Croquette League

The Premise

Croquette League is a local co-op sports game built in Unity, where adorable cats compete in fast-paced, physics-driven matches inspired by the spirit of Rocket League. Players battle their feline friends in frantic local multiplayer sessions, trying to keep the ball painted in their team's colors for the longest period of time. The game features a colorful, hand-crafted art style that brings the cat characters and their playful world to life, making it instantly appealing to players of all ages. Built for PC and designed as a couch multiplayer experience, Croquette League captures the fun of gathering friends around a single screen for competitive and lighthearted gaming sessions.

Solo Development

As the sole developer on Croquette League, I designed and implemented every system in the game from scratch. I built the core gameplay loop including the physics-based ball mechanics, character controllers with responsive dash and jump abilities, and the unique paint mechanic where the ball changes color based on the last team to touch it. I designed and modeled the arena environments, created the cat character animations and integrated them with the physics system, and implemented the local multiplayer input management supporting up to four gamepads simultaneously. I also developed the match flow system including countdowns, score tracking, round transitions, and victory celebrations. The UI system was designed to be readable at couch-gaming distances, with large, colorful team indicators and score displays. I handled the complete audio design, layering crowd cheers, impact sounds, and an upbeat soundtrack that intensifies as matches get closer to ending.

Tuning Physics for Fun, Not Realism

The biggest technical challenge was creating a physics system that felt both physically plausible and endlessly entertaining. Pure realistic physics would make the game frustrating — cats would slide too far, the ball would behave too predictably, and collisions would lack the exaggerated punch that makes party games fun. I spent significant time tuning the physics parameters to hit a sweet spot where the ball bounces feel satisfying, cat-to-cat collisions create hilarious ragdoll moments, and the overall pace keeps every player engaged. The paint mechanic required a custom shader system that dynamically colors the ball surface based on team contact, with smooth color transitions and particle effects that make each paint change visually satisfying. Managing four simultaneous local players also required careful optimization of the physics simulation and rendering pipeline to maintain a locked 60 FPS, as any frame drops in a fast-paced competitive game are immediately noticeable and frustrating. Input management across multiple gamepad types and configurations required extensive testing and a flexible input mapping system.

Release

Croquette League released on itch.io as a solo local-multiplayer project. The core challenge was physics tuning, not physics accuracy — a fully realistic ball-and-cat simulation would have been frustrating, so most of the development time went into hand-tuning collisions, bounce, and the paint mechanic until the game felt satisfying rather than simply correct. That's the part of local-multiplayer party games I find most interesting to build.