As part of NovaLiminal‘s Chill Vibes Jam, I produced CatFlip using P5.js.
I didn’t have a lot of time to produce anything and I didn’t want the stress of taking on a large project. However, I did want to take part in some small way, so my plan was to keep things pretty simple.
Once you have settled on making something small and stupid just for fun, it can be very liberating. After all, it is just a jam and you now have no pressure to ‘make something good’. I found the process of making this game far more enjoyable than the one I made for Ludum Dare in April.
The initial idea
My inspiration for this game was one of the assets that I submitted. Note: asset creation for the jam was a collective activity and all games were to be made using only these assets.
I had submitted a 3D cat model. However, as it was un-rigged, had no back legs and was just in a sitting pose, I felt that it wouldn’t be of any use to anyone.
I then looked at one of the other submissions, a running character sprite by Dennes: 
I thought: ‘I suppose the only thing you can do with the cat is use it as a 2D image and animate the tail to flip up’. Then, in my peculiar brain, it was a short leap to having the tiny character falling onto the cat and then being flipped into the air by the tail. But I no actual intention of making this into a game, at this point.
It was only as the jam period wore on that I wanted to find something small and (hopefully) easy to do so that I could take part in the jam. Having no other ideas and not wanting to go through the brain-storming process I thought: ‘Why not make the cat game?’
It was just intended to be a joke game but it is playable (to some degree) and I am quite pleased with the result.
You can play it here: https://editor.p5js.org/CodeBug/full/Yrw4uGbq-, let me know what you think!