Cat Journey: Action Platformer
Cat Journey is a 2D action-platformer for mobile devices, available on Android and iOS. The full development cycle—from concept to release—was completed by our team using Unity. The game combines rich visual effects and immersive gameplay with a dynamic combat system and well-designed levels. Leveraging advanced generative graphics technologies and automated animation, we created a vibrant, memorable world that continues to expand with each update.
Challenges
The main challenge was to create an engaging game with high retention metrics and stable revenue. Achieving this required seamless collaboration on multiple aspects: developing captivating gameplay, creating high-quality graphics within tight deadlines, ensuring stable performance across devices, implementing a robust monetization system, and integrating analytics.
Solution
Unity was chosen for development as it provides powerful tools for 2D game creation along with a comprehensive ecosystem of ready-made solutions, speeding up development and ensuring stability on mobile devices. All game art and character animations were generated using advanced neural networks, enabling us to achieve high-quality artwork quickly and with minimal resources.
Components
Game Engine: Unity, C#, DOTween, URP, Cinemachine, Input System.
Art: All artwork in the game was created using generative neural networks. Initially, Midjourney was used to generate artistic elements, but the project later transitioned to Stable Diffusion with ComfyUI IP-Adapter Plus. This tool makes it easy to transfer style and composition from a reference image to a new one. Stable Diffusion allowed us to replicate the style of previously created images and adapt it to new scenes and characters, giving the game a consistent visual style.
For character frame-by-frame animation, we used a combination of tools. First, we created base character art with Midjourney. This generated artwork was then processed by an automated Python system that used AnimatedDrawings from Facebook (deployed on Google VM with GPU support) to apply 3D BHV skeletons to 2D characters and generate GIF animations. For final animation processing, GIF files were converted into sprite sheets using a C# program with the ImageMagick library. This combination of tools and automation enabled us to quickly create dozens of high-quality frame-by-frame animations for various characters, significantly speeding up development while ensuring visual consistency.
Analytics: Unity Analytics and Firebase Analytics are used to track player behavior and optimize gameplay. An event is assigned to each important player action (such as level completion, purchases, ability usage, and level exit), which is then sent to the analytics services. This data allows us to understand how players interact with the game, identify challenging levels, and determine which gameplay elements are most engaging.
Monetization: Unity Ads, AdMob, Unity In-App Purchase.
Technologies
Unity, C#, URP, Cinemachine, Input System, DOTween, Firebase, Unity Cloud Build, Unity Analytics, Unity Ads, Unity In-App Purchase, AdMob, Google Play Games Services, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, AnimatedDrawings, ImageMagick, Python, Google Play Store, Apple App Store.
