The Cat Trap Blog

A cat-alogue of experiences as a developer

Castle Invasion

Castle Invasion Review Round Up

20 Oct, 2016

By Dave Ward

As you hopefully know, Castle Invasion release last week on Xbox One, PS4 and PS Vita. We’ve been really happy with the reception it’s received. To showcase that we’ve collected some of our favourite review for the game. Peruse at your leisure…

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Castle Invasion, Design

Castle Invasion Through the Ages

12 Aug, 2016

By Dave Ward

To celebrate the launch of Castle Invasion on Steam I’ve put together a showcase of how the game progressed from a very simple look (drawn by myself which was never a good idea) to a beautiful cartoony art style with much clearer design. My general design process is to get a functional system in place, identify it’s weaknesses and iterate until you feel like you’ve hit near perfection.

A Castle Invasion Waiting to Happen

Here’s how it all started at the end of 2014. A poorly drawn marshmallow of a man holding a bow much too big for his head. No enemies, nothing to hit, just a nice animation of him firing an arrow. This is the first and only build of Castle Invasion developed without Unity. 

FirstBuild

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Castle Invasion

Castle Invasion Launches on Steam

27 Jul, 2016

By Dave Ward

Castle Invasion Store Artwork
Castle Invasion Store Artwork

It’s been a long road for Adam(the artist) and myself but we’re happy to say Castle Invasion is available to purchase on Steam for Windows and OSX! We’re both immensely proud of the quality of the game and hope you’ll enjoy playing it.

If you’re still not sold give me 10 seconds to convince you. Ready the tag line:

“Castle Invasion is the fun, frantic challenge of defending your castle against an army of misfits.“

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Castle Invasion, Unity

Castle Invasion Successfully Invades Steam Greenlight

18 Jul, 2016

By Dave Ward

Steam-ing Through

After two months of patiently wandering around the world of Steam Greenlight, Castle Invasion found the exit door and has been Greenlit. Hooray! A huge thanks to everyone that voted yes.

If this was a gif of what I’d caught in Pokemon GO everything would be a Pidgey

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Castle Invasion, Cat Trap

Social Promotion of a Steam Greenlight Campaign

14 May, 2016

By Dave Ward

As you’ve no doubt heard in every other Steam Greenlight promotion post, the initial couple of days in a Greenlight campaign is where you get an influx of interested gamers funnelled to your Greenlight page from Steam. When your project inevitably falls off the front page and this traffic falls with it, where do you go from there?

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Castle Invasion

Castle Invasion on Steam Greenlight

28 Apr, 2016

By Dave Ward

Castle Invasion has a Steam Greenlight page! Yay!

Much like the game itself the page is full of awful jokes and even worse puns.

I’m particularly proud of all the GIF-age.

LogoGif

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Castle Invasion, Cat Trap

Ga-Ma-Yo #9

30 Nov, 2015

By Dave Ward

(Click here for a bit about what Ga-Ma-Yo is)

Another excellent Ga-Ma-Yo came and went on Thursday 19th November. This time Castle Invasion: Throne out came along to be shown in all its glory on a demo TV at the event.

The games artist (Adam) and I had been slogging away for weeks to have a solid, beautiful, demo ready packed full of every feature we had the time to implement. A steady stream of players came over; some to play, some to chat and some for the free stickers(can’t blame them, they look pretty cool).

Sticker

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Castle Invasion, Cat Trap

The Build up to Ga-Ma-Yo #9

23 Oct, 2015

By Dave Ward

Game Makers Yorkshire(Ga-Ma-Yo) is a meet up in Leeds for game developers of all sizes every six months. I’ve been to the past four of these, propping up the bar but this time I bring a game with me.

Castle Invasion: Throne Out is a fun, frantic and comic 2D tower defence game. You control an archer defending his castle against the onslaught of the kings army. A whole array of misfit combatants march towards the wall and each must be dealt with in a different manner. Throw in a pinch of boss fights and out pops fun.

I’m on the home straight of developing an advanced 25 level demo to show off at Ga-Ma-Yo. Until then, here’s the latest screenshots.

Splash

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Castle Invasion, Unity

Creating an Enemy in Castle Invasion

11 Sep, 2015

By Dave Ward

Castle Invasion has a whole rag tag army of misfits who are trying to…you guessed it, invade your castle. This post is a short, sharp run through of how one of these enemies (a pitchfork peasant) is created in Unity 5.

Here’s an image of what we’re aiming for:

BasicEnemyReconstruction

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