Catovania

I have been watching a lot of AVGN and GDQ lately, so I was naturally attracted by the title "Catovania". I mean, Castlevania, but with cat! What could go wrong? There are some good things about this game, but the bad outweighs the good. In short, this game pretty much captures a lot of the strengths and weaknesses of the early SNES action games, and even plays like one. As I was playing it, I couldn't help but imagine I am James Rolfe collecting material for an AVGN episode. I couldn't even help writing this review AVGN style. Let's start with the good. (1) The music, even though a bit monotonous, is great. Fits incredibly well with the game. (2) Enemies are TOUGH, and I appreciate the challenge. The kind that makes me feel like I achieved something every time I get past one. I have killed more than 50 bees over my course of play, and every time I kill one, it still feels fun. And then, the bad... (1) Unreasonable control scheme! Your left hand, at the minimum, has to deal with the run, the left/right and the jump at the same time. Whenever you do a running jump (which is all the time), you strain your left hand. The scheme even put the attack button on the left hand -- a fourth thing to handle (my first two tries were miserable, and my experience improved after I realized that I can attack with click). This raises several critical questions: (A) Who would think this control scheme is a good idea?? (B) Why can't the cat be just running ALL the time?? Or why can't the game at least give me a choice to toggle run?? (C) More broadly, why can't I change the control scheme?? (2) The boss fights make no sense. I have only made through the first two, but they don't give me much motivation to continue. Boss movement has no pattern, making it impossible to learn; boss movement is very fast, making it impossible to react; and both the first two bosses have obvious blind spots on the screen, making it purely a test of patience (especially since it is absolutely necessary to conserve life). (3) The pitfalls and insta-deaths. I wouldn't complain about it if the control scheme was better. It is just that the platforms, the spike pits and the bees that knock back combined are too much. I had to climb down the ladder, stand at the bottom of the screen (!!), and then jump-hit to kill the bees. (Again, a test of patience, because I had to wait for the bee to cycle back and forth.) Also, whenever there is a ladder that leads UP to the next screen, jumping up is risky; if you jump at the wrong angle, you might touch the spikes at the bottom of the next screen and die. I don't like that at all!! Overall, I think this game has its fun element in it, albeit somewhat unpolished. I played for 2 hours and made it halfway to the third stage I think? It was fun overall, although I wouldn't continue. I simply expected a game coming out in 2020 to be more thoughtful and not have so many drawbacks that the early SNES games have.