It's a popular misconception that cats have nine lives. In reality they've actually got infinite lives and are forced to restart at checkpoints every time they lose one. For proof, just take a look at Katwalk, a metroidvania-style platformer by Krankdud. Our feline hero may bite the dust time and time again but it doesn't keep him down... he just hops right back up and returns to the action! The cat in question has been stranded after falling in a sinkhole outside his home. To help him find his way back, where presumably there's some delicious cans of tuna and black clothing to shed on, use the [arrow] keys to walk left and right and the [X] key to jump. You'll need to find and pick up several different upgrades to complete the game, each of which enhances the cat in some way, such as increasing his jump height or allowing him to swim.
Katwalk is presented in standard retro graphical style. The protagonist cat and all of the enemies are simple but well-defined and everything animates and controls smoothly. There's none of the floaty control issues that you might expect to see in other flash-based platformers. The real highlight of the presentation, though, is the catchy chiptune music that's guaranteed to get stuck in your head for the next decade or so. Katwalk is a short, fairly easy game, so aside from one tricky section involving swimming you won't need catlike reflexes to succeed. This makes it a fantastic coffee break game, and it's so solidly made that it's worth the tiny time investment. So hop on in... there's cattery afoot!
It's got very cute, simple music, I must say. However, I feel as though it is not intuitive enough to be enjoyed. The controls are quite fast paced and the enemies are already difficult to enjoy. Still, I love the simple setting and atmosphere this game brings.
This is a nice, short game. The feather upgrade worked really well.
Great little game!
Some hints along the way:
Grey burger animals are dangerous only when spikes are out
Thou shalt not jump on enemy's head
Find rainbow sock to jump higher
Find blue fin to breathe under water
Find rainbow feather to glide-fly short distances
I don't understand the feather...is it an upgrade or do you have to click a certain key?
It is an upgrade. You have to press X again while in midair to airglide on a little distance. It could be used, well, to jump over lava... :)
Otherwise, cute little game ! Not the kind of metroidvania I expected, but still, short and easy sometimes feel really good.
Adorable and fun!
One game design gripe, though: several screens require leaps of faith-as in, you have to jump or fall off the current screen with no guarantee of a safe landing on the next. In at least one of these situations, you are actually guaranteed to die the first time, because you don't know when and how to react to land safely. These are mitigated by a generous checkpoint system, but it's still not a good design practice.
verry touchy controls, has a lot of promise, but controls that often are hard to control, along with sometimes glitch that makes the browser not even respond to controls (OSX/FF) and no ability to save an continue after a page refresh mars this otherwise very fun platformer. hopefully a persistent save and some tweaking on the inputs will come soon and allow player to fully explore the apparently deeper worlds and gameplay!
[Try Chrome or Safari. I didn't have any response or control issues playing on Mac OSX. -Jay]
That was shorter than I expected. At the final checkpoint, I climbed up the cliff and the game ended when I returned to my house, and I was thinking that I hadn't even explored the water area to the left of that. Played it through again, and it didn't turn out to go anywhere.
Cute game! Anyone find any secret areas?
I've got the following items:
Jump, fins, feather
but I can't figure out what to do now. I've explored
all the way to the left, and can't get back up to my home. I've tried a
leap of faith from the highest place I can find (jumping to the left from the mini ledge to the left of the path with the gap on it and the upward firing plant monster, if that makes any sense),
but it doesn't seem to get me anywhere that normal gameplay won't get me.
Can someone tell me what's next?
nm. Got it.
Cute but.. would've been VERY boring if it wasn't so short.
*2/10 in difficulty
+checkpoints "every step"
+unlimited lives.
I haven't died this much since "This is the Only Level." I really want a gun upgrade in this game. Or to be able to squish monsters.
That lava portion with the spike walls and the small hole in the wall...
Rage. All of it
Ha!
He went out for a walk!
Update