Cattails: Wildwood Story Review

The original Cattails game was a cute title featuring adorable felines, but the game was full of fetch quests and grinding to make currency, which ended up making it feel bland after a while. Will the sequel Cattails: Wildwood Story take the fun elements of the first game and improve on the things that made it feel repetitive? I am so ready to become a cat and lead my own kitty clan to ensure their survival!

This is a feline-themed life simulation game that borrows elements from survival, RPG, and dating sim games; you play as a cat who lives in a land made up of three different cat colonies that all follow the Forest Guardian — who happens to be a lion. All the cats took the Guardian as law, so all the colony leaders respected each other, and there was a variety of prey to hunt for food. Until an earthquake hit, crumbling the Sacred Temple and opening a giant rift in the ground. Not only was the land destroyed, but its Guardian was beginning to fade away. The land was no longer safe for any cat, so it was decided that each cat would decide which leader to follow. Together they would find new lands to settle and build a new home and temple so that the Guardian's spirit would survive. 

Your character volunteers to lead a group of felines into the unknown to begin a new start. The name of your cat? Well, that's up to you. The first thing you will do is name your kitty — I chose Cpt Fluffypnts as there wasn't enough space for the full name. The best part is you get to select your title as leader, so I selected Captain so now we have Captain Cpt Fluffypnts! It felt like a fitting leader-type name! Then you get to select the colour and pattern of your cat's fur. There are 30 different options, so there is definitely no shortage of options. You also get to select your character's body type, selecting if your cat is shorthair, fluffy, or slender to name a few of the options. You can also customise the head, tail, ears, eyes, and even the pitch of its meow. It sounded accurate enough to get my real cat's attention! Do you want a deep meow or a high-pitched mew like that of a kitten? If you get bored of your look and want to go in for a makeover, you can do that at any time. You can give your cat a colourful dye job. Who wouldn't want a kitty with turquoise fur? 

Once you have completed the most important job of the game, you have tasks that you need to address. Make adequate shelter and find food before it gets dark out. Some of the cats (Spark) are tired of always moving and setting up caps at new locations. So as a leader, you need to find something to help them feel better and motivated to help the clan. Ember — an orange cat who knows a lot about herbs — tells you about a pink plant called Valerian that gives cats a spring in their step. You will have to explore the area and find this special flower. Once you locate it, you will pick it up and add it to your inventory. Return to Sparks and give them the Valerian. The cat is surprised by your kindness and is incredibly grateful. Each of your followers has a four-star system, each with one star filled in. This feels like a likeness or happiness gauge.

Now that you have gone gathering, it is time to learn how to hunt and get food. When hunting you will use LT to slowly sneak towards your prey, once you are close enough you can pounce to grab it. Whether you are successful or not will depend on the quick time event that occurs. Hit the line in the green area to capture it, if your timing is off, you will have to find something else in the area to go after. In the pause menu, you can select the hunting mode; if you don't like the quick time events, you can have it decided with a coin toss instead. 

The next important thing you need to learn is how to fight. These "tutorials" are happening because of elements in the story which make them more interesting than the "to do this, hit this button" type of lesson. Your cat encounters a mysterious type of feline it has never seen before known as a voidcat, and will have to use its claws to swipe at the enemy and defend itself against the attack. There are two options to use, a standard swipe or a charged one. The charged attack is more powerful but your cat is stuck looking in that direction, so if an enemy moves, you will have to let go of the charge and realign yourself. 

Like many survival games out there, you have a lot of things to do to ensure that you stay alive. Your little kitty can get hungry and take damage if you don't eat one of the yummy critters you caught while out hunting. To replenish your hearts you will need to eat an herb like Goldenseal that will give you instant health. Besides that, you can go back to your house and sleep in your den. I find that if you are out hunting really late at night, you are bound to run into stronger foes, like snakes, that are fast and can do massive damage to you. If you happen to "pass out" during your adventure, you will awaken in Doctor Krampy's den. He has patched up your wounds, but any items or food that you may have accumulated since you last saved were dropped and they are gone. So this is a great lesson to remind you to save frequently, especially when you find something special. Fortunately, you won't have to travel all the way back to your den, you can just pause the game and select quick save.  

In the top right corner of your screen, you will see a mini-map. This covers the one square that you are currently in. To get a wider view, pause the game and select the Map. This will show you the full region that you are in, and what areas have unfriendly creatures — voidcats — to defeat. When you walk into a square labelled with swords, you will find the enemy, along with other cats from your clan fighting. The voidcats are fast and strong, so you will have to make sure that you dodge their attacks. Luckily with help from the other felines, these battles aren't horribly hard, but you can still take some damage if you aren't careful. Even if you only land a couple hits and your friends do most of the work, you will still earn XP to power up your cat and you can collect the Voidmarrow that the defeated enemies drop. This writhing shadowy essence can be used to craft new items for your kitty clan.

There is a huge range of things that you can craft in Cattails: Wildwood Story with the ingredients that you find exploring the surrounding habitat and other areas like the mines. You can make flower food to use with the seeds you crafted to grow your own crop of useful herbs. In the Mole Mine, you will be mining (slashing stones with your claws) to find gems, ores, and other treasures. I even found a squirrel hidden in a rock… That doesn't make much sense, but I ate it anyway! Reminds me of finding meat in the walls in Castlevania. There is a forging table where you can use the rocks, ores, and gems that you have found to create handy items like a headlamp, polished stones, and even an item called the Wretched Talisman.

The title card for Cattails: Wildwood Story features an image with hand-painted cats chasing butterflies. The game itself does not have a painted look like this but rather a SNES-era pixel art aesthetic. I love games with this retro look so I was totally happy with it. When talking to each of the different cats, the text box shows a close-up picture of the cat's face, and this image has more of that painterly style. These portraits are animated, so it was more than just a static picture of a kitty's face. Each feline has its own personality, some of them are a little lazy like Spark, Ember is hardworking and owns an emporium, then the doctor is really eclectic and wears a plague doctor's mask all the time making him look like a giant bird.

The overworld music is happy and has a jazzy beat like you expect to hear from cosy-like titles. While in battle, it gets more tense, but as soon as the battle is done it goes back to the chill and relaxing feeling. The sound effects are good and as usual, I absolutely love all the different-sounding cat meows! Your home den has an old record player in it that will play all the old vinyls that you can find. It really adds a bit of class to your little home. If you ever want to remodel your space you have the ability to move things around and expand your area to make the space your own.

There is so much going on in Cattails: Wildwood Story that it will keep you busy for a very long time. With a massive amount of customisation options available for everything you can make your cat, den, and settlement exactly how you want it, and that is separate from the tons of stuff you can craft and hunt. Once you build a new temple, you get to recruit new cats to join your kitty tribe, each feline requires certain items to entice them to join. Completing these recruiting tasks adds another challenge to the game. 

If you are a fan of super cute and cosy survival games with a great cast of adorable characters, plus the chance to have little adorable kittens of your own (without the litterbox), Cattails: Wildwood Story is a title that you have to try. It still has the usual gameplay loop trappings of hunting, sleeping, performing tasks, etc. like a lot of survival games have, but with so many extras and a good story, it didn't feel as repetitive as I expected. I just wanted to make my kitty clan happy and it was rewarding when the other cats would send me thank-you letters and gifts!