Magicat (Review)

Magicat is cutesy side-scrolling platformer inspired by retro games from the 16-bit era, developed by Kucing Rembes games and published by Toge Productions and Another Indie studios.

I picked up Magicat because of its charming cutesy pixel art, and the fact that I like 2D platformers in general. The platforming feels very smooth and easy to handle, you have your basic jump, crawl, dash, and attack, which is like a magical kitty paw? or something like that. The levels are very basic at first but get increasingly more difficult as you progress, as they should in any half decent platformer. There's a whopping total of 63 levels spread across 7 worlds, each with its own boss at the end. This not only means you have a good variety of levels and gameplay, but also a tedious amount of reused assets and average enemies being reused as bosses.

I didn't expect much from the boss design, but this is just lazy and tedious to play through. The enemy design are bare bone basics as well, most of them are just different iterations of the average slime enemy. Thankfully everything looks bright, colorful, and charming, so it kind of barely gets away with it (for a little while). There are collectibles that are mostly pointless and tedious to get, most of them hidden behind timed puzzles and after a few levels you just won't care about even trying to get them anymore. Like Super Meatboy, Magicat has a very basic story about something being taken and you having to retrieve it. In Magicat that's an artifact referred to as the worlds lost relic, I'm not sure why its so important but maybe it wards off evil slimes or something. There are small bits of dialog here and there, but its all just animals making animal noises and expressions, so there's no reason for it to be in the game at all and I'm not sure why it is.

Unlike the enemy and boss designs, the level are pretty decently made. There are a number of basic puzzle platforming elements introduced throughout the different areas. Such as buttons that need to be pressed or held down to open doors, bouncy platforms, blocks that can be pushed around and used as platforms, controllable platforms, etc. Every area has a checkpoint including right before each boss, taking away any tension of possibly dying and having to restart. Even if you don't use checkpoints, the cost for reviving is very little. After awhile the entirety of the game became tedious and boring, leaving me unsatisfied and unwilling to finish it.

Magicat has some initial charm with its bright and colorful 16-bit graphics and cheerful tunes, but the bland uninspired designs and eventual tedious platforming and puzzles cause it to be just another mediocre platformer in a sea of terribly mediocre platformers. Magicat is available for $7.99 on Pc/Steam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XjkkcLDMEE