Project Kat

As a fan of 2D and older horror games, Project Kat really stood out to me! I enjoyed the blending of modes in terms of puzzles and exploration in different locations. The dialogue seemed fairly genuine and the choices were more open than I anticipated. I'm looking forward to seeing more on the 'project.'  The soundtrack did an excellent job setting the mood as well. I wonder if the creators will share it on something like bandcamp? I think there may be many like me who wouldn't mind sharing a few dollars for it, if its something that the creators can distribute.

I love this so far! The controls are a bit unnatural as I am a bit more used to WASD, but that's a small gripe compared to how much I enjoyed the game. The art is absolutely pretty and I love the music. I love the atmosphere the game sets too! Looking forward to more of this game.

i thoroughly enjoyed this game, i'm not one for horror but i decided to give this a go and i was captivated just from the word ritual, amazing storyline so far, though i do have a complaint about the controls i found it difficult playing with the arrow keys as i am used to one handed play with rpg, if you could in the future add a control config for people to customise their controls to their liking that'd be splendid. cannot wait for more from this game

this was honestly a very good and the set up was nice and the over all fundamentals were great I really look forward to this being a bigger game very impressed

this was great !! the atmosphere is very good and the art is very charming ^_^ plus i like that there are both side scrolling and top-down sections!! hopefully there gets to be more of this

That was fantastic. Gave me the good old heebies and the jeebies. I recommend for sure!

just finished the game, what a trip! Creepy and fun, and thanks for no jump scares, I just can't with the jump scares @__@ also nice puzzles, hehe. Hope your project goes well =D

This game is so good! I absolutely love the artstyle and would 100% buy the official game if it comes out! I had a lot of fun playing this game and to future downloaders, I hope you do, too! This game had me immersed and on the edge of my seat the whole way through! 10/10 would recommend!

I absolutely loved this game! Whatever this bigger project you're working on is, I would 100% love to play it and hell, if you have a kickstarter or patreon I would 100% donate some money to help develop the game. Keep up the good work friends!

I love it so far the story and the atmosphere is so intriguing ! I'm definitely gonna play the full game if it comes out. The BGM and the art are also beautiful. This is a small thing but I really like the "minigame" for the desks in the classroom !

You did an amazing job, I'm excited for this project !

Just got done with it. Oh my golly, that was fun for a demo. I have no qualms about anything so far. I really enjoyed the BGM, the art and play style. The story and characters are unique and totally likeable. For a horror RPG, if this could even get any better than it already is now, then this should earn a top spot with Mad Father and Ib and others. You all in the dev team keep up the good work! I've got high hopes for this project! 

For such a short story it's extremely captivating and interesting!! I was so disappointed when it ended because I just wanted to play more of this story! The art and characters are great and I really hope we get too see this project in a full game glory!!

Loved it, im new to indie games and this was my first choice im excited for the full game, i loved KAT and i loved the whole horror thing, it was so addicting to be just a prologue pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeee finish the game ! <3 XOXO

it's so good !! i was really into it right before it cut off, i can't wait to see more !! <3

Goddammit. You made me turn my basement lights back on. I'll be downloading this when It's available. Keep up the amazing work.

Loved the game, I am wondering though, will Kat be the main protag in the actual game or are we gonna play as someone else? I really want to see Kat alive!

Holap, ¡me gustó mucho el juego! Lo jugué en directo y después lo subí en mi canal de youtube (la primera parte) <3 

This was awesome, thank you for taking the time and effort to make this. I absolutely cannot wait to see the finalized project! Keep up the good work!!! :)

Just tried this game with my sis, and it creeped the shit out of us. Also we loved it!!

Can't wait to play the final version <3

This is an amazing game! I was terrified the entire time.

That was a fun experience for me! thank you for making this game. I got creeped out by it specially on the maze thing at the end... also, i thought there were different endings because there is a lot of doors at the end. but, overall great flow of story, amazing artworks and i really hope someday i can play the full version of this game.

https://youtu.be/4QbxJKBcatk

this game was fun to play it has been a while since i played a game like this i like how you have to set up all the things but there puzzles and how things slowly get weirder and weirder and once the ''game'' is done i think you did very well with her descent into madness this game was made well and it a nice game to just pass some time I love the idea and I hope you get enough support to make the full game

Damn, it sucks it ended like that and so quickly. I beat it in about 30m. This game could definitely be a full game with the idea it has going for it with different endings. That was good, I wish there was different endings though and for it to be longer.  But it is the prologue so I'm excited for more!

ths is a good game good job

Could you guys have a page for all of the art (and I mean ALL of the art) published so we can admire it , set it as our wallpaper , and make edits with it, it would be kindly appreciated since its so good (also 10/10 game hopefully there will be a full relese) xoxo gossip girl.

I just finished playing this game and I absolutely loved it. The experience was so cool, the music was fantastic, and the story and idea is so interesting. I can't wait for more games and bigger projects from you in the future!!

Holy crap dude this was sooo good. I absolutely adored the graphics and storyline. I can't wait for any other games you may make in the future bc I'm definitely playing those too. In conclusion, it was frickin great :)))))

Just played it its really interesting. I would add an option when you cut someones hair "Are you sure you want to cut her hair" to play with our morals a little more. But the sound track and the art style is really cool. I love how different our main character is to most female characters too sweet and unrelatable. Kat feels like a realer character a lot more unique. GOOD JOB.

For anyone wondering the music is by TAM music factory. 

Most arrangements used in game can be found on youtube with the rest of Project Kats OST Here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GDzZsCsRk0&list=PLDOjCqYj3ys3g39aaq6IMgQao4ioMs7Bl

I have linked some of the more predominent artists work and the rest can be  found on spotify/youtube

 TAM music factory  - Title screen music / Cloudy skye

here:https://open.spotify.com/artist/4eNKadh2oMaXiQqgZtN6Yt?si=cuWw52fiQfyitSIp5QGi1A

Hirokazu Akiyama - Unwelcome guest / Strange Ritual

here:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNPMwbX6-SclEmvFX5_ihCw

and here: http://www.hmix.net/ (the site is in japanese so i recommend the above link if you are unable to speak or translate conveniently)

Amacha / Music Atelier Amacha - Dangerous game/Midnight Music Room, 

here:https://amachamusic.chagasi.com/ (japanese) no other platforms i can find him/her on as they seem to be very obscure.

M-ART- Kats theme/ Cheshire cat laughing

here:http://mart.kitunebi.com/ (japanese again) again very obscure

t12ya  or  @ DOVA-SYNDROME- Club room theme/Rocked by the city(?) 

here:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2vyqKNLXiUo7BefUvCou8K2P1_Doq_Ef

or here(???very obscure...):https://dova-s.jp/bgm/play11578.html

HOPE THIS HELPS!!! 

Hey There! I dont know if its too much to ask but could we please have a version of the title screen  without the selection menu to use as a wallpaper? alternatively any art would be great!

☝THIS MAN WANTS THE FULL VERSION!!!

As a horror anime buff, I can definitely see this as an anime. It's got just the right plot points, just the right art style, and the story has me hooked. I'm itching for the full game, I just need to see this play out. It's like Saki Sanobashi, there's a mystery aspect involved that I need to see played out but I don't have a way for that to be a reality just yet. TLDR; Cute anime girl in twisted world, story good, require more.

I really enjoyed this game a lot! It's games like these that make me want to make a horror rpg game too.  every little detail felt well thought out and put together, everything from the dialogue when you interact with items to how the Kat's running animation being different form her walking animation instead of the usual walking animation sped up that I often see with these types of games. The characters all felt different instead having the same personality, and the style of the game was also really beautiful. The story is also really interesting and left me wanting to find out more about everything. The only problem I had was that some areas of the game felt too bright to be scary for a horror game. All in all I would be really exited to see more from you guys.  It was a really good game!

10/10 would play again, can't wait to see where this goes!
I also liked the small things such as being able to spin the globe, read posters, or things you couldn't see!

10/10 good game

cant wait for the full game !!

this looks promising, please keep us updated <33

Don’t say “it’s annoying to ask”. If you believe yourself to be annoying us by asking, we are far less likely to answer. If you’re going to ask, make it clear that you deserve an answer. Otherwise, you simply seem like the sort of person who gets annoyed easily by questions, so you are unlikely to accrue many answers.

Okay, so for a game developed predominantly by a team of two this is very impressive in how sophisticated its design is, leaving just enough room for the player to control the level of suspense while working within cinematic confines. The story itself is charming in its adherence to certain tried-and-true, though not yet trite, tropes. I was amused by the faithful rendering of anime tropes, both in the characterization of the dialogue and the personification of the visuals. The premise of starting the game in an idealized dreamscape and then plunging the player into a nightmare was very effective. The protagonist’s candid attitude serves to facilitate a fluid transition, on multiple accounts: Not only does her apparent mastery of both the physical and metaphysical domains place the audience in a posture of authority OVER the dark developments, allowing the setting to unfold naturally and casually, but also her creeping descent into madness presents a very striking counterpoint by the end. Mechanically, as well as in terms of illustration, the horror is flawless. So let us talk about the horror in the writing:

At times, the prose is fearsome, yet at other times it is frightful. The employment of clichés, while it works in establishing the genre and keeping the audience engaged, ensuring that we adhere to your advice to play the game in one sitting, falls apart by the end as an Enigmatic Antagonist is introduced. For innocent young schoolgirls to be corny is one thing, since it illustrates their native naiveté. Be that as it may: the significance of the Occult Daemon lies in that it passes mortal understanding. This is illustrated very effectively in one principal scene, which to my mind was the finest in its execution: the interim between the lighting of the candles and the burning of the hair. I took the liberty of exploring the familiar map at this point in the game, and I was impressed with several stylistic alterations, most noteworthy of which was the absence of the supporting characters, the broken light switch, (a token dream symbol,) and certain questions which the protagonist voiced, which I had previously pondered, about the Mysterious Door. The reason that these alterations work lies in the fact that the familiar, mortal world has been EVACUATED, leaving the protagonist as the solitary vestige of Humanity. The fear of being alone is one of the most primal fears for communal animals, so this alone(ness) was enough to create a suspenseful and foreboding setting.

However, at this point, several changes to the environment doomed the writing. The first of these lay in a novel map. Running was disabled, so I presumed that there would be nothing to run from. By the time that I returned to the schoolhouse, the whole thing felt like a child’s nightmare about leaving home to go to school for the first time. This quaint, nostalgic sensibility was reinforced by the apparent randomness of the classroom numbers and the extremely narrow corridors, yet what killed the mood were the notes. Up until this point, notices were posted to establish an omnipresent school bureaucracy whose absence said more than its presence; the girls fear the Faculty and Administration as a potential source of retribution, so all of their threats center around it as though it were a ghost story.

While it is creative to use such notes as a means for communicating between the Daemon and the Protagonist, this places a weight upon those slips of paper that tears right through them. Left alone, Kat has only one Other with whom to communicate, and the manner in which this Other is presented must be flawless. If we are to experience Fear, the Other must be menacing above all else, meaning that its Intent is alien to our own, its Nature must pass our understanding, and its Power must be overwhelming and unpredictable. These three virtues are exalted in the visual design, but they are absent from the prose. The dialogue between Kat and the Daemon feels campy and lame, only because of how much it pales before the setting of the stage for its arrival.

What comes out of this is nothing more than a defiant adolescent striving to defend her individualism from a confining force, oblivious to the irony of the fact that her very defiant individualism was what doomed her to this prison, the latter of which functions as the perfect and most visceral allegory for the former. By contrast, her interlocutor is transparent in its intent: to contain her, observe her, torment her, and then finally to annihilate her. It is OBVIOUS that the antagonist is some sort of a predator, and by this point the clichés alone prove this, so for the predator to identify Kat as its prey is unnecessary. A redundant antagonist who must state the obvious mirrors the fears of the protagonist a little TOO well, tempting me to wonder: can this Daemon become my friend? He certainly doesn’t seem to be hiding anything up his sleeve, after all.

One of the greatest frustrations I’ve encountered as a writer and designer looking to develop video games lay in finding programmers. A great many computer technicians have been possessed of the illusion that, as coders, their ideas ought to take priority over the ideas of novelists, philosophers, artists, and poets. Part of this emerges out of the extreme individualism of a competitive industry; some of it is literally programmed into the nature of the code. It has been made clear to me that the desire to do it all yourself has become a sense of entitlement, precluding team efforts from coming to fruition or even from taking root. The presumption that a coder can also develop and actualize Great Ideas implies that those who come by other Ideas ought to be regarded as adversaries, and if they do not possess the technical know-how to develop those ideas within this medium, they are dismissed as lazy or pretentious. Is this not ironic? The pretension to begin with lay in this: that a brain which spends an entire work-week coding is NOT the sort of brain that produces poetry. One is a very literal, Aristotelian discipline; the other is Platonic and Inspired.

By this review I do not mean to knock your game in the slightest. It is only when something so proximately approaches any sort of professional perfection that I feel tempted to spend two hours playing and reviewing it. I hope to help you push the boulder off the edge to its final refinement; you are already so close to finding a formula that will make this a groundbreaking innovator in multiple genres. I am already deeply impressed with the synthesis of mechanics. A game that feels so postmodern should be developed under the supervision of an oligarchy of specialists. This is why my chief recommendation for you would be to hire several staff writers to proofread and revise your prose. You could make something that works as well as a Stephen King novel here. You already have the Vision; it’s only a matter now of cross-pollinating between different media.

In case you wish to expose any recent versions to a new audience, it is still not too late to sign up for Dream Jam. I am sending you this invitation because of both the quality and the relevance of your game’s content and subject matter. Good luck delving deeper:

https://itch.io/jam/dreamjam2020

[({L.J.)}]

I've been looking for a good RPG after Witch's House, Mad Father, etc. This game did not disappoint!! Keep up the good work and I'm looking forward to more!