Kitty Does Warfare

Kitty Does Warfare Main Menu
Instruction Manual: Character Information
Instruction Manual: Enemy Information
Gameplay Screenshot
Game Over! (You Lost)
Song Credits

Inspiration

We were inspired by the popular game Plants vs. Zombies. We wanted to recreate a game that was recognizable, but would also give us a challenge to create. We chose to do a Hello Kitty themed game because the team thought it would be funny, but also because the coding world is such a male dominated industry that we thought it would be nice to do something more “feminine.” (Also because Valeria is obsessed with Hello Kitty)

What it does

Our game is a PvZ style game themed around your favorite Sanrio characters! Use strategy to defend yourself and defeat enemies to reach The Boss.

How we built it

We used PyGame to code the game and Canva to create the visuals. We first focused on the menu and characters designs along with the audio, and then transitioned into implementing the gameplay elements like placing down the Sanrio buddies and projectiles affecting enemies.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges, including how the random spawn rates for the enemies would happen. We weren't sure whether we wanted to have waves of zombies, or simply killing a certain amount to win. We settled on the rule of killing 12 Keroppis in order to face The Boss, which is how you win the game. Some other challenges we faced included adding gifs, some audio issues, and some basic testing issues we had to tweak along the way.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of our greatest moments when creating this game is implementing all the sounds and music. It really gave the game some life and encouraged us to watch the game develop as time went on.
— Valeria: I have two really great moments I remember when testing the game. The first was actually watching Hello Kitty shooting at the enemies, because it meant that we had the basic mechanic of the game down, and we were on the right track to finishing the game. The other accomplishment is my “Game Over” screen. Even though it is super simple visually, it took some tweaking to get right since it is a transparent image overlaid to where the player lost.
— Daniel: My biggest accomplishment was when I got Pompompurin to successfully eat an enemy. His character was especially challenging because of the progress bar, which took me hours to complete just for a small little square.

What we learned

The most important tool we learned is the ability to import images into PyGame. Once we learned this feature, it was really easy to create the visuals in Canva and import them into the game. We tried getting creative with this feature, like having transparent overlays and using images for the projectiles of the characters. Also, investing in a strong coding foundation saves so much time in the end, it is easily worth the extra time taken in the early stages of the project.

What's next for Kitty Does Warfare

If we were to really flesh out this game in a longer time span, it would be amazing to have animations for each of the characters instead of having still images. Given the time provided and our combined skill level of coding, we were able to get a lot done, but not enough to figure out how to implement videos and/or gifs. We had lots of ideas to include gifs that ultimately we decided to scrap for time and to focus our efforts on other features.

Built With

Submitted to

Knight Hacks VII
- Winner Best First-Time Hack

Created by

I worked on most of the programming behind the game and worked with PyGame to get everything working. Despite it being my first time using PyGame or even making a game, I was able to learn a lot and used what I learned to develop the game.

Daniel Lopez
I worked on the visual and audio aspects of the game. I used Canva to create the menus and the playing field as well as compiling all the images for the characters. I was also in charge of finding all the sounds and music.

Valeria Tibocha