Put your fine motor skills to the test with Cat Wanderer because this 2D platform may seem difficult at first but with enough practice and the right set of skills the game becomes pretty much a breeze.

Magical Girl Concept:

This one is a little hard to evaluate because it is mentioned that in the "How does your game fit the Magical Girl Genre?" that the main character have super cat ability. Somehow, abilities like skill or something that consumes stamina points and not magic points can be confused and mixed up with the idea of what's magical because to me after playing the game for 2 hours, I feel that the main character possess extraordinary skills that may or may not rival what is considered magical in nature. In other words, the game is themed more around the sci-fi genre rather than a magical one since everything feels and explains in a sci-fi manner. The character design lack the typical magical girl traits as well.

Mechanics:

The one good thing about the game is its solid mechanics, where most controls are pretty much laid out to include movement, attack, jump, heal, and a dash ability. The key controls is a little odd since it uses the Z key for jump while the X key is for attack. Most games use the Z key for an active action response, namely interact, attack, and talk while the X key is meant for the back, cancel, or jump action. So there are many instances throughout the game that I got confused by the key controls, accidentally pressing X Key to jump and pressing the Z key to attack since I have prior experience playing Rouge Legacy, where their default key controls are mapped with Attack on the 1 Key, Jump for 2 Key, and Special for 3 Key so old habits die hard. Basically the game is comparable to Rouge Legacy with the difficulty and the attack behavior of most enemies with the exception that it features wall climbing and a controlled dash ability. The game also features exploration as part of the game play, making it a metroidvania sort of game where most access to each part of the game requires late game abilities or key access. The game attack mechanic is straightforward, where swinging the weapon in the enemy direction and a hit registers damage with displaying the damage amount on each hit as feedback to the player. One thins seems to be left out is the hit stun effect on enemies, where enemies would halt animation or stay in place for a brief moment before being able to move as per normal. It might be an intentional design since some of the enemy characters are animation with a wind up period before hitting. However for most enemies without a wind up animation, this makes CQC a little tricky since the player either needs to either kite, dodge with the dash ability which is provided at a later stage in the game, or out run the enemy which is a little impossible for those chasing the player character unless you employ the reset scene trick by moving between scenes (due to the fact that the enemy position between scenes is not persistent). One feature I would like to highlight is the climb ability where the player character can latch on to a vertical wall and scale the wall with the up and down arrow keys while holding the jump key. By holding the key away from the wall and releasing the jump button, the player can jump away from the wall which allows the player to traverse through many areas when combined with the remaining two abilities, the dash and drop kick. The dropkick ability is also an interesting facet of the game since the mechanic allows players to bounce off both horizontal and vertical spikes. Yes, you can practically climb spiked walls vertically which is not explained in the game and the dropkick isn't a downward attack rather a diagonal downward attack so standing in front of a vertical spike wall gives you that capability right away. Besides, being able to time and pull off dropkicks is vital since it will the most used ability in the entire game, next to dash and wall climb. Moving on, the game allows players to customize the main characters skills using modifying chips with up to two slots available. I realize early in the game that the most expensive skill was the Warp chip (invulnerable dash) costing 1000 Atoms (game currency), and I knew this is a vital skill to have since dodging with the dash after putting in a few hits at the enemy would make sense in this genre. However the chips offered is rather limited and most does not offer reasonable effectiveness to be used besides the Tank chip (extra 3 healing) and Quick Paw chip (faster attack). Since the warp chip is pretty much a must have hence its the least you need to beat the game until the end (you will want this for the final boss fight and tons of dodging enemy attacks). In addition, there is a slight bug or intentional design where the dash invulnerability does not work after the player dash past the mid point, requiring the player character to be next to or somewhere before the dash midpoint for it to work. Besides that the game has an managed inventory and item system which feels sparse and redundant since the player only has to pickup 6 crystallized atoms, and two sets of keys. The mobility abilities could have a slot of their own rather than being mixed with the key slots since the keys are items rather than an ability. The character stats is not fully utilized since the defense point never really changed unless you add the defense chip which only reduces damage by 1 point and is only a good reference to the attack damage that increase with the 3 levels of weapon upgrade available in the game. Moving on, the game utilizes the save point system, where the player character interacts with a device called the Termark that allows player to rest or teleport to another location. Each time the player rest at the save point, it would reset the entire game and enemies would be present at their usual spawn points, making grinding for Atoms a viable resource in the game. Besides that, the enemy behavior is simple with a line of sight sensor in which they will chase the player when in visual view and do not notice the player character coming from behind. The enemy behavior could be improved to include dodging the player attack or behave less zombie-like by reacting with the player hits, i.e. running away when health is low, or using a special move when in danger. Next as for the platforming aspect of the game, the platforming mechanics feels solid with a few animation glitches to the player character and one rare occasion getting stuck in a wall. The platforms work pretty well with the wall climbing feature along with the spiked walls when the dropkick ability is obtained. The platform doesn't feature slopes but there are some noticeable variation in height between different types of terrain. One thing to note is that the spiked walls collision detection seem to extend quite far to the sides because the player can get hit by walking near the ledge with spikes lined up on the edge of the ledge. Its a minor issues since it does not hinder the player movement much but can be an annoyance since players going for a running jump may end up getting hit by the ledge spikes instead. Frankly, once the three mobility abilities are obtained, the spikes isn't a frustrating obstacle to deal with but I do notice that the player can still get hit by spikes even when the dropkick attack is triggered successfully. Additionally, the level design is pretty spot as a metroidvania genre with many secret areas to explore accessible at late game, shortcuts, several pathways, and some interesting scenery to admire.

Visual:

The game has really good art assets and is consistent through out the gameplay, making it suitable for its purpose. The pixel art stylization makes the game feel more of a arcade and suits the difficulty it offers. The UI art is laid out nice and simple with little to no distracting parts. The background and platforming art assets used match well through out the different parts and are seamless in style. The main character sprite is animated and if I recall correctly it was mentioned in Discord that it was made and animated using a 3D model with a pixelizer shader. The enemies are also animated and the animation suites their attack behavior.

UI:

The title screen is made really well with the title clearly displayed and two accessible buttons to the main game, namely the start and continue button. There is a lack of a settings button in the main menu and in in-game so no methods to adjust volume or change any settings for the game. The in-game UI is laid out neatly with health bar showing the qualitative and quantitative state of the player character health. The quantity of healing item is also shown directly below it with the game currency on the bottom right. Accessing the animated menu with the E key gives you two options leading to the stats menu and the inventory menu. The stat menu displays several indicators, the weapon attack damage, defense, max health, and max healing tanks. Besides that the inventory menu shows several slot groups divided into chips, items and key slots. Clicking on the item gives the description of the item selected and chips can be used by clicking the chip. There needs to be a bit of a clean up with the abilities and items, where the player mobility abilities could go in the stat menu instead of behaving like an item in the inventory menu.

Audio:

The music tracks are quite limited with it appearing during boss fights, the main menu, and the ending scene. The platforming section only has an ambient audio track so it could use a few music tracks which matching the environment in the different parts of the game. The choice of sound effect used is decent for its purpose and is used in every part of the game.

Theme:

The developer picked Schrödinger's Cat as the main theme and the theme is fulfilled with the characters being humanoid cats.

Challenge / Engagement :

The game is quite challenging not only from the enemy attack behavior but also from the platforming aspect due to the hazardous spiked wall which make certain areas impassable without the right abilities. However the difficulty of the game seem to scaled down when more abilities are unlock and certain chips are in use. (Spoiler Alert! Start) The boss fights are quite interesting with spider boss being the best one while feeling a little let down for the final boss because the final boss is easily defeated with basically the dropkick attack alone (Spoiler Alert! End). As for engagement, it is highly engaging due to the combat system and the visuals of the game world.

Originality / Creativity:

The story is original and creative in its own way but I find that the story isn't well written as it lacks a lot of lore and answers that could have explain the character predicament in the world. The final ending is also dry as it feels very generic and lacks, e.g. where it feel like it is written with the sake of just ending the game.

Story (Spoiler Alert Section):

The story as I have mentioned in Discord the last time  has some resemblance to an existing game and its called ICEY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icey) where a female cyborg awakens to fight a greater evil so I could say the base line of the story in the game is somewhat similar. Obviously its not entirely comparable since the game ICEY takes on a unique approach to story telling. As for Cat Wandered the dialogs is minimal, in which it tells what the player needs to know about the world and very little clues is given to what and why the alien invasion called the "Eye" has to do with the cat girls. On a deeper context, it is obvious the characters are developed by an unknown facility intending to destroy the alien invaders since there is no other purpose for their existence hinted through the game. The developer place some additional story regarding another character named Ruts where at one point the player encounters her in a cave killing one of the enemy but no dialog is initiated when approach. Other than that, a few minor issues with the writing but nothing significant about it.

Overall:

The game in terms of base mechanics and art is pretty much solid and complete. There are a few stuff that needs to be ironed out and probably a big overhaul to the story side of the game since the game only focuses on the platforming and combat aspect. The game is challenging with many enemy types and their difficulty and pattern of attack makes it engaging. For me, it took about at least 2 hours to beat the game with only 2 upgrades and a Warp chip, at minimal grinding while an extra hour to unlock everything and to beating the final boss on full stats.

Side note on how to beat the game (Spoiler Alert and walkthrough!): In case anyone says the game is too hard, stop, because its pretty playable and easily beaten once you are familiar with patterns. So the thing is in the early game, you will need to get the dash ability which is right after exiting the facility. Then grind enough until you can purchase the Warp Chip. Then from that point on just slash at incoming enemies and when they wind up or attack immediately, just dash past them and rinse repeat. To defeat the boss, just use the drop kick on it and be sure to have the warp chip ready. Some tips, you can climb up walls with the up/down arrow while holding jump. Use a combination of jump and dash to access certain areas. Don't forget you can vertical climb spike walls with the dropkick ability. Certain areas in the game requires players to drop kick an enemy to jump to higher places, this is obvious when you first exit the facility heading to the right where above has a crystallized atom.

This is scary good. I think I remember seeing some of this game's progress in discord but wow, you really blew me here. This has got to be one of the best submissions in this jam :O

The polish is absolutely amazing; and it seems the game has got a lot of contents too. The level of pixel art here is something I can only dream of.

Amazing work! 

Great game! 

Could use:

* some key press prompts would help to remind you to get out of dialogs

* minimap

* less birds, I hate the birds = ] ... just joking keep the birds, but I still hate them.