{"id":2425,"edition":13,"categories":1,"features":0,"size":8461,"name":"Paw of Fate","authors":[{"name":"Joseph Chai","login":"jchai01","gh":5901694}],"description":"

A cat is more than just a pet. They are the silent guardians of our world, standing watch in the shadows. With a flash of their claws, they ward off evil spirits, and creatures from the void.

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Made using the LittleJS game engine.

\n","source":"jchai01/paw-of-fate","stars":0,"post":"https://jchai01.github.io/posts/js13k-2025/","comments":[{"at":410592763,"author":"Attila Horváth","login":"attilahorvath","gh":4081005,"text":"

First of all, big kudos for completing your first compo game and in only 3 days! That’s no small feat even for a simple game.

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I loved seeing the cute player sprite as it reminds me very much of my own little void kitten! The game functions correctly, so well done there.

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For some advise, you’ve mentioned that you had issues at first compressing the game package. From a cursory look, I think the entire LittleJS engine is included which surely pulls in a lot of code not actually used by your game? I’ve never used the engine myself but there must be a way to trim it down to just the classes / functions you actually need.

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I saw the sprites sometimes bleeding through pixels around the edges from the other images, which is a classic issue when using texture atlases like this due to how they are interpolated when drawn to the screen. I think the easiest solution here is just to keep the pixels that are on the boundary between different sprites blank.

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Seeing that your final package was only around 8KB, there would’ve been some space left though to include a few improvements to spice up the game a little bit. Something more than just a plain background, different enemy types, different attacks, some sound effects and so on.

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All in all, congrats on finishing your first compo and hope to see you contribute again!

\n","games":["A Voiding Your Problems"]},{"at":410653338,"author":"xem","login":"xem","gh":1225909,"text":"

Congrat for the release, looking forward to a more elaborate game next time!

\n","games":["I got up on the wrong foot"]},{"at":410656504,"author":"Romain Arnaud","login":"Rominou34","gh":17294713,"url":"https://osmova.com/","text":"

Congrats for having delivered a playable game in just 3 days ! I love the artwork of the cat from the top-down view, rotating to follow the direction.

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The gameplay is easy to understand and fun to play, but a little bit hard. If you had more time it would have been nice to add some dash when the cat is clawing the enemies, in order to have a better range, because I can only hit enemies while waiting for them to attack me, he is too fast to correctly time the attack before hitting them.

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I hope you will publish a director’s cut version with more content packed in the 13kb (like a background, sound effects), because it is a very good start.

\n","games":["Oggy's Curse"]},{"at":410816865,"author":"Benjamin Boyd Austin","login":"bbaustin","gh":18755168,"text":"

Nice punchy arcade gameplay! I got 26 points. Pretty fun and deceptively difficult!

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I have a question– is there different enemy logic? Most of the enemies were running straight at me, but I encountered one enemy that entered the stage, then kind of hung out near the edge by itself and didn’t approach me. I wonder what caused that.

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Two small things I noticed for improvement:

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  1. When you run left/right, it looks like the cat is running running tail-first :D So I guess flip the cat image
    2. \n
  2. I noticed I could run off screen; creating a boundary at the edge of the screen would probably be good
    3. \n
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But yeah, nice entry!

\n","games":["VOID Cat"]},{"at":410858649,"author":"Christoph Schansky","login":"DerBenniBanni","gh":5499976,"text":"

I like the cats sprite, minimalistic but neat. Does it run tail-first horizontally? (i guess thats not intentionally..hehe)\nThe explosion.effects look nice (a bit over dramatic maybe…)

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Would have been nice to have:

\n\n","games":["Miami Mice"]},{"at":411004643,"author":"Anthony Cosgrave","login":"anthonycosgrave","gh":1410114,"url":"https://imtoospexy.com/","text":"

Interesting idea to have enemies that move at angles while the player can only move in straight lines. Some more definitive instructions would be useful to add, I thought initially the goal was to avoid the skulls then I remembered the “flash of their claws” in the description so I tried several buttons before I figured out it was spacebar. It could definitely use some audio too.

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Maybe for other entries in the future you’ll have sorted out the LittleJS issues you had!

\n","games":["Chickpocalypse Meow"]},{"typ":2,"at":411055961,"author":"Michelle Duke","login":"mishmanners","gh":36594527,"url":"mishmanners.info","twitter":"MishManners","text":"

I love that you did a full post-mortem and even hosted it on GitHub Pages; great job. Super happy to hear it was a good experience; and so random you heard about it on a podcast at the gym.

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Fun game! I love that you were able to fit it in the constraints. You do still have some Kbs to work with, so it’d be great to see some sound effects and music for future. Some on screen control instructions wouldn’t go astray, however it was very intuitive so I picked it up no worries after a few seconds + you had nice smooth controls.

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The implementation of a scoreboard would be fun to be able to see if you are getting better or not. Great take on a classic game; some future things could be power ups, 9 lives, and different enemies with various abilities.

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Also a minor one but I had my screen flickering a bit as I used the attack button. The cat does also seem to be facing the wrong way, or it could be me :P

\n"},{"at":411172986,"author":"Homer Dilpleu","login":"HomerDilpleu","gh":66157330,"text":"

I like the speed of the cat and the particles effects. I don’t know if it’s done on purpose but there is no border and no scroll, so the cat can escape from the screen :)

\n","games":["Wash the cat"]},{"at":411562350,"author":"PHQV","login":"viet98lx","gh":40865791,"text":"

The game is so fun. But better if no blink effect exists any more. Sometimes, my character can push the ghost without using claw to scratch but sometimes he dies because of touching the ghost. To restart, should be key Tab or Enter, not only key R.

\n"},{"at":411707477,"author":"smiley405","login":"smiley405","gh":66162073,"url":"https://rlimbu.com/","text":"

I can see great potential in this game! With a bit of polish on the graphics and the addition of sound, it could really shine. As the score increases, having enemies spawn faster would also ramp up the challenge but I’m sure you already had that in mind.
\nI think you could’ve squeezed in some sound effects with those 4kb you had left! 😄
\nEnjoyed playing!

\n","games":["Biralo"]},{"at":411820066,"author":"Jasper Renow-Clarke","login":"picosonic","gh":26137750,"twitter":"femtosonic","text":"

Graphics are good

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It’s easy to understand and get into gameplay

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I’m glad the cat moves pretty quick

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Wow when lots of enemies come on screen it’s hard to run away

\n","games":["Mochi and the midnight escape"]},{"typ":2,"at":411922858,"author":"Noël Meudec","login":"Noel-FB","gh":71314518,"url":"https://facebook.com/instantgames","text":"

This game is a twist on the game Asteroid. Graphics are simple, but there was an extra effort made for when enemies die. It’s lacking sound, sadly. A few bonus items and more variety of enemies would have made it a lot more fun to play. At under 9ko, I think you did a good job.

\n"}],"results":{"theme":{"rank":112,"min":1,"score":2.79,"max":4.24},"innovation":{"rank":160,"min":1.2,"score":2.05,"max":4.03},"gameplay":{"rank":149,"min":1.18,"score":2.05,"max":4.37},"graphics":{"rank":160,"min":1.6,"score":2.11,"max":4.56},"controls":{"rank":125,"min":1.6,"score":2.79,"max":4.45},"primary":{"rank":157,"min":8.68,"score":11.79,"max":24.89},"label":"Overall"}}