What's Cat Rogues?!
There's no real title yet, I'm barely sure of what the game is about which isn't crazy for a prototype game. The only focus was make something fun and perceived as simple.
It wasn't simple though.

So now we have a cat rogue game where you have to finish the game in 9 lives. Each death presents an opportunity to upgrade 2 sets of skills. As well as artifacts you can find and equip for powers (just fancy power-ups Mario style) and yeah!

What Broke Me?
So, I've been on an Unreal binge since I got a lot better with it; what broke me finally?

I will say returning home to my main engine, Godot, isn't a new thing it usually happens eventually. When I went to Unity I eventually trickled back. Although this time it was a bit different.

When I went from Unity back to Godot, I went back to fix up an old asset and make new tutorials for Godot 4.0. It had a ton of new features so there was a lot to catch up on. I still went to Unity for anything to do with mobile projects and 3D projects.

With Unreal I kept hitting walls over basic 2D features. I'd figure a way around the wall and I was pretty happy with the game. However the skill trees shouldn't have been crazy.

It should've been:
Check all skills for ones I don't own
Check the non-owned skills to see which ones I have the requirements for
Pick 3 skills for each category from those skills
Show name of 3 skills
When hovered show skill info
When clicked see if I can buy skill
If I can add skill and hide button

What ended up happening was these basic checks became a mess in blueprinting and a pain with something holding it back. I spent 2 days trying to fix this system; and honestly I just broke from it.
I was supposed to be making a 2 day project not a project that takes 2 weeks to implement a basic skill tree.

I just felt like Unreal was lacking in some departments for me and from what I've read it really lacks 2D features. The tilemapping was quite...underwhelming. But I get it, it's a mainly 3D engine; I should've switched engines instead of trying to make the engine be what I want.

Rebuild Time!
Rebuilding this game came with some minor relearning Godot. I spent THOUSANDS of hours in Godot in college where for a while it was the primary engine. Some later professors scoffed at this; but I still love Godot.
But given my history with the engine I wasn't shocked I didn't lose my touch with it.

It took a lot less time to build the game back up to a comfortable point. Which honestly just speaks for the fact I didn't have to repaint some sprites and figure out gameplay features and all that. I just knew what I wanted to do with it.

The one notable change was camera limits I didn't have set in Unreal. And a lot more modularity for objects.

Playable?!
Right now the game still isn't playable. It's taken way more time for a playable build than I would like. But I'm gonna get the playable build out shortly as I chip away at it while I work on my main project! For now here's some of the shots and the story so far!