Cat Bird

Developed over the course of four months and changed mechanic ideas from a rechargeable jump to the gliding mechanic for an easier time in designing levels. The game was released on 23 August 2017, with additional content released subsequently. Bird received positive reviews, with critics praising the level design, music, and art style, and criticising the onscreen button layouts. The game was downloaded over five million times.

• Title — Cat Bird • Developer — Raiyumi • Publisher — Raiyumi • Composer — Julien Mier • Engine — Stencyl • Platforms — * Android • iOS • Released — 23 August 2017 • Genre — Platformer • Modes — Single-player

• Illustration — Cat Bird gliding over gaps to land on platforms while dodging obstacles such as spikes and sawblades. Cat Bird is a two-dimensional (2D) puzzle-platformer game set in outer space with a pixelated art-style. The player character is a half-cat, half-bird hybrid named Cat Bird. In the game's opening scene, Cat Bird is launched away from its home planet during a meteor shower and must return home. Buttons to control the player character are positioned on the lower-half of the phone screen. The core gameplay of Cat Bird consists of the player character's ability to glide by holding down the jump command. The gliding mechanic is used to avoid hazards and obstacles, such as spikes, saw blades, falling rocks, and enemies, as well as to solve puzzles. The game consists of 45 levels split across three planets, fifteen levels per planet, with a boss fight at the end of each planet. Some levels hide a crown collectable for the player to find. After an update in October 2017, a fourth planet was added to the game, which is accessible to the player at any time. Two levels on the planet require crowns to unlock, which, upon completion, grant the player skins for Cat Bird. The player is granted an unlimited number of lives; however, obstacles can only hit Cat Bird once before it dies. The lives counter is replaced by a counter that tracks the number of deaths accumulated throughout a playthrough. Outside of the game's main campaign, there is a Time Trials mode where the player replays all levels of a selected planet while being timed against a clock.

Cat Bird was developed by Ryan Carag (Rayumi), the founder of indie mobile game developer Raiyumi Inc, who used the Stencyl game engine. Julien Mier composed the music for Cat Bird. Cat Bird was Carag's first release, and according to him, it took four months to develop. In an interview with the website Indie Zoom, Carag mentioned that during the early stages of development, the initial game mechanic was that the player character would need to recharge its jump. However, Carag opted to switch out the mechanic due to his difficulty with designing fun levels around it. Upon implementing the gliding mechanic, level design became easier for him. Citing level design as the hardest aspect of the development process, Carag mentioned that he would "create a rough of each level, test, and work on the next level" before later on adding detail to the levels. A trailer was released in early August 2017, and was scheduled to release on 24 August; it launched on 23 August, releasing for Android and iOS-supported devices. Since its release, Cat Bird has achieved over five million downloads on the Google Play Store. On 26 October, the game was updated to implement a new world, featuring new levels and a new boss. Two levels require collecting a set number of crowns from other levels to unlock; when an unlockable level is completed, the player is rewarded with a skin for the character. This update also featured new achievements as well as a leaderboard.