GA Spring 2023 – B.O.B & Cat

In B.O.B & Cat, you play as a bobcat who is stuck in a mysterious, deteriorating factory, trying to find its way out. Travelling with it is a tiny robot, guiding it forward, its intentions unknown. B.O.B & Cat is a love letter to early 2000 era action adventure/platformer games such as Ratchet & Clank and the Sly Cooper series. Explore an interesting location, collect hidden trophies and smash enemy robots to bits in this action platforming epic!

Development process

It all started with an admiration towards the aforementioned PlayStation 2 era video games. We wanted to recreate the feeling we had when we played those games as kids. The first thing decided was the character, or rather, characters. It just simply would not be a PS2 era inspired action adventure/platforming game without an anthropomorphic animal as the main character. There is no “Ratchet & Clank” without Ratchet, nor is there “Jak & Daxter” without Jak. However, those games also would not be the same without the trusty companions. That’s why we created B.O.B, a small robot that follows the player around, helping them make sense of the bizarre and spooky world they have found themselves in.

After deciding on the characters and tone, we needed to agree on which gameplay elements we would implement from the games. Jumping, running and attacking were obvious ones since all of the games have those. We also needed a way to interact with the world, something unique to our game. The answer laid in the robot companion. In the game, B.O.B is used to help open doors and battle enemies. It can smash itself into fuse boxes and enemies alike, causing damage to any and all circuitry it comes in contact with.

Other than being a wrecking ball, B.O.B also provides helpful and, at times, humorous commentary on the events that transpire when Cat traverses through the dangerous obstacles in the rundown factory. We wanted to have a rich and unique narrative to our game, but were quite held back by the time we had. Since we had no time to implement npcs, not to even mention cutscenes, we had to focus on making sure we can tell a cohesive story with just the environment and a couple of dialogue lines from B.O.B. We would like to think we did well and the game certainly does have an unique vibe to it.

All in all, there is absolutely tons of things we didn’t have time to add, but we as a team are happy with how the game turned out. For a new player there is more than 30 minutes of exploring, dodging obstacles, jumping from platform to another, collecting two different kinds of collectibles, fighting enemies and solving puzzles! Test it out for yourself in the link below!

https://team-bob.itch.io/bob-cat

The people who made the magic happen

Niko Holopainen: Project lead, level design, programming

Joonas Järvinen: Programming, level design

Pasi Sundelin: Programming, audio

Joey Audi: 3D art, level design

Vuokko Lehtola: 3D art, animation, 2D art

Aino Virtala: 3D art, 2D art

Valtteri Kamppinen: 3D art, animation

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