I'm apparently too rusty on these types of games, considering I can't beat level 1...
Reviews for "A Halloween Cat-Tastrophe"
Not too shabby! Certainly a cute little puzzler that's got a rather unique concept and art/presentation, but man, I really went back and forth on this game.
Tutorial didn't make the greatest impression as I felt like it took waaaaaay too long to explain something that, in the end, is very simple to grasp once you get into actual gameplay: pictures would be worth a thousand words in this case! It just wasn't really effective: I actually didn't even know you could rotate the pieces for a bunch of levels because of this, though I'll say that the rotation is very wacky in that its more like its shifting the order of pieces around while keeping the shape the same.
Once I got going with the game, it felt alright for the most part, but it felt like it was really feast or famine: if you got lucky with your pieces, you could end up sometimes clearing the stages in like 1 or 2 moves (which unfortunately despite winning felt unsatisfying) however if you got unlucky with your pieces, then you can spend so long trying to dig through the clutter to get to the objective, only for it to be covered up once again. Just so punishing and difficult to recover! Because of this, I was always really tense and prone to feeling hopeless if things didn't go right: the last level was an absolute nightmare where I almost beat it but then from a few unlucky moves felt like it was unsalvageable.
Its a cute game, and perhaps I'm just bad at puzzlers, but the whole feeling of everything being up to luck and the lack of control or recovery hurt it for me. I'm probably not gonna beat it, but hey, I had a nice time while it lasted: I'll leave the last level to the real puzzle lords, haha!
KittyhawkMontrose responds:
Hey! Thanks so much for taking the time to play and review our game! I see what you mean about the intro/tutorial, and we're thinking of tweaking that in the next game. But I'm glad you got the general concept quick! It's definitely a different way of playing. Sometimes luck does play into it, like you can get a bad run of pieces, but for the most part, each puzzle does have a "simple" solution, if not obvious sometimes. We are definitely going to be working on the difficulty curve and the role of randomness on our next game.
Glad you like the theming! And thanks so much for the feedback. It's got us thinking about things for the future. :D
This game really needs restart puzzle button, since recovering from full box is incredibly tedious, when you can't figure out the puzzle solution in time. Also tutorial is useless, except for story purposes. Otherwise incredibly fun, and cat girls are incredibly cute, especially the black one.
KittyhawkMontrose responds:
Thanks for playing! The 5 key on the keyboard or Select (Share) Button on a gamepad will reset the current puzzle. Haha, yeah, the tutorial could be tighter and better. Glad you had fun, and really happy you like Velvet. ^_^