Kitty Maestro

Genre: Arcade / Music-Rhythm

Players: 1

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Review:

Kitty Maestro is a Top-Down Arcade game with Music-Rhythm elements that has you playing as an anthopomorphic cat dodging obstacles and meowing at music notes to complete each level. It was originally released on PC… at some point (I’m unclear on when exactly) and brought to Nintendo Switch in 2020. This concludes the non-complaining portion of this review.

Hoo boy, where do I even start with this one?

Firstly, the game’s hand-drawn visuals are ugly, and inexplicably in black and white. I could almost understand the monochrome aesthetic if the game were looking to imitate the style of classic black and white cartoons like Felix the Cat, but the game doesn’t really look at all like that. It just looks amateurish and the lack of color seems like a lazy time-saver more than a stylistic choice.

And for a game that is nominally part Music-Rhythm, you’d think the sound and music would be good, right? No, just… no. The entire game is filled with the sound of some guy imitating a cat’s meowing, and some really simple, terrible, bad music. Again, this feels like an amateur effort that wasn’t even trying at anything close to quality.

As for the gameplay, there’s not much “Music-Rhythm” to this Music-Rhythm game. It’s mostly about moving around the small levels to dodge enemies and hit note targets. The enemies do at least move in time with a rhythm of sorts, but it’s not the sort of game I’d say you need to be rhythmically gifted to play, nor will having an ear for music help you to enjoy it.

At best, the gameplay here is painfully basic. At worst, it’s stiff, your character is far too large and collides with obstacles that should move behind him, and the game is so unforgiving that any mistake means restarting a level.

Kitty Maestro is not in any way fun. It is not fun to look at, listen to, or play. It doesn’t work as an Arcade game and it especially doesn’t work as a Music-Rhythm game. Do not play Kitty Maestro.

tl;dr – Kitty Maestro is an Arcade game with Music-Rhythm elements that looks ugly, sounds terrible, plays poorly, and all around reeks of low effort. Do not play this game.

Grade: F

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2020 Game Awards:

Winner:

Worst Game – Who is this game even for? It’s a music-rhythm game with terrible music, it’s a top-down Arcade-style game with poor controls and hit detection, it looks ugly, sounds ugly, plays poorly… this is without question the most joyless experience I had on my Nintendo Switch in all of 2020.

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