The Cat Lady is an adventure psychological horror game developed by Remigiuz Michalski, it was released on December 2012 in English and on May 2013 in Italian (Though the english voice acting remains). It is an indie game made using Adventure Game Studio. An album was also released featuring music by Warmer, 5iah and Tears of Mars.
Whilst I was facing a rough patch in my life in the past few months, a friend had actually mentioned this game to me whilst I was discussing with her about psychiatrists, let's just say it wasn't what I had expected when it came to indie horror games. It is however a perfect example as to why I adore horror games so much, there are must some titles that prove to be surprisingly therapeutic to play, especially where they have a decent storyline and well developed characters that you can relate to.
The plot follows protagonist Susan Ashworth, a chronically depressed, middle-aged woman with no friends, her only companions being stray cats, earning her the cliche but nonetheless insulting title of the Cat Lady among her neighbors.
One night she decides to end her life, but this instead leads her to a mysterious world where she encounters the Queen of Maggots, who makes her immortal and gives her the task of ridding the world of five psychopaths referred to as the "parasites". Whilst reluctant and only seeking peace in death, Susan isn't exactly given a choice and is sent back to the world of the living, where she is soon forced to carry out the first part of her task.
The game deals with mature themes such as depression, suicide, and loneliness, though now and then some dry humor is added into this otherwise very deep game. The themes of depression and suicide have always been done in a far too cliche or ineffective manner… and honestly, yeah, somewhat cliche moments still do occur in this game, but I can't blame them for that, it's pretty hard avoiding one-liners and those so-called abstract scenes (Wow they sounds harsh). Anyway, cliche isn't entirely bad, and besides, only a small percentage of this game is presented in that way.
And aside from that, I find the main protagonist to be likable and actually relatable (Save for her unfortunate disdain for dogs…) as she progresses along, and I think we can all agree just how awkward and dumb those suicide helplines tend to be, her distrust towards most people despite their oh-so kind mindset of desiring to 'help' and 'understand' her situation is also incredibly understandable.
Let's just say that this is the most movie-esque game I have ever come across (This would perhaps be the only game movie that would actually turn out right, if they ever made it into a movie that is), whilst it most definitely has a creepy and rather gothic feel to it overall, most scenes tend to be more dramatic or action-related than scary (The sound effects still do get me now and then… stupid cringing piano punch).
Going back to the art style of the game however, it is gorgeously stylistic as seen in these few screenshots, while most scenes tend to be in black and white, the ones that are colored have an absolutely rich look to them, the characters are never actually colored (With the exception of their clothes), and so it is really cool to see how clever they are when it comes to the use of lighting. I also love how they don't actually color every single thing in, a few spot colors are instead used, be it for the characters' clothing or the blood stains. Overall I just really like the contrast of colors and shadows in each scene, especially the more monochromatic ones.
While it might seem like a side scroller game most of the time, the creator was able to create more unique poses for the characters (So they won't simply be showing us their sides to us for the entirety of the game) as well as different camera close ups to enhance certain scenes. Each character definitely has a set of different expressions to go with whatever situation they are put in, I however find it unfortunate that it is rather difficult to make them out considering the usual distance put between the character and the camera itself, and there aren't many close ups when it comes to them pulling their more interesting facial expressions.
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| One of the more uniquely designed scenes, as the character's thoughts decorate the walls of her home. |
The Adventure Game Studio is an open source development tool developed in 1997 that is primarily used to create graphic adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers (Aww and I thought I had a chance to mess around with it once I get my hands on it) and combines an integrated development environment for setting up most aspects of the game with a scripting language based on the C language to process the game logic. (I would still love to learn more about it one day, especially if it is able to produce a game as beautiful as this one)
Aside from The Cat Lady, thousands of other games have been produced using this software, many of them being professional quality. Such examples include The Blackwell series by Wadjet Eye Games, Resonance by XII Games and Gemini Rue by Joshua Nuernberger. Numerous Sierra releases have also been made through this software.
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