Bongo Cat Rhythm Game — 1 Button Game Prototype

You are a cat, with quite a nice set of bongo drums.

An up and coming internet meme, bongo cat plays a set of bongos (among many other instruments) to the beat of popular songs. In the Bongo Cat 1-Button Rhythm game, notes pass by and Bongo Cat must tap along to the beat. The gameplay will be in the same vein as Guitar Hero (or Rockband, et al.), Osu!, and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat.

The original bongo cat animation, an edited version of a cat tapping the table. Source: Twitter.com

The first prototype only has input for Bongo Cat hitting his drums with music playing in the background. The blueprint only contains input for detecting the Z button, and changing the 2d flip-book accordingly.

The next iteration will include the note event, in which a point will display on screen if bongo cat hits the note within the time it is on screen.

Further prototypes will continue to add complexity to this framework, displaying different animations for the notes to hit. Songs will come pre-loaded with the game, but far in the future uploading your own songs and creating your own tracks is not impossible.

Simple blueprint for switching Bongo Cat back and forth when the Z key is pressed.

I chose this idea as my first Unreal game as the core principles of the game are quite simple, but can be expanded in ways that do not make the gameplay overly complex. Namely, by adding animations to distract the user or creating difficult tracks with rapid inputs required. The simple design also gives me an opportunity to study animations in Unreal and learn how to create gameplay blueprints in an incremental complexity.