Count the Voids

[cinder zinc]

Count the Voids! How many could there be?

The winning entry for the Black Cat Game Jam!
https://itch.io/jam/black-cat-jam-1
https://youtu.be/9YD5FZVbnSo

You have to count them all to send the back to Somewhere Else, before the outbreak can no longer be contained! Inspired by everyone’s favorite Mario Party mini-game! Increment and decrement your counter once they appear, but be sure to have the correct number of Voids counted when time runs out!

Controls:

Increment Counter: Left-Click, Scroll Up, or D
Decrement Counter: Right-Click, Scroll Down, or A

---

Hey everyone, I'm back with another game jam entry! This time though my game didn't only place well, it won the jam! Out of 135 entries, Count the Voids won Overall, and got #1 in the "Black Cattiness" category.

I'm super happy with how it turned out, and even though I didn't get everything I wanted to done, I'm very proud of the choices I made and the ways that I down-scoped the project as I lost time mid-jam to getting sick. In total I probably spent roughly 50 hours on the game as-is.

I plan on continuing the concept, adding the mechanics I had in mind but didn't make it in (such as lighting/darkness manipulation, moving/opening furniture, and other fun ideas), adding a BUNCH more levels, and releasing a completed version of the game!

[frank violet]

Congratulations! That's absolutely awesome.

[cinder zinc]

Thanks! I'm really happy with how it turned out in the end, even though I had to massively downscope it, haha. A part of me wonders if it did well simply BECAUSE I down-scoped it o.o

[shell nexus]

This is great - Congratulations! I realize it was a game jam and you only have so much time, but since you mentioned you'd be updating it, I think it could use some patrolling cats to add a bit of extra challenge, like in the Mario Party minigame. I love your ideas of light/dark mechanics and opening furniture too though! 🖤

[cinder zinc]

Thanks! I'm looking forward to adding the new mechanics in too! 😄

Oh did some of the cats not patrol for you? There should be a few in each level.

Or did you mean all of them should move around a bit? That was definitely the original vision (and current plan for release) is to have the cats move between different positions and animations based on some internal logic.

[shell nexus]

Oh, I just watched the YouTube video, which doesn't have any patrols (And I really wanted to call pawtrols... you can have that one for free 😂).

[cinder zinc]

ah yeah, sorry, that was an early build. i added patrolling cats in the last like 4 hours before i submitted 🤣

[shell nexus]

Oh nice, good choice, and right before the buzzer 😁

[cinder zinc]

I recently looked up and took a breath and thought "finally, my life is in a place where I can go back to doing Indie Gamedev stuff and work on Count the Voids more."

Then I looked at the calendar and I realized it's been almost a year since I built this and won the jam.

Better late than never though, they say.

Here's some WIP videos of the new biomes that I'm cooking up.

The Forest Temple

https://youtu.be/9ikBELRyR3o

The Abandoned Mine

https://youtu.be/K5Phq_n1pfo

[shell nexus]

I totally get that - I did a similar thing with my indie game development recently 😩 The forest level looks amazing! 💚 And I forget if you had this before or not, but I love the addition of the light mechanic in the mine level - Stuff like that is great to mix up the gameplay!

[cinder zinc]

thank you so much! light/darkness was one of the core mechanics i wanted to add to the jam but ran out of time on. it's why i made sure to always use pitch black for all parts of the Voids except their eyes and ears, so the light blending would keep them hidden.

i was really glad to get it added here and see it working as i had imagined! I think it can add a lot of complexity and fun to the later, more difficult levels :D.

[cinder zinc]

dropping these here for posterity. also just asked a question about the idea of a level select screen like this aesthetically working in the art channel:
#🎨︱art message

[cinder zinc]

Back when I started, all the assets of black cats I found available online didn't quite match what I wanted.

So I tried making a ton of pixel cats in Aseprite. Some look really weird! But some looked pretty good too!

You've seen above which I picked (and much more), but I thought it would be cool to dust off some of the old experimental stuff from the jam and share that too!

[dusky granite]

These are adorable, and your game looks delightful! I also happen to be working on a pixel-art game with a little void in it 🙂

[cinder zinc]

Awesome! Voids are so cute! My real life cat isnt exactly a void but she is void-adjacent, haha.

And thank you! Your game looks really fun!

Let's just say that in my house when it's night and I look at a dark spot on the floor, sometimes two eyes are suddenly staring back at me.

[dusky granite]

Haha, mine is also void-adjacent. For some reason he likes to sleep on the stairs at night, which is just a recipe for disaster!

[cinder zinc]

Oh gosh, you get an obstacle course built-in right at home!

[cinder zinc]

Love the toe beans!

[cinder zinc]

Been a couple weeks since I updated here. I've been heads down with my day job and lost a good amount of time getting my socials all up and running.

A byproduct of that though is I made this video capturing my level creation process for Count the Voids!

I didn't think it would do too well on social media (and it didn't) but I made it anyway because it's such a fundamental part of my process (my game will have MANY levels). I wanted to be able to share it with folks who were curious about how each level is assembled / designed. Maybe I'll do a longer one sometime where I actually talk through my thinking as I go, haha.

Anyway here's the vid. It's unlisted cause I'm not even attempting long-form youtube content (down that path lies darkness). Happy to answer questions folks have about godot, tilesets, cats, or making your own restaurant level pizza at home.

https://youtu.be/Ss5oOlAXmBE

[cinder zinc]

Earlier today I decided, screw it, i'm adding NPCs to my game. I have a rich lore (in my head) and don't have the kind of game where I can use ONLY environmental storytelling (maybe if i was a metroidvania....but no).

There's a particular NPC that's been in my mind from the get-go. Her name is Vivian (Viv for short), she is your assistant assigned by the Counting Guild. She has some strange ideas about the Voids, like that they can be rescued and kept in a vivarium instead of sent back to Somewhere Else. She wears the games timer around her neck with a gold chain Flava Flav style (it is way too big for her), keeps you appraised of danger while counting, and helps you enact the final ritual.

Oh she's also a talking black cat (not a Void - if you call her one she'll be very upset) that wears a big floppy wizards hat. Just because.

This character has existed in my mind for over a year now. My first draft was done in about 3 hours. Here it is, circa 7:30pm:

I'm proud to say with about 6 hours of dedicated effort, I thitnk Viv looks a lot better than her first draft:

[cinder zinc]

obviously still more to do (something is off with how the hat sits on the head) but a good enough stopping point for 2am

[cinder zinc]

another night, and more improvement.

this one's looking pretty decent. gonna hold at here for a bit and make a few still-frame "emotion" frames like this one (excited) to use as first drafts.

[left island]

SO CUTE!!!

[cinder zinc]

finally got a rough day/night cycle working on the new biome i'm working on, thought it looked kinda neat 😄

[cinder zinc]

What do folks think is a better sort of icon for "coins" which are bonus points you can earn from completing levels quickly, and use to buy cosmetics?

[left island]

I'm very charmed by the left but think the right reads better as coins

[dusky granite]

Agreed, I think the right is more legible as coins

[cinder zinc]

Yeah, I sort of agree with you all haha >.<. Still, maybe I can finesse the left one nicer. But either way, coinage is occurring.

I got my dialogue system working, which is pretty cool (nice and easy to drop into a scene too, which is good). lots of updates to my overworld map too!

[cinder zinc]

I had to take a long break from this, but i've been back at it for a bit! i've sort of changed my core mechanic a bit, as I did some experimentation and found that clicking on the voids themselves to count them seems to be much more fun. sort of changes the entire feel of the game (much more casual) but it's much better to get that immediate feedback. as it existed before, when folks made a mistake there was no real way to know what voids they'd missed and how to improve. so i'm taking cues from the genre i've identified as most similar to my game (the hidden-object cat games genre) and am modeling levels more on that vibe instead.

i also have an early playtest build that i'm looking for playtesters on! i'd love to be able to be in a discord screenshare so i can silently (but not creepily, i promise) watch you play my game and take notes. anyone who is interested feel free to reply here or send me a DM and we can set up some time (15-30 minutes probably)

I don't think I ever shared it here, but I also got my capsule art completed and all done, I think it looks pretty great!

[left island]

Very exciting!!! I might be interested in doing a playtest but i'm currently swamped with school 😭

[cinder zinc]

understood, best of luck! school's super important 😄

[cinder zinc]

I've been working a lot on a timestop ability that you can unlock later in the game. I think it looks / sounds pretty cool right now!

(i know the button UI isn't responsive enough right now, i just got this feature working roughly and wanted to share 😄 )