In a dilapidated English flat a lonely middle-aged woman, Susan Ashworth, has decided to take her own life. Surrounded only by her cats she takes 23 sleeping pills and slowly slips from consciousness. But she doesn’t die just yet, or does she? She finds herself in a strange wilderness, before an old woman who calls herself the Queen of Maggots. She wants Susan to return to the world of the living to deal with five terrible human beings, parasites, who exist only to bring misery and despair to others. Before Susan can find peace, she must kill these people.
Welcome to The Cat Lady by R. Michalski and Screen 7, a dark, dark horror adventure game that explores themes of suicide, depression, revenge and depravity and friendship. The game puts you in control of Susan in a side-scrolling puzzle-solver that’s anything but your lighthearted graphical adventure game. Susan’s task puts her against evil people and dark forces, aided only by her young new roommate, Mitzi, and her cats as she must face both the parasites as well as her own sad world.
First things first, The Cat Lady contains very mature content: suicide, graphic murder, torture, allusions to rape, cannibalism… If you’re easily offended this game is not for you. The dark, inner world of Susan’s life that drove her to take her own life is pretty grim to begin with, and the parasites are vile, evil people who would be at home with Hannibal Lecter and Leatherface. While the game does border a little bit on the edge of depravity for depravity’s sake, especially at the beginning, it comes to a good balance in service of the story, but it’s still only suitable for mature audiences.
The game starts out almost like it’s trying to make you hate it. The interface is clunky and never feels very intuitive, plus the game uses very few keys which can cause issues. The arrow keys moves your character, but also progress text boxes, so more than once I believed a dialogue to be finished and tried to move away only to skip through two or three potentially important texts in the blink of an eye. Furthermore, the first few scenes feel disjointed, bland and more than a little lacking in direction as it can’t seem to decide if it wants to be The Machinist or Saw III; couple this with some of the game’s poorest voice acting and The Cat Lady gets off to a pretty lousy start. It’s a lot to ask the player to get through, but if you can manage that, this game has some truly unique rewards.
The first thing you’ll notice about the game is its look. Spot color isn’t anything new, but The Cat Lady uses it to great effect. The drab greys work well to keep in step with the tone of the game, and while a smattering of bright red blood is old hat by now, a brightly-colored nurse’s smock or a vase of flowers can stand out in a way that makes the scenery feel vibrant in spite of the gloom. Aiding the feel of the game is the soundtrack which consists mainly of haunting piano pieces which add a sinister and sad feel to even the more mundane sequences; throw in a few soulful acoustic tracks at key scenes and the game has a very good sense of production. The Cat Lady also succeeds in its atmosphere and delivers a game that feels pretty scary. The dark backgrounds and chilling soundtrack work well with the game’s undertone of horror in a way that leaves you a little scared of even the mundane. While the game doesn’t set out to frighten you at every step of the way, it does a very good of making the scenes tense when the pressure is on and haunting when there’s nothing around. The voice acting, which starts out as pretty wooden, never gets great, but most of the players give a good performance; the main character finds her zone in time, but her companion Mitzi is the best talent in the mix. While there’s some awkward lines and a few elderly characters who sound like they’re voiced by much younger actors, overall the voice work delivers pretty well, and that’s a good thing because it’s all in service to The Cat Lady‘s greatest strength.
Where the game really stands out is in its story and more importantly, how it tells it. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen an independent developer do such a fantastic job of presenting a narrative so engagingly, especially one as unconventional as this. Susan’s story is sad, her neighbors are cruel, bad things happen and the world is filled with evil people. This could have easily been a trite and cliche story, but instead it’s presented in a way that feels human and even honest. Susan’s depression feels clinical and inescapable, not romanticized, but sincerely deep and painful. The game does a wonderful job conveying this in multiple ways, but most potently through dialogue. Yes, the voice acting isn’t perfect, but it also has an abundance of full, poignant conversations which convey so much about the characters and still feels organic. Even contrasted with the supernatural elements and the grotesque brutality of the parasites The Cat Lady feels oddly down-to-earth and real, sometimes in a way that’s uncomfortable, but still resonates with me in a way that few games have. But the game isn’t all razor blades and Bauhaus albums, some parts are cheerful and warm, especially the developing friendship between Susan and Mitzi, and there are even a few comically absurd parts that were actually pretty funny. The one caveat I must acknowledge is that in order to tell this great story, large parts of the game feel more like an interactive movie than a game; while I think this was just fine I could see some players taking issue with it. All I can say is that it’s worth the investment of time for the tale it tells.
As for the gameplay that surrounds this great story? It’s pretty good. The interface has issues that I never really got over even to the end of the game, but nature of the genre doesn’t demand a tight response, even though it can be frustrating all the same. Players might take some time to get used to the mindset behind puzzles, and I for one got pretty frustrated with the first chapter, but after that I felt the difficulty was pretty engaging but never again so aggravating. There are a few sections that are actually pretty inspired and clever, and while the rest of it may not shake up the genre, it’s still a pretty enjoyable experience.
I have to admit that I had my misgivings about The Cat Lady. The plot, the themes, even the title lead me to think that I was going to hate this. I’m happy to say that I was very wrong. This is a good game with a great story and truly inspired storytelling that really makes use of the creative freedom available to independent developers. Even after finishing the game and having some time to think about it, I keep coming back to just how impressed I am with it and how much I would like to see other indie studios take note of what it does, even if they don’t necessarily do it with as much blood and guts. This game is an easy recommendation, and at $9.99 the game has a lot of content for the price and enough choices that you might even want to play the game twice. I certainly did.
