Kozmo Kat
Release type: Freeware
Release date: 1992
Levels: 3
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: DummyDuck.com
Related games: Dummy Duck
Aspiring game artists go through a few stages. There's mastery of the tools, mastery of each constituent elements of design (composition, animation, sound, timing), and mastery of design as a language. Game-Maker makes it easy to leap in and put something together, without demanding mastery even of the tools. As you learn more about illustration and animation, you'll make better sprites and backdrops. As you learn more about the relationship between the player and a gameworld, you'll design better levels and think more about how you put things together. As you learn more about Game-Maker's peculiarities, you'll be able to get more out of the system instead of fighting it every step of the way.
It's much easier to learn a basic competence with RSD's tools than to make that leap toward holistic design. So for many Game-Maker users, you will see a distinct stage where they've figured out more or less what the software can do and they've found their own styles of illustration and animation, so they throw all their skills at a project -- only to build a game that sort of forgets anyone might want to play it.
These games -- games like Super Hamster and A-J's Quest, and Caudel's own Hamsterman -- are giddy with their individual ideas and with being allowed to exist in the first place. They make a big show at playing with Game-Maker's broad features, like gravity and background animation, and tiles that change on contact. They're also full of random ideas that seem cool, but serve no particular role within the game as designed. Often enemies and obstacles will be placed more to hinder the player than to present a discrete challenge. It's kind of like someone dumped all the toy bins on the floor, invited you in, and said "Have fun!"
This is the mode of Kozmo Kat: a familiar sort of unguided giddiness with the fact of design. It's an earnest game, clearly from early in Caudel's use of Game-Maker. Here indeed he has figured out what Game-Maker can do, and he has made a point of exploring all of it, on his own terms.
Kozmo Kat definitely has its style and ambition. Kozmo himself is a distinctive, well-drawn character. Every stage declares its own sense of place, and is conceptually different from the last. Stage one emplys a sort of angled side view, as you see in brawlers like Double Dragon; stage two is a more focused platformer, full of environmental hazards; stage three is a sort of a downhill toboggan ride.
Its problems are the typical sort of oversight: the hoverboard moves are cool but serve no function; the angled perspective is cool, but awkward to maneuver; enemies are placed where they can't easily be attacked, yet they will still remain an obstacle. This is all stuff that you learn to work around.
The biggest roadblock is with the "shrink" move. It's a weird ability; instead of ducking, Kozmo just reduces in size so that he fills one character block instead of two. The levels require the player to use this ability to slide through narrow corridors, yet the ability is limited in use and contingent on item pick-ups. Every time you pick up another item, it fills another inventory slot. It's an awkward system, and it seems totally unnecessary.
As Game-Maker games go, that's not such a big deal. Really, Kozmo Kat is a pretty solid effort. In another young artist's hands, it might be a defining achievement. For Caudel, though, bigger things would come.
Contents
Story[edit]
N/A
Instructions[edit]
N/A
To move Kozmo Kat around, press the arrow keys in the direction you want him to go.
Press UP to make him jump.
To make him jump left or right, press "7" OR "9" on the numeric keypad.
To use his jet board, press either the "+" or "-" key.
To fire a net at his enemies, press "SPACE"
To shrink, you must pick up the Kozmo icon by pressing "P". Then, hold down "S".
Credits[edit]
By: Alan Caudel
Special Thanks To: Adam Tyner and people who helped me, of course!
Dummy Duck and all associated characters are copyright 1992
Background[edit]
Alan Caudel:
- Kozmo Kat was one of my earlier games. The character is a cat in outer space who has a trusty remote control that can do lots of crazy things. You can use it to shoot nets and capture eggs that are scattered across the planet. And you can ride on it like a hoverboard. (I was kind of obsessed with hoverboards after seeing Back to the Future 2.)
Availability[edit]
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Archive History[edit]
After an earlier wave of rediscoveries, on July 13 2011 Alan Caudel provided another archive of previously missing Game-Maker material, including the following:
Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Kozmo Kat (141 kB)
