Grumpy the Cat vs The Genius Rat Swarms!

This is our entry in to the Brackey's 2025.2 Game Jam (https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14).

Keyboard/mouse required; relatively decent computer with a GPU is recommended. 

Art/Character Design: Oleksandra Dreval (https://oleksadreval.com/)
Programming/Game Design/Writing: Wes C. (https://wescc.dev)

The Stupid Ridiculous Story

Grumpy, our hero, is an indoor kitty and has never been outside. Why would he? He has everything he needs inside his owner's huge mansion.

But oh no! his owner is a mad scientist who has been working in his secret laboratory to put Einstein's DNA in rats.
And oh no! he has cloned millions of them to release into the wild. 
And oh no! now the genius rats escaped the lab and want to take over the world! All they have to do is escape the mansion and their domination is assured. 

The only thing stopping them is Grumpy the Cat..

Can Grumpy stop the disgusting genius rats and save the world? Nope. But he's going to try!

How to Play

Don't die.

Grumy only has one life for the whole game. Not nine because that's silly childish nonsense. One.

Navigate the areas of the mansion to reach the exit. 

Controls

Standard top-down shooter stuff. 

• Use the WASD or cursor keys to move Grumpy. 
• Use the mouse to aim and shoot experimental hot sauce.

Kitty Senses

Press X or the middle mouse button to show Grumpy's awareness of the environment.  It helps to know where the rats are and where they are going.  Plan your route to prevent being overwhelmed.

Pay attention to the Blips on the edges of the screen to pick opportunities to move safely through the mansion.

Weapons

Grumpy’s mad scientist owner became obsessed with creating the hottest hot sauce the world has ever seen. He worked for months until he finally crossed Carolina Reaper peppers with black widow venom and cobra venom. 

Then he said “screw it” and added sulfuric acid, napalm, and depleted uranium.

And then, to be sure everyone had no choice but to eat it, he put tracking sensors on the bottles that would make the bottles chase down anyone nearby and fly directly into their mouths.

It was brilliant!

The Primary mouse button squirts  a blob  of experimental hot sauce in exactly the same way you are envisioning because you've played games before. 

The Secondary mouse button throws a bottle with the tracking sensors that locks on to the nearest disgusting  evil genius rat, forces its way into their moths,  and then explodes in an area that damages all nearby disgusting and evil genius rats. 

This pleases Grumpy.

Rat holes and Switches

 The disgusting genius rats emerge from rat holes in search of cheese. Grumpy, despite being a cat, can somehow manipulate switches to deactivate (or activate) the rat holes because this is a game. Just don't think about it. Logic is for weenie-heads.

Disgusting Genius Rats

There are two types of disgusting genius rats. 

Bitey Rats run around looking for cheese and will bite Grumpy if they catch him. 

Boomer Rats do not directly attack Grumpy. Instead, they run around and plant bombs for Grumpy to stumble into and go blamo. 

They love it! It's their favorite thing.

Bombs cannot be destroyed and will damage all nearby rats too.

Doors and Keycards

You remember Doom, right? Same deal here. Colored doors are impassable unless Grumpy possesses a key of the same color, which are scattered around the floor. How does a cat use keys? Grumpy is special, that's how.

Pickups

• Grumpy can pick up biscuits to increase his score.
  
• Grumpy can pick up food to increase his health.
  
• Grumpy can pick up hot sauce bottles to fill his bottle-gun and shoot the disgusting genius rats.
  
  

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License

 All art is original and created exclusively for this game by Oleksandra Dreval. All rights are reserved and may not be used for any purpose without the permission of the copyright holders, Wes C. and Sasha Dreval.

Audio, music, and additional icons are used under license from Kenney.nl (who else?):

Created/distributed by Kenney (www.kenney.nl)

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License: (Creative Commons Zero, CC0)

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

This content is free to use in personal, educational and commercial projects.

Support us by crediting Kenney or www.kenney.nl (this is not mandatory)

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