Boing Kat

What it's like to play

Boing Kat began life as a js13k entry and still carries that jam-sized shape: three levels, one input, and a 640 by 480 canvas drawn with kontra.js. You are a small black cat that starts running the moment a level loads, heading right toward a duck standing at the finish flag.

Space is the whole control scheme. Tap it to jump, and to start, restart or advance between levels. The cat gains one pixel per frame of speed every frame until it tops out at 2.5 pixels per frame, so early jumps drift and late ones commit. Gravity pulls at 3 pixels per frame and a jump adds 3 of lift. Levels are built on 16-pixel tiles: the opening stage is 64 tiles wide, 1,024 pixels of scrolling ground, and the next two run 128 tiles, or 2,048 pixels each. Spikes and a fall past the bottom edge both end the run. Score is distance travelled divided by ten, plus a bonus for reaching a flag.

The limits are structural. There is no touch input, no pause key, no difficulty option and no save; a death returns you to the start of the current level. The 640 by 480 buffer never scales, so a phone gets horizontal scrolling instead of a fitted view. Sound is a handful of zzfx blips, and the only feedback for a jump is the sprite rotating while airborne.

Verdict: What remains is a tight five-minute platformer that rewards rhythm over reaction. It is not deep, but it is precise, and the spike runs in the third level justify the retries.

Controls

Space jumps, and also starts, restarts and advances between levels; a gamepad's south button does the same.