Kathy Rain

I enjoyed the game a lot, right from the beginning. The first scene has a fun dialogue between hung-over Kathy and her over-eager nice-but-weird college roommate Eileen, and it bode well for the game. The game is a typical point and click adventure, with a very simple interface - you click on something and can then choose whether you want to look at it, think about the item (useful for further clues) or use it further (open, talk, take etc). You have a bag with an inventory, the items of which can be used as in every other adventure. All well-known stuff. The graphics look very old-fashioned, but the backgrounds are nicely done, as is the voice acting. Another reviewer compared it to the Blackwell games and the looks are very similar. The charaters are interesting and well created. The story starts well - supernatural twist, family secrets, town secrets - and it's great fun to investigate it. Investigation is done the usual ways - talk to people, examine locations and documents. There is a fun bit where you have to use a photo editing and a voice recognition program on the computer (the story takes place in 1993) and in total, I liked the mix of investigation methods and the step by step revelation of the story. The tasks are mostly logical, sometimes they were a bit too easy for my taste (especially all tasks relating to the very gullible young policeman in the station and his tendency to coveniently not pay attention in crucible moments), but then I prefer this to overly annoying riddles in some adventures, and there were also some tasks which had me wondering at first. So basically it's a mostly easy-going adventure, with a focus on the story, and this is exactly what I like. The story developed in the promising way, but the end was a bit too weird for me. Nicely executed and original, just not completely my case. Still, in total, I very much enjoyed this game, found it a bit short, but great fun and would buy the next in the series if there will be one.

Kathy Rain is a fairly short game which is pretty typical of modern indie adventure games. All the art, such as character spires and especially backgrounds, is quite good-looking. The events of the story proceed logically from one small discovery to the next which makes sense for a detective game but I found it a bit dry especially since the game is overly generous in pointing the way to the next action the player has to take. It gets close to a series of clear directions to follow rather than a puzzle to explore to find the solution. The escalation from the beginning of the game to the revelation of secrets and the climax then finale is smooth but oddly uninvolving. I found the most interesting part of the game to be chasing a red herring in the early part and realizing there was more to the story than what there first seemed to be. There are occasionally parts where Kathy can only say a single line the player chooses but as far as I can tell there are no wrong answers and little effect from the player's choice, which is a little pointless. The biggest flaw in the game is, unfortunately, the main character. Kathy is supposedly motivated by personal reasons to unravel what the player is told is a mystery (the initial hook is quite weak and only develops after a bit of playtime) but it's hard to believe it. She comes off more as mildly curious for its own sake. She is also supposedly carrying unresolved inner conflicts but these come up so infrequently and with so little force (until an avalanche with overly neat resolutions at the end) that it fails to add much color to her character. The voice acting for Kathy is never overtly bad but doesn't add much either and is one of the weaker performances in the game. She ends up seeming fairly bland, which is a serious problem for the game's heroine. The supporting cast is a little better. Some of them seems like deliberate appeals to character stereotypes (evil rich man, ignorant bumpkin, badass biker) but when Kathy and the player get to interact with them they're more complex and interesting. This is apparently aiming to be the beginning of a series and it certainly leaves enough of a hook for a sequel but I hope to see a lot of improvement in a second game if it comes.

I really liked this game, but whoa, was it different than I expected. When I read the description, it talked about a journalist who investigates the death of her grandfather and searches for clues while coming to terms with her past. It does mention right at the end of the description "The truth is dark and sinister…" but that's an understatement.... Having just played Thimbleweed Park, and the tagline of Kathy Rain being "A Detective Is Born", I was excited to give this a try. Plus, I love 90's pixelated point and click adventure games. The game starts out with Kathy in her dorm room when her bubbly roommate tells her that she read that her grandfather passed away and suggests that she go home for the funeral. You learn pretty quickly that Kathy has a tense relationship with her family and had a difficult childhood. Once the funeral is over, Kathy's grandma explains that her grandfather had actually been catatonic for a decade after a terrible accident years earlier. Since Kathy's mom had taken her away, she never knew any of this. As you learn more about the story, it seems like there's way more to it and Kathy decides to investigate to find out what really happpened. It starts off typically enough... but it very quickly goes from Nancy Drew to Unsolved Mysteries which I was not prepared for. We're talking about things like mysterious lights in the forest, ancient prophecies, creepy dreams, computers that start randomly typing things like "I SEE YOU", occult groups, dead kids that talk to you, etc. Personally, I found a lot of the images very unsettling and preferred to play during the day. It's just...nothing in the game description led me to think that I was about to challenge an ancient prophet from the abyss. Beautiful graphics, great voice acting, intriguing story and fun puzzles. Just way creepier than I anticipated, so I wanted to focus my review there in case anyone else gets unsettled easily and wants to shy away from that sort of theme.

Kathy Rain is mostly serious game with occassional cynical jokes balancing a mysterious detective story and personal struggles. The gameplay elements are traditional which means there are no timed events but also that there are some more old-timey puzzles like a maze. The latter wouldn't feel like a punishment if a game implemented an option to skip walking cutscenes from one screen to another. The visual side of Kathy Rain is beautiful, a result of attention for details and of ability to draw a bigger scenery. Walking in the rain at the cemetery was just, wow, breathtaking. Combining it with the nicely done soundtrack, it made me to stop playing for a moment to enjoy the atmosphere from time to time. Regarding the story, I should say upfront that I am not a fan of "bigger-than-life" plot intertwined with family ties. Kathy Rain reminded me of Gabriel Knight 1 here and there, including the theme, but it felt like it didn't exactly know what to focus on - family or the bigger deal? It kept peddling between two, unable to decide what has the higher priority, and the conclusion wasn't as strong as it could have been due to it. On the other hand, I like that there are obvious attempts to not use stereotypes, so we get a quite interesting side-kick and some unusual residents. I wouldn't mind Kathy Rain 2, the game has a potential to grow into something truly magical.

I really enjoyed playing through this. Most of the puzzles weren't especially hard, but at the same time also not insultingly easy. The only minor gripe I had was the game being a little too on the nose with its hints on how to proceed. If it left a little more of the thinking up the player it would've been perfect for me. Instinctively, the ending made me feel a little wanting for more closure. It left quite a few things ambiguous. But once I started looking towards the game's influences, the Twin Peaks style absurdism and the Lovecraftian beyond the veil narrative, I had to admit maybe the ending was well played after all. There are a few blanks left to fill in, but the game does piece together a rough narrative through symbolism. I'd say it's definitely worth your time.