Cats & Dice News

Hi all, this is a little late but let me wish everyone who is reading this a happy 2025!



First of all, a bit of a regrettable news but the release of Cats & Dice will be delayed. I've previously mentioned a January 2025 release, but it looks like that will be a little too tight for me. The game still needs a bit more work to smooth out the rough edges. I am still aiming for a Q1 2025 release though so hopefully it will be just a slight delay.

[h2]Final demo update[/h2]
This will also be the final demo update as the early access release draws near.

[h3]Quality of Life[/h3]
- All sprites for the cats are now in the game (say goodbye to the W-I-P cat for now).

- General polish such as screen transitions.

- You can now take Steam screenshots.

[h3]Bug fixes[/h3]
- The "Sunstone" item is now able to affect other sunstones when equipped on the same cat. Previously a Sunstone will increase the passive number of all abilities/items except for other Sunstones. This means stacking Sunstones onto the same cat now will be way more powerful than before.

- Missing Chinese text for certain items have been fixed.


If you encounter any bugs, do let me know either here or on discord. I will be providing another update once I have an actual release date ready. Until then, thank you for your continued interest in Cats & Dice!



Cheers,
Yong

This update to the demo is mostly for bug fixes and certain quality of life features that have been requested.

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]
- Using "Bane Removal" ticket on the 'nullify bonus' bane now works correctly without having to exit to the title screen.

- Buying an item by placing it in an already occupied item-slot will deduct its cost twice. This has now been fixed.

- Fixed the game potentially crashing if you're loading a save-file that exited mid-way through a tutorial.


[h2]Quality of Life changes[/h2]
- There is now an option for windowed borderless fullscreen.

- You can now drag and drop dice/cats/items instead of pressing once to pick them up and then pressing again to drop them.

- In addition to the spacebar, you can now press 1-6 with your keyboard while hovering over a dice to send it straight to the position you want. If the dice-slot in that position is already occupied, it will displace the prior dice.

- While holding a dice, dropping it onto another dice in the dice-tray will swap the two dice. Previously this is only possible for dice placed in the dice-slot.

- Added a short-cut button (it's to the left of the dice-slots) where one click will slot in all dice automatically. This is mostly for situations where you are all out of rerolls, or you are going to win/lose regardless and it does not matter where you place the dice.


[h2]Polish[/h2]
- Better presentation of cats/items change when you reroll in the shop.

- Added shadows for cats and they now slowly float around their positions. The floating also serves a informational purpose where if you get the bane that restricts cats from changing positions, they will stop floating and simply stay still like before.


Thank you for playing. Feedback will always be appreciated so please leave them here on the forum or in discord.

Cheers!
Yong

First of all, hello to all the new players who found this demo because of Nextfest or some other reasons. Welcome!

Thank you to all who have given feedback in one form or another. This patch is mostly about bug fixes, and also to address some of the more common issues I've received feedback on.



- The item "Yarn Ball" now accurately reflects its description by giving +1 Reroll every time you score a dice in the same position.

- The Bonus: "Straight" can fail when you have say, 1 2 3 4, and then you place a 6 dice. The gap from 4 to 6 makes the code think the sequence is broken. This has now been fixed.

- When you're in the Shop, depending on how you release/place a cat, it's possible to have 2 cats stacked together in the same position, unable to be separated. This is now fixed.

- While in the Shop, it's possible to place an item you own onto a cat being sold in the shop. This has been fixed. If you try to drop an item onto the dice tray now, you'll just end up selling it.



- The "Cantrip" dice effect has additional description added to better inform players that "Cantrip" ONLY affects the dice effect it's attached to.

- Any Bonus that has been nullified by a Bane now shows up crossed-out when you play its combination.

- Any Bonuses on display will disappear once you press Play. This is because once you press Play, the base Points and Mult you get from bonuses will be locked-in and will not actually increase while scoring even if you get a better bonus.
I know perhaps it doesn't feel good that altering the dice mid-way while scoring results in no change in bonus. But on the flip side, you also don't get penalized if you change a dice value and no longer has a valid bonus. The dice manipulation can still benefit certain Cats like the Triplets or Quadruplets for instance, even if the bonus amount does not change.



Thank you for playing. Feedback will always be appreciated so please leave them here on the forum or in discord.

Cheers!
Yong

- Screen shakes that occur upon getting a really high score will knock the camera off position for certain resolutions. This has now been fixed.

- Changing language can sometimes create multiple layers of music playing over one another. This is now fixed.

- Fixed missing characters for the Chinese language when in certain resolutions.

Updates
- Simplified and Traditional Chinese have been added. Languages can be changed in the pause menu. If you ever use Chinese, please do let me know if there are any mistakes or mistranslation.

- The required score for the first few rounds have been tweaked and lowered ever so slightly to allow players to better ease into the game.

Polish
- Added more visual effects to give better clarity about all the things that's happening while scoring. Also, more polish and juice added.



Any feedback is more than welcome. Please leave them here in the Steam forum or in Discord. Happy playing!