Cattails (video game)

Cattails's gameplay is open-ended, allowing the player to explore, hunt prey, fight battles, and gain reputation within their chosen faction. The game has a difficulty setting that can be changed at any time, The player can also romance a selection of NPCs, which can have kittens with the protagonist if they're successfully wooed, who can tag along on adventures. == Plot ==

Cattails begins with the protagonist (a house cat) being abandoned on the side of the road. A stray named Coco finds them and helps them settle in to one of three colonies of feral cats: the Forest Colony, the Mountain Colony, and the Mystic Colony. The protagonist eventually comes into contact with a supernatural force known as the Forest Guardian, who tasks them with solving various puzzles and collecting items and offering them at an altar in order to restore balance to the forest. Completing the Forest Guardian's quests unlocks the ability to create your own colony. == Development ==

Cattails is the debut project from Indianapolis-based husband-and-wife duo Falcon Development. It began development in May of 2016, with funding from a Kickstarter campaign with over a thousand backers and almost $40,000 pledged, over twelve times the duo's original goal. It uses the GameMaker engine. The game released on Microsoft Windows, MacOS and Linux on December 1, 2017, and on Nintendo Switch on November 29, 2018. A sequel, Cattails: Wildwood Story, was released in 2023. In an interview with GameSkinny, Falcon Development lead Tyler Thompson explains that Cattails was loosely inspired by an earlier project of his, a Warriors fan game entitled Warrior Cats: Untold Tales. Another mentioned source of inspiration is Story of Seasons. The visuals of the game are in a pixel art style with a fixed top-down camera. == Reception ==

Cattails received mixed reviews from critics. Neal Ronaghan of Nintendo World Report calls the combat system "mostly chaotic cat tussles where you spam the attack button", but nonetheless praises the exploration, saying the game has "hidden areas galore". Both he In a review for COGconnected, Patrick Anderson describes the game's survival aspects as well-balanced, musing that he never felt like "a slave to the survival wheel". Siliconera's Jenni Lada writes that "the objectives that you set for yourself" are the most fun aspect of Cattails. while The Mary Sue's Madeline Carpou compares the game's world and plot to that of young adult novel series Warriors. In a feature for PC Gamer, Lauren Morton rejects the Stardew Valley comparisons, instead calling the game "Risk but with cats". == References ==