Cattails

Genre: Top-Down Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Cattails is a Top-Down Action-RPG with elements of Survival Adventure games, Strategy games, and even games like Stardew Valley, but that remains fairly unique and distinct, not quite exactly like any other game I could point to. This game was released on PC in 2017 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2018, and has players taking the role of a cat abandoned on the side of the road and subsequently joining one of three warring cat factions.

The presentation here is wonderful, using some really nice, colorful 2D pixel art graphics and a lovely acoustic soundtrack, with some good examples of songs here being Summer 1 and… well, it’s hard to find more songs to point to on YouTube, but here’s the full soundtrack – it’s really all quite nice. Anyway, the entire thing combined comes across like a really great old-school 16-bit RPG, in the best way.

As for the gameplay, as I noted earlier, this game combines a lot of elements from various games. The game it reminded me the most of was Stardew Valley, but even then it’s not really the same sort of game – there is no farming, for one thing. After the game’s intro, a brief tutorial, and choosing one of the three factions, players will find themselves gathering supplies from the surrounding area. There are plants to gather, but more importantly players must hunt for food, which involves a little bit of stealth. This is initially tricky, but gets easier over time as players get used to how the game works, and as their skills improve.

Once players get the basics down, they can start to expand their scope of what they do. Keeping a good supply of food in inventory and healing plants enables players to explore further outward, where they can opt to gather items to fulfil their faction’s daily quest, gather items to donate to a shrine (which seems to be the main way the game progresses), delve down into a mine, go to the edge of their faction’s territory to fight off a warring faction and gain territory for their own faction, or head to the village of an opposing faction to impart gifts to increase relations with that faction.

While there’s a wide variety of activities, all except warring with other factions pretty much boil down to the same things, just applied differently – hunting and gathering. That said, there is a fair amount of satisfaction to be had when you happen upon a new resource you haven’t seen before, or manage to successfully pounce on some prey you’ve been hoping to come across for a while. On top of this, building up skills and abilities through an RPG-style system gives players additional goals that make virtually every action beneficial even if they’re not seeking that particular plant or prey.

Having said that, there are some issues here as well. The game can get a bit repetitive, and at times even grindy. It’s particularly frustrating when you need one particular item to complete a quest and are depending on the game to randomly spawn that item in your journey. You could perhaps buy the item in one of the game’s shops, but gathering and selling things to earn the money is even more time-consuming.

Also, I haven’t spoken much about the combat in this game, and that’s because it’s pretty bad. It’s hard to tell if you’re connecting with hits, and hard to tell if you’re taking damage unless you’re watching your own health bar, as neither you or enemies will react in any noticeable way when you trade damage. What’s more, while the game theoretically has some strategic skill when it comes to timing and positioning in battles, in practice combat is just a mess of button-mashing chaos, especially in the game’s skirmishes between two factions – there you’ll have a half-dozen cats of each faction dog-piling on each other without any clear way to gauge how the battle is going.

In the end, Cattails has its fair share of problems, but the core gameplay loop is still fun, and the presentation is so endearing that the game will suck you in despite its faults. Yes, the combat sucks and the core gameplay is grindy, but hunting and gathering is enjoyable and the game is so charming that it’s hard not to like it. If you’re looking for a unique Action-RPG and especially if you’re a fan of Stardew Valley looking for something “similar, but different”, definitely give Cattails a look.

tl;dr – Cattails is a Top-Down Action-RPG that combines various different elements to create a somewhat unique game about a cat hunting, gathering, and fighting for their chosen faction to compete with other groups of cats. The combat isn’t good and the game can get a bit grindy, but the core gameplay is enjoyable and the presentation is endearing, so it’s easy to overlook these flaws. If you’re looking for a unique game that touches on some of the same notes as Stardew Valley while still being very different, definitely give this game a look.

Grade: B-

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