Mousescaped!
This project was the final of our level design course. It had been intended to be a final part of our previous project (which you can find on my website “Power of 2”) but my professor lifted my heavenly restriction blocking me from creating cat themed projects, and well. The rest is history.
Mousescaped was sort of rushed but I went into it with 3 weeks and a f*cking mission. It was my last course with Professor Cookson and I wanted to finish it with yet another cat project. Including this I think that brings my total of cat projects with him to 5, which happens to also be how many cats I (currently) am a parent of. Mousescaped though, is essentially pacman if it were a horror game.
The games aesthetics were inspired by this insane Japanese death game movie I had seen. In it, there was a game where players had to survive a giant killer cat statue. I figured sure, lets make that into a horror game pacman. I was so sleep deprived this year it was unreal. I had like 3.5 studio courses because I was a dumb stupid idiot and also I had no friends at the time and also I didn't know any better. The mice in the game spawn around the map randomly and will eat the cheese laid throughout the area. The cheese acts as a form of point collection alongside gaining points for surviving extra time. The NPC mice can be killed by the giant cat and serve as a great distraction. The player can even pick up other mice and hurl them at the cat.
The giant cat paths around the maze randomly and is relatively quiet. It's paws can be heard close up but the walls muffle the sound quite heavily. She does make a horrifying and loud fog horn sound every time she finds a mouse so hearing the pittering of her sprinting up behind you and then getting hit with her eating you while a fog horn blasts in the background can be quite horrifying.
The maze has mouse holes around the area which the player can use as hiding spots if the cat is approaching them. Peeking out of the mouse hole can be helpful to check left or right but if the cat gets too close to them while peeking they will die.
While you can't directly hurt the cat you can be an asshole to the other mice. Like I said earlier you can grab the other mice and throw them into the path of the cat which will temporarily distract her.
The goal of the game is to collect as many points as possible. After each game the players score is recorded. Points are gained by surviving for longer and also collecting as much cheese as possible. The game has a 100 second timer and the player must not only survive to the end but also escape from a corner of the map to end the game. Basically, you need to decide when to escape and head towards one of the escape holes to win.
One of the pickups in the game I designed was this laser pointer. It never made it into the actual game but it would have been a funny way to use a line trace to instantly change the giant cats pathfinding and sort of just drive it around for a second. You can use it to send the cat somewhere else or even just so she runs over other mice. I think being able to be an asshole lends very greatly to the comedy of the game.
Here's a size comparison of the giant cat and the mouse. Yes the cat is just a giant pear shape. She looks just like my Jimmy Cat, lol.