Meowmentum

PLAY FOR FREE HERE ON ITCH.IO (PC): https://purrfectpaceinteractive.itch.io/meowmentum

FOLLOW AND CONNECT WITH US ON OUR SOCIALS: https://linktr.ee/pp_int

Game Description 🕹️

Meowmentum is a first-person speedrunning platformer in which you must finish magical trials in a pocket universe as fast as possible to become a full-fledged catmage! 🐈🧙‍♂️

We're a team of recent graduates who chose to take our Unity Award-winning final project from school ('Meowmentum Mori' | VFS) and expand upon it. We use it to learn and grow our skills as we become professional developers!

Game Trailer 🎥

This is the trailer we created as students, when it was still called 'Meowmentum Mori'.

Screenshots 📸

Gameplay Mechanics 🎮

We always wanted to build a speedrunner, but getting to where we are now took a while. We started by including combat, using enemies as pivot/anchor points that the player would use to navigate the level. Two days into production, we realized that combat blew our scope out of proportion and made our core vision weaker overall - so we scrapped it! With a stronger focus on speed-feel, we built our movement to be fluid and to encourage the player never to stop moving. 

Our core gameplay loop looks something like:

1. Find Path -> Plan each moment to decide which jumps to take, what platforms to use, and when to use them.

2. Move Forward -> Execute your planned path.

3. Maintain Speed -> Switch between locomotion states to prevent the loss of meowmentum!

Our target audience has always been dedicated speedrunners. We want folks who don't mind spending hours replaying the same levels, cutting the smallest corners just for that extra fraction of a second. We're proud to say that, by playtesting, we've found many people who fit in that category. Seeing people play our game and get excited to improve is a huge motivation for us to keep going! Since the days of 'Meowmentum Mori,' we've made major updates to gameplay - namely, updates to movement all around. Each state was individually examined and improved upon, and the way momentum is built and kept is calculated differently.

Early testing footage of the new and improved movement system in 'Meowmentum':

Level Design 🗺️🖌️📏

We initially found inspiration from similar games like Neon White and Ghost Runner. Then we expanded to other multimedia such as movies like Casino Royale, Prince of Persia, and even from everyday life like the daily train commute to school. During the prototype stage, the focus was to build out as many scenarios as possible to try to find the fun in the game. What does a good shortcut look like? How should options be presented to players? Those were all questions that guided the level design.

During production, we found an interesting interview with Ben Esposito, lead designer for Neon White, where he mentioned that presenting the player with too many options is counter-intuitive to the spirit of the speedrunning genre. "We started off with a strictly linear path because we knew that even with a linear path, players would find ways to cut corners and optimize their times".

Armed with this insight, I (Pablo) began to scrutinize my level design to see if it met the following criteria:

1. Is it the right size?

2. Is there an appropriate amount of choices?

3. Are choices clearly presented and easily identifiable?

4. Are players always moving forward or are there any chokepoints where they slow down? 

5. Do the levels offer enough replayability value?

Once I felt good with the overall layout and feel of the levels, I went through the enriching process of playtesting and iterating upon the feedback. This constant back and forth between playtest and iteration allowed me to prove my good design choices and improve upon the bad ones. Through playtesting, I have continued to achieve polished levels that meet my standards, and those of the team :)

Networking 📡

As replayability became increasingly important to us, we realized that leaning into the social aspects of competition would greatly improve our intended experience. As such, we used Unity Game Services (UGS) to implement a global leaderboard and player analytics. The leaderboard offered a way for people to compete with each other on a global scale, something we had never imagined before while encouraging our target audience to spend much longer trying to perfect their level runs.

By analyzing how players went through the levels and the rate of completion per level, we were able to funnel our analytics data into further iterations on level/game design! The impact of our networking features cannot be understated, and their existence has undoubtedly made Meowmentum a better game.

Moodboard 🎨🖌️🖼️

Concept Art 💭

Initially, our theme was entirely different - we were working on 'Momentum Mori,' a game set inside an Aztec temple. The revisions to our mechanics led to a change in theme, which required a reset for all our concepts.

Super mega early concept art from the game ('Momentum Mori'):

Rebuilding our concept art was not an easy task, but it was worth the effort!

This shift in direction was prompted by design changes in the game, such as the removal of enemies and the absence of a weapon. As a result, the previous theme felt forced and no longer aligned with our vision.

First, we started working on tiling textures and created our first set of play-space-affecting props. We also went through multiple iterations to finalize the design of our main character. We opted for a character rig with two paws to maintain a clean screen for players to focus on the fast-paced gameplay. Once rigged, we created initial animations and prepared them for implementation in the game engine (with Apoorv's assistance).

One of the major challenges we faced was establishing a strong visual identity for this new universe, as our in-game visuals were still in the early stages. To address this, we took a screenshot from one of the levels and created a paint-over proxy. This helped us visualize how all the cat and magical elements would come together, serving as a key reference for future milestones.

Key Takeaway: Let go of ideas if they are not suitable anymore. The consistency of our core vision was more important than holding on to past work, even if we had spent many hours on it!

3D Art & VFX  🗿✨

Tiled Materials ⚡

Textures 🎁

The Team 💞

Apoorv Taneja - Tech Design/Project Lead (LinkedIn | Portfolio)

Pablo Moctezuma - Level Design/Cinematics (LinkedIn | Portfolio)

Ivan Restrepo - Tech Design/Networking (LinkedIn | Portfolio)

Ivonne Medina - 3D/2D Art/Rigging & Animation (LinkedIn | Portfolio)

John Santana - 3D/UI Art/Texturing (LinkedIn | Portfolio)

Audio Collaborators

We are lucky to have 4 external audio collaborators who have built all audio assets for us, and work closely with us to iterate on and improve our overall vision! Check them out below:

Hojune Kwak - SFX/Audio Lead (LinkedIn)

Pedro Campos - Voice/Ambience/SFX (LinkedIn)

Benji Ruiz - Composition (LinkedIn)

Jenny Shim - Composition (LinkedIn)