Rat Attack Remake
What is this?
Rat Attack! is a game released for the PS1 I picked up randomly at a car-boot sale years ago for cheep. In it, players would take control of cats within an arcade game about rounding up rats and protecting furniture from damage. Collect enough rats and dispose of them to open the way to the next level. Keep doing that through several worlds of harder and harder types of rats to defeat. Apart from some boss fights that aren’t terrifically notable, that’s the gameplay. The game otherwise had an excellent style, with a vibe that I feel could be really appealing.
I have this principal that the media that deserves to be remade isn’t usually the popular or classic, necessarily, it’s the games that have flaws holding them back from being better. While remakes for the sake of accessibility are excellent for preserving classics, such as the System Shock remake, I would argue that something like Rat Attack would benefit from a proper redo that could insert some further creativity. Attempt to see what the game can really do once you remove the limits of the PS1.
When I played it, I found that you could perform a spin attack, but you are locked to the spot while you do it, making it harder to use properly. Otherwise, jumping felt off. Not to mention the arcade style of the game made it nearly impossible to make any progress. Even so, the scope and style of the game didn’t seem too difficult to achieve for one developer in their spare time.
Built in Godot, I worked on this for a while but haven’t gotten back to it yet. Though I very much would like to once I have the time and will to do so. Currently, the game is being built up. Player control works, I’m just trying to get the Rat AI to function correctly. Not only to ensure it can pathfind to the correct place for what’s going on but also allowing for the forms of interaction between a rat and the player can happen.
In the original game, Cats could use their spin attack to stun rats before capture with their special devices. Hitting the button draws a ring on the floor that changes shape based on where the button is pressed and where the cat moves to while it’s pressed. Once released, any rats inside the ring are caught. Stunning them keeps them still. It’s this part of the game I was working on when last I was working on this idea.
The hope at some point is not only to have bizarre and dangerous new rat types to handle, but also new player characters to experience. Each with their own unusual abilities and quirks to work with. But the tech needed to be working first.