Take part in an exciting and rigged race for food, switching between an agile cat and a clumsy dog. Annoy your friend by exploiting all the various items or try to survive the traps played upon you. But never forget your main goal: reach the praised bowl first and become victorious!

What's Up Dog is a two player game developed for the Nintendo Switch. Two players race towards a food bowl, one playing as a clumsy dog and the other as an agile cat. Players can pick up items along the way, influencing the other player. When collecting items or moving, switch bar fills up and once full, the dog can activate it. Activating this ability makes it so that the player that previously played as the dog gets to play as the cat and the previous cat player plays as the dog, both players needing to swap their Nintendo Switch controllers JoyCons with each other.

What's Up Dog was developed during my third Animation & Game semester with a team of 3 other students from my semester. Through the university we were able to use a Nintendo Switch Development Kit, allowing us to develop a game for the Nintendo Switch. While the game is not officially published on the Nintendo Switch, it is fully functional on the Nintendo Switch and can be played on the University Campus

As the sole programmer of the project I developed the entire game for the Nintendo Switch. This includes the two different movement types of the dog of the cat, procedural level generation, enemy behaviour, user interface implementation, and item functionality. Additionally I ensured that the game is fully playable on the Nintendo Switch along performance profiling and optimization so that it is playable without lag.

A special achievement for this game is that we managed to develop a well functioning game for the Nintendo Switch.

https://butterj.itch.io/whats-up-dog