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Sacred Reviews: The Cat's Minute Whimsy (DEMO)
thesacredlobo- 08/26/2022 03:17 AM
- 96 views
Intro
"The Cat's Minute Whimsy" was a game being developed by roseredpinball near the end of 2016 using RPG Maker VX Ace. And like many abandoned projects that never got past the demo stage. I have no idea why the developer gave up on this game. My best educated guess based on their posts is that they were having issues getting the engine to do certain things they wanted. As a result they just gave up on this project and decided to find something else to do.
Admittedly I've been there and done that before so I really can't criticize roseredpinball that harshly over this. In fact, she got further than I ever got since I never even got a project to the demo stage before. I'd usually make a couple of really bad maps and just give up since making a game was way more effort than just playing a game and reviewing it.
At any rate one of my biggest complaints about this project right out of the gate is the size of the demo at over 1.6 GBs. Apparently roseredpinball wasn't sure what resources she was going to include the final build so she included the entire RTP as well as few additional resources she had picked up elsewhere with the demo. A decision that really annoys me since the demo takes less than ten minutes to beat. And that includes time spent on interacting with various objects.
Game Breaking Bug
The demo was also never updated to fix an eventing error found by sylphries where if your below the wolf and give it a rainbow flower it will cause the game to endlessly hang. This is because after thanking the player the wolf will try to move downwards in order to exit the area and your character being in the way means the wolf is endlessly trying to walk through an impassable object and this causes the game to endlessly hang. Admittedly this is a pretty common mistake among amateur developers. And this appears to be the only project the developer ever worked on. So I'm not that upset about this game breaking bug. After all, the demo can be readily conquered in under five minutes if you speed through it. So this bug isn't going to cost you that much time even if you haven't dropped a save file before giving the wolf a rainbow flower.
Story
The demo does lay the foundations for a story with Melanie, the main character, getting sucked into a fantasy realm by a powerful dark force that also turns her into a cat. Shortly after leaving a bar full of rude patrons you'll stumble across an injured wolf that's really a witch. After helping her retrieve a rainbow flower she decides to lend Melanie a helping hand by transferring at least part of her cat curse into a bell. This gives Melanie the ability to shift forms which was probably going to be used for gameplay purposes.
Admittedly this isn't an entirely original idea since the original build for "Malice" was going to include a similar feature and this feature actually is included in "Ranma ½: Akanekodan Teki Hihou" or "Ranma 1/2: Treasure of the Red Cat Gang" if your looking for an English translation of the title. At the same time this feature does open up possibilities for puzzles where you'll need to transform back and forth in order to solve them. Unfortunately the demo ends after the player is supposed to gain access to this ability. So this is a planned feature and not one you'll encounter in the demo.
Gameplay
For the demo build all you can really do is walk around and interact with various people and objects. Admittedly most of the people in the tavern are rather rude.
So it may be best to avoid them. After all, there's only so many times I can be told to get lost before it starts to feel personal.
Graphics and Sound
On the graphical and sound side of things the demo is simply alright in my opinion. While it is obvious that a lot of the assets used in this demo either come from the RTP or were found online for free. They tend to blend together alright for the most part.
My biggest gripe with the same is that the mapping feels a bit off. A good example of this issue is the map shown below.
The way the trees are setup on this map just feels off to me. I'm just left wondering why the trees aren't just clumped up in a way where there is a lot more darkness on the side of the map.
Conclusion
If I had been following this when the demo first dropped I'd probably be a lot more disappointed about this project never getting updated after the initial release of the demo. After all, the idea of being able to switch between being a cat girl and a cat does open up some potentially unique options for solving puzzles. And if that aspect of the game had been included in the demo I might have still suggested people take a look at this demo for an idea they could try to implement in their own games. As it stands, I'd say this one isn't worth the time it will take to download.
"The Cat's Minute Whimsy" was a game being developed by roseredpinball near the end of 2016 using RPG Maker VX Ace. And like many abandoned projects that never got past the demo stage. I have no idea why the developer gave up on this game. My best educated guess based on their posts is that they were having issues getting the engine to do certain things they wanted. As a result they just gave up on this project and decided to find something else to do.
Admittedly I've been there and done that before so I really can't criticize roseredpinball that harshly over this. In fact, she got further than I ever got since I never even got a project to the demo stage before. I'd usually make a couple of really bad maps and just give up since making a game was way more effort than just playing a game and reviewing it.
At any rate one of my biggest complaints about this project right out of the gate is the size of the demo at over 1.6 GBs. Apparently roseredpinball wasn't sure what resources she was going to include the final build so she included the entire RTP as well as few additional resources she had picked up elsewhere with the demo. A decision that really annoys me since the demo takes less than ten minutes to beat. And that includes time spent on interacting with various objects.
Game Breaking Bug
The demo was also never updated to fix an eventing error found by sylphries where if your below the wolf and give it a rainbow flower it will cause the game to endlessly hang. This is because after thanking the player the wolf will try to move downwards in order to exit the area and your character being in the way means the wolf is endlessly trying to walk through an impassable object and this causes the game to endlessly hang. Admittedly this is a pretty common mistake among amateur developers. And this appears to be the only project the developer ever worked on. So I'm not that upset about this game breaking bug. After all, the demo can be readily conquered in under five minutes if you speed through it. So this bug isn't going to cost you that much time even if you haven't dropped a save file before giving the wolf a rainbow flower.
Story
The demo does lay the foundations for a story with Melanie, the main character, getting sucked into a fantasy realm by a powerful dark force that also turns her into a cat. Shortly after leaving a bar full of rude patrons you'll stumble across an injured wolf that's really a witch. After helping her retrieve a rainbow flower she decides to lend Melanie a helping hand by transferring at least part of her cat curse into a bell. This gives Melanie the ability to shift forms which was probably going to be used for gameplay purposes.
Admittedly this isn't an entirely original idea since the original build for "Malice" was going to include a similar feature and this feature actually is included in "Ranma ½: Akanekodan Teki Hihou" or "Ranma 1/2: Treasure of the Red Cat Gang" if your looking for an English translation of the title. At the same time this feature does open up possibilities for puzzles where you'll need to transform back and forth in order to solve them. Unfortunately the demo ends after the player is supposed to gain access to this ability. So this is a planned feature and not one you'll encounter in the demo.
Gameplay
For the demo build all you can really do is walk around and interact with various people and objects. Admittedly most of the people in the tavern are rather rude.
So it may be best to avoid them. After all, there's only so many times I can be told to get lost before it starts to feel personal.
Graphics and Sound
On the graphical and sound side of things the demo is simply alright in my opinion. While it is obvious that a lot of the assets used in this demo either come from the RTP or were found online for free. They tend to blend together alright for the most part.
My biggest gripe with the same is that the mapping feels a bit off. A good example of this issue is the map shown below.
The way the trees are setup on this map just feels off to me. I'm just left wondering why the trees aren't just clumped up in a way where there is a lot more darkness on the side of the map.
Conclusion
If I had been following this when the demo first dropped I'd probably be a lot more disappointed about this project never getting updated after the initial release of the demo. After all, the idea of being able to switch between being a cat girl and a cat does open up some potentially unique options for solving puzzles. And if that aspect of the game had been included in the demo I might have still suggested people take a look at this demo for an idea they could try to implement in their own games. As it stands, I'd say this one isn't worth the time it will take to download.
