Catmaze

I have mixed feelings about this game. On one hand it brought me... some degree of entertainment... But on another it's actually kind of frustrating when you think about it. I'll explain. First of all, the price for this game is actually decent. This is obviously a low budget game and having a price for 10$ is actually okay. It's one of those bargain bin games you used to get at your local games store. Now about this game: This is a metroidvania. For those of you who don't know what Metroidvania is, it's a platformer genre where instead of having multiple separate levels, the entire game is divided into different areas. Sort of like... a 2D open world. If you have played Super Metroid for SNES or Castlevania Symphony of the Night for Saturn/PS1, then this game is pretty much that. Storywise, the entire point of the game is to rescue your mother from the world of the dead. There's not really that much in terms of story... I didn't really care that much about substories, even though I know developer actually took effort into probably writing it, but... it didn't hook me. The story is pretty run of the mill save the princess story, except you are saving your mother, which all and all it's the same. The music is annoying. I am sorry to say, but I did not enjoy the music. It's bland, forgettable and because you are going to be frequently backtracking to previous areas, you are gonna hear the same music, which didn't actually appeal to me. This game is supposed to be slavic themed, but there is nothing slavic about this music. It's just bland. Take for example Witcher 3, yeah I am gonna compare this game to Witcher 3, but only because Witcher 3 has more slavic theme to it, than this game. I don't really see anything slavic about this game, nothing really strikes me other than the names. The only slavic god that appears here is Czernobog, I know that god, but he doesn't really have anything memorable. Meanwhile in Witcher 3, you have slavic music, you have slavic town names, even the creatures you hunt. I could recognize that as a slavic inspired game. This game... has nothing slavic about it other than names. You could have called this inspired by ancient nordic culture, and it would have probably been closer. Gameplay, oh boy this is where the game takes the dive. Major issue with this game is at the beginning of the game, you are gonna die too easily. This is because your weapons generally suck. You have a close ranged weapon and a fireball that you only have mana to cast maybe 3-4-5 of them before you run out of mana. The close ranged weapon has this... delay that makes it not able to hit consistently, especially since enemies at the beginning are quite tanky and it will take multiple hits. Of course, at the end of the game, you will be pretty powerful, but until you get there, you are gonna struggle. Platforming also feels off, sometimes, your toes touch the edge of the platform, and you still fall down, because the developer didn't add that tiny space for you to land. That's just bad design. One last thing I should add, the art style of this game is not good. There's the 16 bit pixelated graphics which is fine, wouldn't say it's unique, a lot of indie devs still do this to this day, but then there are these art styles of characters when you engage in dialogue. They feel amateurish and off. Why is it that we have pixelated characters on screen, but in dialogue you show this deviantart style characters. I am well aware other metroidvanias have similar art style like Dust An Elysian Tail, but at least that game has a consistent art on screen, and to be honest, the deviantart style in that game is forgivable because that game is at least FUN and memorable. This game is frustrating and forgettable. While the ending of the game is satisfying and it doesn't take that long to beat it, it's still a frustrating journey and since the whole Metroidvania genre is oversaturated... I can't really recommend this game. If you want better metroidvanias, I recommend Dust An Elysian Tail, Owlboy, Ori and the Blind forest or go play the gameboy advance castlevania games. This ain't it chief.