Guide a mischievous black cat with a laser pointer and spread “bad luck” by crossing people’s paths. Survive the night, watch the mayhem (hello, flying Black Volga), and make the most of your nine lives. Built in raw WebGL under 13 KB - mentee-powered, mentor-polished!
\nNice try. Use the laser pointer’s red dot on the floor. It’s a cat - it won’t listen to you anyway.
\nIt’s a light “horror/survival” game. Stay alive as long as you can and bring bad luck to as many unsuspecting souls as possible.
\nTo bring “bad luck” to someone, just cross their path - they’ll turn yellow. Our 13 KB budget is tight, so the only “accident” we implemented is a cameo from an urban legend: the Black Volga. You’ve got a whole crew on call; they work fast and efficiently. It’s 2025, so yes, they fly - no need to run you over.
\nIt gets darker over time, but don’t worry—our cat’s eyes glow in the dark.
\nWait for “rush hour.” It gets wonderfully chaotic when everyone goes outside.
\nNine lives aren’t forever. Spend them wisely—and have fun! :D
\nThis project was a blast. Most of the heavy lifting was done by Julia—my mentee, whom I’ve coached over the last year. I added the final touches and squeezed it under 13 KB for JS13K.
\nA month ago neither of us knew raw WebGL. Not much has changed—except we now have a working game ;)
\nPS: Julia asked me to include this quote:\n“My mentor, Bartosz Cytrowski, is truly the best—always inspiring and supportive. I wholeheartedly recommend him to anyone who wants to grow.”
\nMy two cents: Don’t joke with your mentees about “maybe building a 3D game for JS13K” if you can’t say no to a challenge :P
\nPS2: The flying Volga started as a bug - but with the right framing, every bug can become a funny feature :P
\n","source":"cytrowski/js13k-zabobon","stars":1,"comments":[{"at":410470070,"author":"Vadym Perepeliak","login":"Vapsel","gh":16780217,"text":"I love the idea of a cat having lights in the eyes :D
\n"},{"at":410553999,"author":"xem","login":"xem","gh":1225909,"text":"Very good graphics and controls. Only missing a bit of sound :)
\n","games":["I got up on the wrong foot"]},{"at":410685970,"author":"Michal Zalobny","login":"michalzalobny","gh":69809353,"url":"michalzalobny.com","twitter":"michalzalobny","text":"Nice game and interesting mechanics!
\n"},{"at":410987398,"author":"Anthony Cosgrave","login":"anthonycosgrave","gh":1410114,"url":"https://imtoospexy.com/","text":"Interesting mechanic and well done getting it all done in under 13kb! I really liked the transition into night time with the lights flickering before turning on fully and the cat’s eyes being lights themselves.
\n","games":["Chickpocalypse Meow"]},{"typ":2,"at":411060295,"author":"Michelle Duke","login":"mishmanners","gh":36594527,"url":"mishmanners.info","twitter":"MishManners","text":"Right there on the 13kB, nice work.
\nI love the concept, the cat movements are rather fluid, but at the same time jerky with the way they collide with people. The glow in the dark eyes were interesting and the graphic houses in the background were very fun. Could do with a little more variety in the people but I understand the kB constraints.
\nIt’d be good to see some sound effects and music. Great work on implementation and nice fitting with the theme.
\n"},{"typ":1,"at":411100575,"re":411060295,"author":"Bartosz Cytrowski","login":"cytrowski","gh":2965690,"twitter":"cytrowski","text":"Thank you, love the feedback :D
\nDid you notice that the “eyes light” is in sync with cat blinks? This is also in sync with the cat avatar in the top-left corner. Also, the cat avatar shares some wisdom during the game but I guess it’s hard to ready while trying to manoeuvre on the arena.
\n"},{"at":411263495,"author":"Andrew Higson-Smith","login":"ElementalSystems","gh":4255763,"url":"www.elementalsystems.co.za","text":"Lovely game - fun to play and entertaining. Well done
\n","games":["Wake the Cat"]},{"at":411440215,"author":"Surma","login":"surma","gh":234957,"url":"https://surma.dev","text":"Very cool idea. Love the ties to the theme and the laser pointer thing. Visuals and goal was clear (thanks for the explanation!) and I got going straight away.\nIt’s a bit punishing and I wish the controls felt a bit more precise. With both me and the person moving, it’s pretty hard to aim and not lose hearts. It also fills up rather quickly. But there’s a great game here.
\n","games":["Swing A Cat"]},{"at":411640000,"author":"Jasper Renow-Clarke","login":"picosonic","gh":26137750,"twitter":"femtosonic","text":"I had fun playing your game
\nThe laser was a little hard to see at night, when I thought it’d stand out the most
\nThe graphics are brilliant and the 3D works well
\nAt first I ran into people, but that didn’t go so well, when I realised you needed to cross their paths they turned yellow and it made more sense
\n","games":["Mochi and the midnight escape"]},{"at":411874281,"author":"Raptor Dev","login":"raptor0999","gh":74460924,"twitter":"Raptor_IndieDev","text":"Very interesting idea and gameplay.
\nI like the whole idea of guiding/controller the black cat with a laser point, because cats will not follow orders lol and then also giving people bad luck by passing in their path (we actually also had this idea but did not end up implementing in our game).
\nI think the best thing is if you could have added levels or more of a progression into the game. As it is there are a few people and you cross their path and then suddenly everyone is let out at once it seems.
\nI do like the score that you get at the end; we also did the same sort of mechanic for that.
\n","games":["Boots and the Black Cauldron"]},{"typ":2,"at":411940522,"author":"Noël Meudec","login":"Noel-FB","gh":71314518,"url":"https://facebook.com/instantgames","text":"Interesting concept, and it is always great to see 3D games in this game jam! The game is hard, but I think it is because the controls are not ideal. With some tweaks to make it more accessible, I think it could become really good!
\n"},{"typ":2,"at":411989090,"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 and shipped a complete game! A 3d game under 13kb! Submissions like these are the reminder that you can actually render a cube under 13kb in the utterly verbose WebGL APIs.
\nI try not to read the descriptions and the feedback before I play the games, so I was naturally confused with the idea that I had to crash into people so they got picked up by a black car. When I “rescued” 9 folks, I also lost all my 9 lives, and the game ended. Hm.
\nI tried once more; with similar results. So instead, I assumed the goal was to totally avoid people – because there was a timer so I should be staying the longest. I failed at that too and didn’t get why the people still got carried away by mysterious cars.
\nAccidentally then, I noticed that I managed to send another person to the right side of the map just by crossing their path. It then clicked! This is a game about a black cat crossing paths with someone :)
\nBut the challenge was not over. Getting effective at crossing people’s paths never quite happened. After some runs I’m still not confident what were the parameters that made for a “good crossing”. Sometimes I was too close, getting hit. Other times too far away or maybe the npc was not quite looking at the direction I “crossed”, and then there was the crossings that the game didn’t consider it a “real cross” – I was doing too sharp turns or not crossing enough for it to send the npcs away.
\nGreat work on putting together a place, the lights and the environment – it feels like a busy square at night, with someone in the neighbourhood flats trolling the cat with their red laser.
\n"},{"typ":1,"at":412067320,"re":411989090,"author":"Bartosz Cytrowski","login":"cytrowski","gh":2965690,"twitter":"cytrowski","text":"Thanks Victor :D Yep, squishing all of that in 13kb was a crazy challenge - we shaved half of the ideas to make it work and I agree the controls require extra love to become trustworthy ;) We decided to drop the “quick start guide” from the gameplay in favour of the game description so I totally get your struggle if you didn’t read that upfront :D
\nI think that displaying some popup on 1st unfortunate confrontation with NPC, saying that “you are doing it wrong” may have saved you some frustration ;)
\nOnce again thanks for the detailed feedback :D
\n"},{"at":412030857,"author":"Attila Horváth","login":"attilahorvath","gh":4081005,"text":"Well done implementing a full 3D world in WebGL within the size limit. The models, animations, spotlights, shadows all look good so props for that!
\nHowever, I had some major performance issues on my machine which made the game unplayable on a full screen window. It got somewhat better when I resized it to a small size but still far from ideal (around 30 FPS or so). You could use something like Spector JS to investigate these issues, the game is probably doing too many draw calls each frame (instanced drawing might help in that case).
\nThe cat’s eyes glowing in the dark is really funny as is the flying Black Volga car!
\nControlling the cat with a laser pointer is a fun concept but I feel like it made the game too hard to play. Also, the collisions / physics can get a bit wonky at times.
\nGood job releasing this and good luck with your games in the future, I’ll be excited to see them!
\n","games":["A Voiding Your Problems"]},{"typ":1,"at":412067506,"re":412030857,"author":"Bartosz Cytrowski","login":"cytrowski","gh":2965690,"twitter":"cytrowski","text":"Thank you :D Yep, perf issues happen - I guess I introduced them with drop-shadow calculations, trying to respect all the lights and NPCs. Didn’t find enough time to fix that - sorry :)
\n"}],"results":{"theme":{"rank":31,"min":1,"score":3.6,"max":4.24},"innovation":{"rank":47,"min":1.2,"score":3.15,"max":4.03},"gameplay":{"rank":132,"min":1.18,"score":2.35,"max":4.37},"graphics":{"rank":88,"min":1.6,"score":3.05,"max":4.56},"controls":{"rank":92,"min":1.6,"score":3.05,"max":4.45},"primary":{"rank":118,"min":8.68,"score":15.2,"max":24.89},"label":"Overall"}}