[h1]A Familiar Feeline[/h1]
A witch’s cat must undo a spell that turned the entire population of the island of Neverwarm into animals! [i]Familiar[/i] quickly stood out to me thanks to its intriguing premise and striking art style. As it seemed the game was, for the most part, a work of a lone developer, I wondered if what was behind the scribbles would prove equally as interesting.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2811227796
The unique art style was certainly what made me interested the most. Although [i]Familiar’s[/i] pencil drawing-like visuals can seem a bit too jagged at times, they carry a certain element of sincerity with them. The same can be said of the voice acting, which the game is surprisingly full of, with every NPC and cutscene being voiced. While it’s a bit inconsistent in terms of quality, it has a lot of character. As for the soundtrack, it’s quite enchanting, full of fairytale-like melodies that go wonderfully with the game's magical setting, even if the majority of its 30+ tracks don’t have proper time to shine and aren’t as memorable as others because of it. It's not the only thing that bugged me about its presentation. There are some other issues with the presentation, like how the music will sometimes fail to loop, leaving scenes completely quiet. The way the characters’ mouths are animated when they’re talking is overly-simplistic, to the point of being somewhat distracting, as it’s just a black circle that expands and contracts on the characters’ faces as they talk.
In terms of narrative, it seems there's more going on than meets the eye when it comes to the game's themes and its quirky set-up, yet I feel as though the developer was afraid of committing to it as much as they could. The characters, for example, could have benefited from having to do more with the plot, rather than just talking at you and occasionally asking for your help. It seems as though there’s a good bit of underlying lore to all of them, as is hinted at a couple of times, but there being no time or chance for it to be properly explored leaves it as just a tease of what could have been. The same can be said of the whole island, really, as even its most outlandish characters, places, and occurrences are explained away as: “The spell did it!”.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2811252268
In terms of gameplay, [i]Familiar[/i] is more of an explorative puzzler rather than a platformer. You go from area to area, solving puzzles, with the ultimate goal being to gather all the necessary ingredients needed to reverse the spell that’s befallen the island. Exploration can be quite rewarding and can affect the end of the game as well, even if it’s largely linear by design. What’s frustrating here is that leaving a previously explored area mostly resets it to its original state, which forces you to redo some of the puzzles you originally had to do to progress, every single time you pass through the area again. It quickly becomes tiresome and makes backtracking a huge chore. It is especially frustrating in the later stages of the game when there are only a couple of items left to find, and you catch yourself directionless, searching all over the place for things you might have missed.
While there [b]are[/b] sections focused purely on challenging platforming in some of the puzzles, they’re far from the focus - which is a good thing, considering movement is a bit stiff, further made difficult by the art style, as there doesn’t seem to be a strict rule set on what’s a platform and what isn’t, leading to some confusion. Some of the puzzles suffer from the same issue, or can be similarly unintuitive, as what was a special object with which you could interact in one, can be just a decoration in another.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2811262600
The design problems are strongest when you’re presented with the final challenge, as the game doesn’t properly prepare you for it. Granted, this seems to be intended for the most part, as the whole thing is a welcome surprise. The end result, sadly, will most likely be frustration, further made worse by what I think are bugs. Had this happened earlier in the game, as opposed to at the very end, and had [i]Familiar[/i] not already charmed me, I would have seriously considered dropping it.
[h3]Verdict[/h3]
While [i]Familiar’s[/i] emotional punchline and message don’t quite live up to the expectations its intriguing premise and unique art style set up, and while there are some quirks in its design it could do without, it still proves to be a worthwhile experience, with enough charm and personality to win you over. There’s some serious potential here that, with more experience, dedication and, perhaps most importantly, budget, could probably be realized with great success.
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