Cats with Bats
Disclaimer: Cats with Bats was made for exploration and learning and is not related to any IOI game projects. Everything was created for IOI Week and presented on August 22nd, 2023.
When was the last time you played a couch co-op game about cats playing table tennis in space? ”
Probably NEVER! This is why we thought that the world needed - Cats with Bats. (We made sure the title rhymes!) In 2021 a few of us started on a prototype of “Pingis”, a Scandinavian mode of table tennis where the players hit the ball and run around the table.
What is this game about?
You lose a life when you mess up and when you lose three, you are out!
This game is a ritual here at IOI Malmö and we thought to immortalize it in the form of a video game. The cats and space theme was unanimously agreed upon in close succession!
Cats with Bats is all about chaos and a little bit of skill. It puts your reflex skills to the test as you play as a cat manically flying around and hitting balls while using powerups to mess with the opponents. The last two cats left battle it out in a final best of three, where it boils down to pure skill.
Audio
Intro by Ivo Sissolak, Senior Sound Designer
I was in charge of creating the weird and crazy sounds that the game needed as well as composing the interactive music.”
I also played part time producer, trying to keep the team aligned!
I never thought that we would re-visit this game at IOI Week 2 years in a row after we worked on it for a whole week in 2021. Something pulled us back to work on it because we remembered that other colleagues enjoyed it the initial prototype. The Cats with Bats team changed a bit over the 3 years with exciting new additions that were refreshing, and this impact was positively surprising to me!
The Cats with Bats team changed a bit over the 3 years with exciting new additions that were refreshing, and this impact was positively surprising to me!
- Ivo Sissolak
Programming
Intro by Mircea Popescu, Gameplay Programmer & Marc Nilsson, Programmer
I’ve primarily focused on gameplay, adding behaviours for top spins, smash shots, slices and lobbed balls.”
Furthermore, I worked on improving the ball behaviour, for example making sure we do not hit the net or “faking” ball physics so that a slow shot does not stop on the table.
I was both amazed and humbled by the insanely fast iterations the team was doing! The target on Monday was to add more ‘juice’ to the game and consider it ‘done and shippable’ by the end of the week, but now I would not mind giving it another week of iteration next year!
- Mircea Popescu
Most of my time on the project was spent building the core game from the ground up.”
I was a part of Cats with Bats since the first IOI Week. The following IOI Weeks I focused on rebuilding and improving the first systems and implementing new features.
The most unexpected thing was how fast we got to a fun, playable state that looked like a real game! It is also amazing (but maybe not unexpected) how incredibly talented everyone is.
- Marc Nilsson
Animation & Graphics
Intro by Daniel Nagy, Animation Intern & Tova Nyström, Junior Gameplay Animator
I focused primarily on creating cinematics for the final round and announcing the winner in a Smash Bros type game over screen. ”
In this area I did all the animation, VFX and engine implementation.
I was one of the newcomers to both IOI and the Cats team this year and it was wonderful to see how much can be achieved just in a couple of days with complete strangers. The collaboration and the fun we had also resulted in strangers becoming friends and this clearly highlights how many things teamwork can achieve besides the project itself.
My main task has been creating our cat characters, from concepting them to creating their gameplay animations.”
I was also in charge or UI graphics and creating the Hats we have in the latest "Cats with Hats" expansion.
It's been very exciting seeing our game develop so much in such a short time, having new IOnians join every year, adding new skills to the team and new cool content to the game, expanding on the game and making gameplay more and more solid.
Every year we have had so many new fun ideas we want to add to the game, but we have been pretty good at prioritizing the ideas that would bring the most to the game and timeboxing for a weeks’ worth of work.
We will see what we will add next year!
Additional art screens
Full Credits
Marc Nilsson
Ivo Sissolak
Mircea Popescu
Tova Nyström
Daniel Nagy
Hobia Engel
Rune Langkilde
William Fredriksson
Yeseul Kang
Milan De Laet
Emma Lintvelt
