the game is so enjoyable to play! Graphics and music are great, this is definitively a very good entry!
\n","games":["Wash the cat"]},{"at":410421960,"author":"sdeseille","login":"sdeseille","gh":106524,"text":"The game is really fun to play even on desktop. I don’t have a lot of experience on playing on mobile game.
\nGraphically, I found it really well realized.
\n","games":["Blacky Returns Home"]},{"at":410429451,"author":"Christoph Schansky","login":"DerBenniBanni","gh":5499976,"text":"Reminds me a bit of the good old gaming times on the Amiga (Games like “Wings of Fury”)\nGreat graphics-style!\nThe one-button / tap control works amazingly well.
\nGood Job!
\n","games":["Miami Mice"]},{"at":410480151,"author":"Vinas","login":"vinas","gh":1933732,"text":"Nice game, fun and easy to play.
\n"},{"at":410486436,"author":"Rob Louie","login":"roblouie","gh":5448110,"url":"roblouie.com","twitter":"rob_louie","text":"The explosion and smoke effects are wonderful. It took me a bit to understand the cadence of tapping to shoot fast, but once I did the game was quite fun and intuitive. I do wish I could like tap spacebar instead of mouse on desktop, as that would just be easier to hit rhythmically than a mouse button. Excellent music as well, really nice!
\n","games":["Whiskers Witch Adventure"]},{"typ":1,"at":410556957,"re":410486436,"author":"Jesper Rasmussen","login":"repsej","gh":116525,"text":"You can use the spacebar :)
\nSpacebar, left mouse button or touch all works.
\nMaybe I should’ve written that somewhere ? :D
\n"},{"at":410576048,"author":"xem","login":"xem","gh":1225909,"text":"Impressive graphics and audio. Nice idea to make a fly + shoot game with just one button.
\n","games":["I got up on the wrong foot"]},{"at":410581165,"author":"Benjamin Boyd Austin","login":"bbaustin","gh":18755168,"text":"Woah, this is great! Easy to learn, hard to master. I made it to level 6 and will try to beat it later.
\nThe levels with the boat are fun, as you have to angle yourself correctly to hit the target. I wonder if there could be a similar enemy that stays at the top of the stage, like a blimp? (Maybe this comes later, not sure)
\nBy the way, after seeing the victory screen/transition between stages, I thought, “did this person make ‘Way of the Dodo’?” And indeed you did, haha. Somehow I was reminded of it!
\n","games":["VOID Cat"]},{"typ":1,"at":410765453,"re":410581165,"author":"Jesper Rasmussen","login":"repsej","gh":116525,"text":"Glad you enjoyed the game :)
\nAnd yes, I did think it’d be amusing to “reuse” the transition and win screen of “The Way of the Dodo” … happy someone noticed :)
\n"},{"at":410628813,"author":"smhaaker","login":"smhaaker","gh":10542292,"text":"Very impressive. Loved the style. Was difficult to learn the timing, but overall loved the game. Great job.
\n","games":["CatNFish"]},{"at":410643484,"author":"Anthony Cosgrave","login":"anthonycosgrave","gh":1410114,"url":"https://imtoospexy.com/","text":"This is a great game. It looks great and has loads of great little touches too like the explosions, the sound effects and the 1940s style music. I was also very glad of the ability to continue from the level you died on and it doesn’t send you back to the first level again!
\n","games":["Chickpocalypse Meow"]},{"at":410735856,"author":"Cliff Earl","login":"Antix-Development","gh":17822130,"text":"Hey, that’s cool. I don’t think the music suits the game at all but the game is still fun!
\nSome color would also be great :)
\n","games":["Black Cat - Nine Lives, No Mercy"]},{"typ":1,"at":410765244,"re":410735856,"author":"Jesper Rasmussen","login":"repsej","gh":116525,"text":"The gane music is my attempt at making something that sound like popular music of WW2 era :)
\nYou know back when the “Black Cats” were prowling the south pacific for japanese ships.
\nIt is also why the game is in black and white … like movies and newsreels were back then.
\nEg. try listening to “Flying home” by Benny Goodman Sextet (1939) … the music in the game is heavily inspired by that song … :)
\n"},{"at":410742718,"author":"Eoin McGrath","login":"eoinmcg","gh":96340,"url":"http://eoinmcgrath.com","twitter":"eoinmcg","text":"This is an absolute blast, loved it! The graphics, sfx, music and flow all fit together so tightly. Brilliant game!
\n","games":["KleptoKitty"]},{"at":411015119,"author":"ch4itu","login":"ch4itu","gh":63451145,"text":"Awesome game! Love it to the hilt…
\n"},{"at":411030555,"author":"nihdao","login":"Nihdao","gh":74270287,"url":"adamalet.fr","text":"An Arcade game that is very cool to play! Well done
\n","games":["Clicker Pawry"]},{"at":411091722,"author":"Gleb Volkov","login":"malec-palec","gh":2181873,"twitter":"volkov_ayyy","text":"Black Cat Squadron is super fun and addictive! I love the retro style and simple one-button gameplay - tough, stylish, and really well done.
\n","games":["Catapoolt"]},{"at":411275021,"author":"Jasper Renow-Clarke","login":"picosonic","gh":26137750,"twitter":"femtosonic","text":"A fun game, with a nice aesthetic
\nI liked the mostly black and white graphics as night time is pretty dark like that
\nThe music was very good, as were the sound effects
\nI like the loop-the-loop at the end of the levels
\nNice and easy to control, I played on desktop but can imagine it being just as easy on touch devices
\n","games":["Mochi and the midnight escape"]},{"typ":2,"at":411382494,"author":"Victor Debone","login":"debone","gh":763457,"url":"https://javascri.pl/","twitter":"javascripl","text":"Thanks for your submission! First, I can’t know how much effort you’ve put on the game, so don’t mind me if I get cliché or repeat ideas you simply didn’t get the time (or kb) to finish. Second, great you have finished a complete game, and what a game you have in here :)
\nGreat work on making everything fit together in really well made package. You got great graphics, music, sfx that matches the actions, lots of small details like particles and explosions. The enemies movement and variety were also top-notch.
\nAlso great work on making sure I knew what I was getting into. Knowing I had 8 levels from the start was surely half of the motivation to keep trying the levels “These are only 8 levels, I can’t miss the end of this gem”.
\nI really liked that you took care of the pace of the game. It has an intro screen, then a rolling text getting you into the context, and then the game starts. Quickly you get the gist of the game, finish the first level and is welcomed with a end screen that is a really good pause for the slightly madness it is to keep the plane flying and shooting. Then you get to the second level and it goes different, you have a ship now! And it keeps giving this variety throughout that kept me engaged!
\nI also enjoyed that by the balloons and the final ship, I had to completely give way from thinking to letting my hands and eyes just take care of it. There was no time to strategise or think the next move. It was a game about getting the skill and then applying it. I had a really good time with the Black Cat Squadron!
\nThe thing that I’d think about making some tweaking was the scoring/lives system. I understood what you were going for, but for the amount of times I died, I think 3 lives are missing the balanced number by one or two magnitude levels :D The whole game is around your success as the Black Cat Squadron – why not make it about it in the end? Something like “you downed 323 planes, 34 guns and 5 baloons, using 44 planes”.
\n"},{"typ":1,"at":411426417,"re":411382494,"author":"Jesper Rasmussen","login":"repsej","gh":116525,"text":"Thanks a lot for your very kind review and your good suggestions :)
\nI am very happy that you played the game to the end, even though you clearly found that it was a bit too hard.
\nThe continue mechanic was one of the last things I added. Glad I did that.
\nI also turned down the difficulty quite a bit - just a few days before submission the game was much harder ! Eg. enemy planes would shoot at you just before they left the screen on the left.
\nJust goes to show how difficult it is to judge difficulty (!) when you’ve spend so much time on making a game alone.\n \nI’ve made a “Director’s cut” version with lots of small improvement and where you can choose difficulty: Easy is how it probably should have been, medium is like in this version and hard is where I find it a nice challenge :)
\nCheers, \nJesper
\nps. Re the size, I was less that 10 bytes below the limit with my final submission. I could not have added another feature.
\n"},{"at":411559318,"author":"Andy Sommerville","login":"aksommerville","gh":1869768,"url":"http://aksommerville.com","text":"Wow this is a ton of fun! It took some practice to get in the habit of adjusting my taps’ duty cycle to be able to adjust elevation and shoot at the same time. The mark of a great challenge: One can understand perfectly what needs to be done, but only after some struggle be able to achieve it.
\nThe only thing I didn’t love here was the changing tempo of the music. Was that intentional? It sounded kind of broken.
\n","games":["Nine Lives"]},{"typ":1,"at":411591937,"re":411559318,"author":"Jesper Rasmussen","login":"repsej","gh":116525,"text":"Glad you liked the game - and rose to the challenge :)
\nThe music tempo shifts are very much intentional.
\nI even made it so the “band” gradually changes tempo over few seconds.
\nIt’s to make the boss-battles more energetic … and the game over screen more sad.
\nAnd trying to get the most mileage out of the one song I could fit into the game :)
\nPersonally I think it works quite well.
\n"},{"typ":2,"at":411688586,"author":"Noël Meudec","login":"Noel-FB","gh":71314518,"url":"https://facebook.com/instantgames","text":"I had a good time with this game.\nThe art (graphics and music) is really nice.\nThe level design and the evolution of the gameplay per level was surprisingly good.\nI played on a laptop with a trackpad and found the controls to not be ideal, unfortunately. It is probably better on mobile or with a mouse. But it didn’t prevent me from finish it!\nAlso, I am not super convinced it’s a great match with the theme (even though I get that the concept is that it is hard to see a black cat in the dark, the same way it is for the plane we control).\nOverall, I think it is a solid entry for this game jam.
\n"}],"results":{"theme":{"rank":32,"min":1,"score":3.59,"max":4.24},"innovation":{"rank":31,"min":1.2,"score":3.41,"max":4.03},"gameplay":{"rank":3,"min":1.18,"score":4.19,"max":4.37},"graphics":{"rank":16,"min":1.6,"score":4.19,"max":4.56},"audio":{"rank":2,"min":1.75,"score":4.19,"max":4.22},"controls":{"rank":17,"min":1.6,"score":3.78,"max":4.45},"primary":{"rank":5,"min":8.68,"score":23.33,"max":24.89},"label":"Overall"}}