Table of contents
What is this game?
This game is a traditional platformer where you play as a cat and have to traverse from the beginning to the end of a level while avoiding enemies. Touch the gold box at the end of a level to complete it. Touching an enemy results in a game over and the level must be restarted.
Inspiration for this game came from popular 2D platformers such as Mario and Megaman. The player currently can walk around, jump, and duck as is standard to the genre. Enemy, level, and graphics design were heavily influenced by the games Super Mario World and Megaman 2.
The art direction was chosen to facilitate a “happy” vibe, and follows a blocky minimalistic style because I am a horrible artist. The grass is green, the flowers dance, and a bright color palette is used which is totally not just the result of me only using Microsoft Paint default colors.
Features
- One very short level
- Two enemy types
- One NPC that you can talk to
- Player can walk, jump, and duck
- Touching an enemy immediately kills you
- The level is completed when the gold box at the end of the level is touched
- Tile map loader that supports both static and animated tiles
- Some interesting level set pieces like jump through platforms and moving platforms
- A map editor tool
- A menu and credits screen
The menu screen can be navigated using the arrow keys, and an option can be selected with the space bar.
The player character (cat) can walk left and right using the left and right arrow keys. Pressing the up arrow key causes the player to jump, and pressing the down arrow key causes the player to duck. Note that depending on the type of keyboard your computer has, you may be limited to how many keys you can press at the same time. If you find yourself being unable to jump when multiple other arrow keys are pressed at once, it is likely a keyboard problem, not a coding/Java problem.
If you touch the gold box at the end of the level, the level will be completed. If you touch an enemy, you will die and be forced to restart the level. Most of the map tiles (grass, dirt, trees) are solid and can be jumped on but not jumped through. There are a few tiles like the tree branches and the moving platform which can be jumped through from underneath and stood on (like typical jump through platforms that are common in the platforming genre).
Clearly, this game is not finished – it’s pretty much just the “start” of a platformer game. There is one level, two enemy types (that cannot be killed in any way), and the player character’s movement options are limited. There are many different directions the game can be taken in from here, and the backing game engine was built to be as flexible as possible in order to support a wide variety of features that could be feasibly implemented.
Tools used to make this game
This game was written in Java and utilizes Java Swing for UI/rendering.
No external libraries were used; it’s made entirely with what Java supplies out of the box.
All the game’s art was created from scratch using Microsoft Paint.
Running the game
The game can be run like any other Java application – execute it from the main method.
The main method for the game is in the Game package > Game.java file.
The main method for the map editor is in the MapEditor package > MapEditor.java file. This is a separate program from the game, but both are included in this project.
Java version 8 or later is required to run this game. To verify your Java version, run the java -version command in your CLI.
Game Screenshots
Here is what the game looks like:
Menu Screen 
In Game Screens (the player character is the adorable cat!) 
Example of traversing through level. 