Developer: Valhalla Cats
Publisher: Valhalla Cats
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
The Purring Quest – Review
The bond between human and animals is quite special and this is especially visible in this game. Our beloved furry friends are always there for us and they try to cheer us up. The protagonist in this game goes all the way for his boss. Are you going to help him on his quest?
Story
When you start the game for the first time, you get greeted with a small introduction. It shows us how a man and woman meet for the first time and how their lives become intertwined. This is also the moment where we see our little purring friend. It has a good life with a loving couple, but things will get ugly real soon. Fate strikes and kitty’s female human passes away. Although our furry friend does his best to cheer up his boss, it seems that the male human keeps on mourning the loss of his loved one.
One day, they both stand at the grave of ‘female human’, when ‘male human’ suddenly sees his passed away wife (or so he thinks?). When chasing this young woman, he loses his precious necklace. Our kitty friend wants to get this treasure back to his boss, but doing so, he has to transverse a lot of scary places. Will his love for his boss be enough though? That’s something for you to find out.
The goal of the game is quite simple: get the necklace to your boss. It would have been nice if you could do more things, although you can release some cats that have been trapped for no good reason. It is your job to find them and unveil the culprit. At any rate, the story is quite emotional and will take you on quite a ride.
Graphics
Overall, the graphics are above average and it is clear that the imagery are hand-drawn. It would have been nice if they would have put more thought into the introduction. This ‘cinematic’ is just a chain of still pictures which has both positive as negative sides. For instance, it is great that they tried to come up with something else and that they even bother giving such a proper introduction. On the other hand, this video doesn’t really have the same style as the rest of the game and it makes it feel quite ‘cheap’.
During the levels, the quality of the graphics is better and you can tell that the developers tried to create a different look per stage. It has to be said though, it is a shame to see that they re-used a lot of imagery from previous levels, but with a different look. At any rate, your little furry friend is animated quite nicely and the same goes for all his fellow friends or foes he meets.
Sound
The Purring Quest has some nice tracks and sound effects, and the diversity of the tracks really fit each stage. You will hear rather dark tunes at the graveyard, while the more populated area has a lighter tune. The sound effects on the other hand could have been more diverse. Even more, your concentration should go to getting Mr. furry back to his boss, but it might be that you’re more distracted due to the quite loud soundtrack.
There is something that is quite bothersome though. When you turn down the volume, the game doesn’t seem to register this. This means that, when you die, it could be that the volume of the music is placed back to its original state. This is quite a pain, as you will need to turn it back down. Turning down the volume has no effect on the effects as well, which is really annoying.
Gameplay
The Purring Quest is a platformer with 3D effects in which you need to guide Mr. Kitty through some levels. On your way, you’ll need to watch out for some traps, dogs and small bosses that try to get in the way of you finding your owner.
Cats have sharp claws which are very handy to chase away or defeat certain enemies. Don’t try to fight your worst enemy head on, as you will die a certain death. Don’t worry though, as your furry friend has seven lives. When you die, you get respawned at the last checkpoint so you get the opportunity to try once more. Depleting all seven lives might seem the end of the game, but that isn’t true at all. You just respawn once more, with yet another seven lives. Just an insider, it seems that certain countries say that cats have seven lives, rather than nine.
Since this is a platformer, it is only normal that you need to jump and get across several obstacles. It is quite a pain when the controls are against you (or just don’t trigger well) and that is what is happening here. Some jumps don’t seem to happen when you actually press the buttons (both with keyboard and controller), which makes the game feel quite slow and clumsy. Even more, sometimes you made a jump, but you still get damage because your tail is hovering over the painful object. This costs you a life, which is not that pleasant.
The combination of these sloppy controls and weird elements that (don’t) trigger at certain times, makes it hard to make progress. This is also the case when fighting bosses, which will actually make you quite annoyed as you lose lives and die over and over again because you don’t know what to do or certain events just won’t trigger. Overall, the idea of the game is great and the levels are okay, the sloppy controls really take down a lot of the fun.
Conclusion
The Purring Quest will take you on a furry trip to get something special back to your boss. To do so, you will need to overcome a lot of obstacles, which might be quite hard due to the controls. Don’t worry though, as you will have some nice graphics and tunes to accompany you. Let’s go on a quest, human!
The Purring Quest - Review,
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[…] while back, we got the chance to review The Purring Quest. This game full of meows had some minorities that could use an upgrade, and the developers used the […]