Author: Lil (Darlinganddeath) Date: 06-02-2023
We weren't secretive about our desire to try the Cattails: Wildwood Story Demo that came out yesterday as we're huge animal lovers at the Pillow Fort and we especially adore games from an animal's perspective. There's just something about being able to tap into their lives and explore something that we'd never be able to otherwise, so games that do it well are an extra special treat and that's exactly what this game is, a treat.
For those who don't know about Cattails, it's all about becoming a cat, leading and growing your colony, and exploring the world to hunt, harvest, and collect treasures. There's the added bonus of shadow cats to fight and fend off, territories to expand to, and apparently, we'll even be able to fall in love and have a few little kittens of our own.
I will soundly say that when release day for this game comes, you can expect us to be no-lifeing it and enjoying our little virtual cat lives. We only got to experience 10 in-game days in the Demo and that just wasn't enough... so we'll be impatiently waiting for the full release.
Let's get into the "why" though to back up our obvious excitement.
Don't want to read? We'll have the Video Review available soon!
10 Days in the Life of a Cat...
Since this is a Life Sim, RPG game, there are quite a few aspects to talk about but we're going to keep it to the biggest ones that we got to experience. Please remember that there will be more aspects in the full release as we only get 10 in-game days, but for now, we'll talk about what we did get to see.
Endless coats for your Kitty Cat...
Let's start by talking about the sheer customizability in this game because it's impressive. Not only can you pick everything from the color of your body, face, paws, and tail, but you can customize whether you want to be a spotted cat, striped cat, or some hilarious thing in between. On top of that, you can edit your body size, tail position, face size, fur length, and more. The impressive part doesn't come from just being able to customize your character this in-depth from the start (and let's be honest, customization to this extent is already epic) but rather the fact that you can edit your coat and accessories anytime, anywhere. You know me and Pink, so you bet I'm rocking some pink patches and a little white daisy on my ear.
As I mentioned, this level of customization is unheard of in games (for the most part) and the fact that this game offers it makes it stand out among other Pixel RPG games. I'm a huge fan of customization and I know it can be hard to do well, but Cattails: Wildwood Story nailed it on the head.
Exploring the Great Outdoors...
Once you've customized your cat and are ready to hop in the game, you'll almost immediately be thrown out into the world. I want to compliment this game on its tutorials as it did a great job of keeping the immersion through its tutorials but also successfully teaching you how to be your cat self. Right off the bat, you're taught how to hunt, collect herbs and other items, and fight off the Shadowy cats, which are a prevalent part of the story.
After the initial storyline segments, you'll be left to your own devices on a decently large map to explore to your heart's content. The map works on a square system, meaning, it's divided into square segments that you can freely move through. Even during the first few days, I found it no trouble to go to any part of the map to collect whatever happened to be there. In fact, in just 10 days I explored nearly 75% of the map, and while there might be expansions for it in the full release, I can soundly say it's a great experience. There'll always be a few map sections you'll want to avoid until you beef up your health, or recruit a few cats to make battling the huge spawn of void cats a lot easier, but for the most part, you'll have no trouble wandering around and using your kitty claws to pounce on mice, birds, snakes, and fish.
I'll talk about the hunting aspect as it's probably one of the things I enjoyed most about the game. You'll go into "stealth" mode and crouch down to get close enough to your prey, then, if you successfully land in the green on the slider, you'll pounce on it and secure yourself a true cat's dinner. If you miss, whatever you were hunting will run away. On the flip side, if what you decided to attack was an aggressive mob, like a bat or snake, it will start attacking you back and you'll have to deal with being potentially hurt or poisoned. I will note that even successful pounces on this mob type do not kill them in one shot, you'll need to take your kitty claws and finish the job if you want to secure these mobs as your late-night snack.
Time
Speaking of late-night snacks, let's talk about how the time works in this game. I will state that the days are longer than your typical Pixel-Life Sims and that feels great. Instead of being forced to sleep at a certain time of day, you can continue adventuring straight through the night. I don't know if there are any negatives for staying up too many days in a row, but the only reason I found a need to sleep was to restore my health. This, though, can also be done with herbs you collect, so at one point I'd gone 3 days without sleeping and saw no odd punishments for it. When you do decide to sleep, it just progresses the day a couple of hours ahead and restores your health, so if you don't feel like using your herbs or coins to heal, then sleep is the way to do so.
Things like the Quest board will only reset once a day though, so any "daily" tasks are still on the 24-hour time clock for whatever day you're on, but it was definitely a refreshing feeling to be able to adventure around the beach at 4 am.
Colony Building & Recruitment...
Now, we mentioned recruiting a few extra kitty friends to help you defeat Shadow Cats a bit earlier on, and we'll return to that now. When it comes to the colony building and recruitment, it almost feels more like a Strategy game and I adore it. If you collect certain items, you can recruit new cats to your Colony, and with additional cats, you'll have an easier time defeating the Shadow Cats out in the wilderness. You'll also be able to send cat "squads" out to certain regions of the map every day to help increase your influence over the area and take it over as a territory for the clan. This is why I mentioned it feels more like a strategy game as you'll be able to either battle for new spots or harvest resources from existing ones. You'll want to decide what you want to do for that day depending on what you feel the colony needs.
Also, with more cats, comes more love choices! Yes, there will be your very own cat dating sim baked into the game so you can choose who to woo with mice (or other creatures because as we learned, some cats don't like mice and get rather offended), and even have your own cute litter of fluff balls. We didn't get to take a deep look at this in the Demo but it's a trend in most Life Sims so it was a smart choice to include it.
Museum & Mines
If you're a collector of curious curios the way we are in games, then rejoice, because Cattails features not only an in-depth mine system but a Museum to turn in all those odds and ends you find while digging through the dirt with your claws.
While the Museum is unlocked by recruiting a specific cat, the mines are open from the start. They do feature the standard, 'descend and reach certain checkpoints that you can return to later', model, but that's okay, it does it well and it's one of those things in games that I like to use the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Cattails: Wildwood Story is unique in the sense that the mine is filled with adorable Moles that will give you specific tasks and buy your rock debris in exchange for some tokens that you can spend for items or upgrades. It offers an entire crafting and shop system baked around the mine and it's why I feel it presents a uniquely fun take on them.
Farming
We only get a small taste of the farming, as you'll have to recruit the cat that knows a thing or two about plants prior to unlocking it. However, it was one of the easiest cats to recruit so don't fret, you'll get it early on. After you've recruited them, you'll unlock 6 farming plots, which I assume can be expanded with time but for obvious reasons, we didn't get that far.
Farming is pretty simple and intuitive in Cattails. Turn the plants you find into seeds (the higher quality of the plant, the more seeds it grants) then plant them and wait a few days. Instead of watering, you'll need to use plant food every day to keep them happy and healthy. I do appreciate that they didn't opt into watering the plants because... well how the heck is a cat supposed to operate a watering can or hose... anyways. It's pretty close to accurate in terms of how cats would keep plants alive, even if that entire idea is a bit of a silly one. That being said, I don't want it excluded from the game just because it's not realistic. 99% of the games we play aren't realistic so let's not start that ridiculous trend now. I don't know about you but I play games most of the time to escape reality, not be reminded of it (lol).
The Cattails: Wildwood Story...
Normally I put this section at the top but I preferred how the Gameplay aspects flowed so we'll leave it as it is.
Touching on the story side of things, I have to give a special mention to the fact that this game might be a Pixel-Graphics game, but the story scenes are incredibly beautiful. It feels like you're watching a cat anime anytime there's a cutscene and it's brilliant. The physical game might be pixel-based, but all the artwork is wonderfully detailed and it has that soft feel to it that makes it enjoyable to look at. Every time I interact with another cat in the colony I'm reminded how much the devs cared about the look of their artwork and I'm impressed all over again. Sure... it might be a silly cat game to some (especially dog lovers - don't worry we love dogs too), but let me remind you that the topic of the game shouldn't take away from the sheer artistic talent. I don't appreciate the horror genre but I can appreciate one that is terrifying in an artistic way (I'm looking at you Layers of Fear).
After that short rant... we'll get back to the story. I feel the need to point out, the Cattails Wildwood "Story" didn't feel cute the way some games in this genre do. Sure, it has cute cats in it, but nothing about the game screamed "younger audience" or "immature", in fact, it's quite the opposite. You're a band of cats that's home got destroyed and now you're looking for a new space to call your own. You're the technical leader of the colony too so you get a sense of being the most powerful cat in the land and while that's a tad humorous, it's fun and yet another reason it feels more like a strategy game. Regardless, if you're not into that "cute" genre, this one leans a bit away from it.
Visuals & Audio
Obviously, it's a Pixel game, so we're not going to go in-depth about the fact that the map is well painted and has enough definition to be a "good" pixel-graphic game, but I will take a moment to highlight the audio.
I have to say that the music got turned down to background noise, but this happens with 99% of games, so nothing new there. However, the ambiance and sound effects sounds were spot on. From mice squeaking when you pounce, to the cats hissing if you gave them something they don't like as a present, you definitely feel like a cat in the Wildwood world. I especially enjoyed it when an area had shadow cats to fight. The music would go into that battle mode style and it was complimented by an eerie background tone that added to the mystery of what these shadow beings really were. Good job to the dev team for having audio that immerses you in the world, it's my biggest ask in the audio department and Cattails did it right.
Conclusion
I'll just straight up say that I can't wait for this title. I try to avoid giving games too high of praise as we want to be critical in our reviews to avoid seeming biased one way or the other, but I experienced 0 bugs or performance issues (that's why the section didn't exist), had a completely smooth experience and playthrough, felt like it taught me everything I needed to know before releasing me, and did a fantastic job of setting the tone of the story right from the start.
For a Demo to be this well-rounded and enjoyable? Yeah... I'm excited. Sorry not sorry for saying it a few times but it's rare that we get such a unique take on this genre and one that's also well done. The developers have been thorough with the visuals, audio, customization, gameplay aspects, exploration, the mines, and more. There was a ton of content packed into a small Demo so we can only imagine what the full release has to offer.
We're happy to say that this game's release is announced for Q4 of 2023, so while we don't have an official date, we're thankful it'll be this year at the very least, and you can bet we'll be covering it.
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Disclaimer:
Please note that we have not been paid or promoted for this review, and are not affiliated with Cattails: Wildwood Story or its developers officially in any way. All thoughts are based on our own genuine experience of the game. All footage is based on the Game's Demo in its current state as of 06/02/2023 and is subject to change or be completely omitted in the full release at the developer's discretion.
Very fun review!! Kudos from an older fan of this series, their previous installment was very good and Wildwood Story is already shaping up to be so much better!