PEGBRJE: Catlateral Damage and Dungeons and Lesbians
Never would’ve thought I would write that kind of title before.
Catlateral Damage is a destructive cat simulator made by Manekoware, a solo indie studio by ‘crazy cat man’ Chris Chung, and it is a game that sounds exactly as it is. You play as a cat in first person, and you destroy everything. Whether due to the audacity of not being fed on time or the apathy for the hardwork its owners put in, it does not matter: you as the cat will exact judgement upon all inanimate objects as you pounce and swat your way throughout the multiple rooms. By fulfilling your catastrophic destruction, you can find certain locations that give power ups to your swatting and jumping power as well as event-based power ups that give unique modifiers for a short time such as catnip.
The only real way to describe Catlateral Damage is that it falls into the category of ‘smug animals doing smug things’ that was popularized by Goat Simulator and contains many other titles with the most recent being Untitled Goose Game. The idea that the gameplay is to disrupt and destroy is almost cathartic in practice — instead of completing quests or saving the princess, you simply behave as an animal would do with complete free reign. It was only natural that a game of this genre would feature a cat based protagonist, seeing as they are one of the most stereotypical ‘smug, destroy stuff out of spite’ animal known to man.
There isn’t much else to talk about with Catlateral Damage other than it does exactly as promised: gives you points for knocking stuff off of high places. If you’re looking for this kind of release to just destroy mundane objects as a cat, Catlateral Damage is the game for you. It doesn’t take long to get into, and once you grab a few power ups the snowballing of chaotic mayhem becomes faster and faster.
Plus there are a massive number of cat pictures to collect in game. I don’t know what else could be better.
Dungeons and lesbians, on the other hand, is a visual novel made by FrankleWinkle, a duo dev team consisting of noeybodys and emoqueee. You play as the named protagonist of your choosing, attending a D&D session with your nerd friends as the ‘useless’ bard in a party with a paladin and ranger. As the session continues, you choose which of your friends you’d like to get to know better, and perhaps romance them along the way.
Let’s state the obvious first: I do not believe myself to be the intended audience of this game. The only things I have in common with the protagonist is that I too like cute girls and D&D. Yet I never felt like this stopped me from enjoying the writing style and overall tone, which can only be described ‘tastefully memey’. Normally I call out games who have this style of writing — constantly referencing memes and internet-based jokes can be funny, but usually reads as forced and repetitive attempts at humor while lacking the context that makes memes funny in the first place. Dungeons and lesbians solves this problem by creating the context of the memes they wish to write within the D&D game being played. Jokes and memes are made the same way that anyone playing a tabletop game would, by reacting to the scenario given and crafting the humour as you go. It’s extremely human and so much fun and crazy to read in the silly over the top style of humour. Heck, the bard’s name is Sir Swaggerballz. I don’t know what else to say about it, really.
Dungeons and lesbians only obvious shortcoming is the length — I finished the route with Lena the DM in under 30 minutes, which did lead to relationships feeling slightly underwhelming and not completely fleshed out. However I don’t think the length takes away from the enjoyment that is found from it, especially upon learning that it was made in about 5 days. If you are looking for a bombastic short visual novel about gals being pals while fighting sorcerers, Dungeons and lesbians is worth your time. It’s honest, short and so over the top you’ll defeat the evil and then get accused of committing murder.
As always, links are below. Both games today were short experiences, so there wasn’t much of a need to write a lot. Perfect bite sized games, if you will.
