Cats, comedy and a cute story. And you got saveslots working in a Godot game. But yeah, I had to play it in browser only since the download buttons doesn’t seem to work, or at least they weren’t working when I tried to use them. And sorry if I’m making this review a bit short and perhaps focus slightly more on some things than others, but I’m trying to play an entry from this jam per day this month, so I can’t really spend a whole week on writing each review.
Writing
The story was pretty fun and wholesome. A bit torn by some endings crashing the game (I think this happened when visiting each location twice, but I think it also happened with at least one other ending; I do remember that the ending you get from visiting the farm three times seemed to work and have audio) but I liked it anyway. A cat making friends is so cute. The characters were pretty fun to talk to. And a familiar cat gathering stuff for a witch for a Halloween party seems like it fits well into this jam.
Audio
The music sounds fun, and definitely fits a comedy game. And the different pieces of music seem to have enough in common that they feel like they’re part of the same game while also setting reasonably different moods for the familiar and “unfamiliar” locations. It does feel like the latter sounds louder than the former. I think the obvious way to fix that would be if you can loudness-normalise it to -20 LUFs or something like that (alternatively, you could just play them at different volumes in Godot; you mostly want the two main tracks to sound about equally loud, and you probably want to listen to the part with the percussion since that part is probably going to feel louder than the part without it; if you go this route, consider testing with both speakers and headphones, because the drums might sound louder in speakers).
Art
Simple, perhaps a little childish, but I like it, especially in a comedy VN. And I would say having more characters and places at the cost of a simpler artstyle isn’t really a bad thing. And you have portraits (or whatever you call those images of speaking characters that show up in the textbox), which is another thing I like seeing.
UI and accessibility
The text is a bit blurry, and while I can advance the dialogue with either the mouse or the keyboard it doesn’t seem I can select choices using the mouse. But I like that there’s saveslots. I don’t usually see that in Godot VNs, but I want to see more of it.
The text buttons with white text on a grey background might look a bit dull in such a colourful game, but they oddly fit the simple artstyle.
Marketing
The game page seems to answer all the questions I would have about the game, although the length is mentioned in hours rather than words (reading speeds can vary quite a bit). I also don’t see the screenshots on it (if you click “Edit page”, one of the things you can change is where screenshots appear).
The logo seems to look good although the text is a bit hard to read. And the logline seems to describe the game fairly well (especially if you see an orange cat as a playful cat, which I know some humans seem to do).
Other
I see an “exit game” option in the main menu in the web build. I haven’t tried clicking it, but I know those don’t always work (in fact, on Itch, they usually don’t).
What I liked most: the dialogue and the save menu.
What I’d suggest changing: fix any endings that crash the game. And probably figure out why downloading doesn’t work.
[Edit: I’d forgotten to add the marketing section, so I’ve added it now]