I like the vibes of the game. Its got crimson peak vibes but it never goes full Lynchian with the esoterism. I thought I would dislike the main character but the edgy bitch persona could have been worse. Not much to say on the point-and-click gameplay except that it has pretty clear conveyance all through-out with one, maybe two exceptions. You'll figure out what item to use on what quite naturally and it rarely feels contrived. While this makes the game feel easy, it is preferable to a hypothetical scenario in which the game's logic becomes such an obfuscated enigma that you end up trying to brute force every conceivable solution for each task.

This game was like catching a old movie you've never heard of on tv in the middle of the night as you flip through channels. You meant to change it during the commercial breaks but somehow you are at the end credits.

I liked this a lot more than I initially anticipated. It has its quirks and issues but overall I thought the experience was really solid

I am a sucker for these pixel type games. I always enjoy the style. And Kathy Rain is another example of it. The colors are very warm and pleasant here.

The music was actually quite good. There were certain pieces that were extremely unnerving and disturbing, but fit the tone those moments were going for.

I liked a lot of what was going on in the story conceptually. There's many moving parts and reincorporation of previous elements. Most of the characters are somewhat memorable and there's occasional funny banter. They did something interesting with the narrative near the end that felt engaging to go through.

I quite enjoyed playing the game and solving its puzzles. They didn't feel too hard or complicated, but they had enough going on to where as long as you're paying attention everything will click. There were some sections that had really clever ways of handling a situation.

I have gripes like I said. I think the voice acting was pretty solid overall, though there were moments where the direction didn't really work. Something crazy or serious would happen and then you'd interact with an object in the room and the delivery was totally flat. I also think Nathan's voice did not work at all for the character they were going for.

A lot of the dialogue in general can be annoying. Kathy in particular has really bad one liners. She's a part of a very very long and annoying list of modern characters who are really rude and arrogant and snarky intentionally to try and make them seem tough or cool. But it just comes off as her being a huge jerk. I don't actually dislike the character overall, she has a lot going on with her backstory and how she has processed her life. But I think the character could have been a touch more likeable. In general, the way the game kicks off with the mystery feels weird as a result. She is investigating her grandfather yet she came off like she didnt give two hoots about the the guy. She was late to the funeral so she could go smoke some cigs.

The last third, while interesting, felt a lot weaker than the rest of the game, it was a lot of buildup and intrigue, yet the section feels very rushed through and short. Theres a lack of payoff and real meat or substance. It's like they just kinda ran through it quickly because they ran out of time to develop it further.

Finally, I did like most of the puzzles, but some have the typical point and click trope of being needlessly complex. You'd have items you couldn't interact with the entire game, yet suddenly when you interact with it 4 hours later you can now pick it up. Many puzzles felt well thought out, then there were some where they just threw something together to draw out the game.

I should also mention on Switch load times were fairly long. The game in general feels a bit slow. It needs a run button.

Those seem like a lot of gripes, but they were all mostly minor because I really enjoyed the experience overall. A lot more than I thought I would.

If you like point and click adventure games, this one is a great recommend.

A point and click adventure about a young woman coming to terms with her own past as well as that of her family’s after going back home for a funeral and the mystery that is unearthed surrounding that death.
I came away thinking that the game was perfectly fine but that’s it. I often thought of Hobs Barrow and how that really set the scene for a small town story with its sense of place as I’m still quite fond of Bewlay whereas the setting for Kathy Rain doesn’t stand out for me nor does the time period it’s set in. Although it does allow for some nice interactions because of the technological constraints of the 90s.
The central mystery is interesting enough and it feels like a series in the making which I wouldn’t be opposed to playing. I just wasn’t as engaged as I would’ve liked which is a shame as it’s not bad. I think it’s partly down to the voice acting. The main character is okay but everyone feels somewhat middling to be honest as I didn’t warm to anyone.
It’s fine! If you’re a point and click fan your mileage will vary with this it might hit for you but it didn’t quite do it for me.

I enjoyed Kathy Rain despite some cringey moments/ lines here and there at the beginning, but nothing too bad to take me out of the experience playing this game (Believe me, I've played games with worse story and dialogue. Not to say this game is bad or anything.). The characters are well-written and likable, even Kathy. Although Kathy was pretty annoying at the beginning, she wasn't terribly written, and despite her daddy issues, it didn't really affect the character all that much, and she became much sympathetic and likable as the story goes on. The mystery definitely got me glued in from beginning to end. The creator of this game cited Twin Peaks as Kathy Rain's inspiration, and I can definitely see that in the some of the dialogue, writing, and horror-fantasy elements (besides a few obvious references to that show). The puzzles were not too hard to figure out (for the most part), but definitely left me stumped a few times (although that's just me and not to criticize the game for how hard the puzzles are, but a few could be explained a little better.). Overall, it's a fun point and click adventure game, pretty old school, and I highly recommend it.

i've owned the original game since the earlier days near its release but it took me so long to get around to this that i figured i'd just do the director's cut. it went for such a cheap price in the recent winter sale when you factored in the additional bundle discount for owning the old version that it was an easy sell.

having not played the original i'm not sure how substantial any changes that came with the Director's Cut were. what i played however was pretty different than what i expected. the mystery elements were all here and what i was looking for after first coming across the game but the darker, almost horror elements and developments that came with that were a surprise. it was my expectations and therefore my own fault but i was really hoping this was going to have a more grounded resolution to things but some of the environments in the end were interesting at least.

puzzles and point and click gameplay are all solid with nothing standing out in a significantly bad way. some of the solutions get into some brain wormy territory but that's standard for the genre and i'm used to it by now.

curious to see how i feel about Whispers of a Machine from the same devs. hopefully i don't wait so long to play it that it also sees a re-release before i got around to the copy in my library. 🤪

I was late to Kathy Rain, but the release of the Director’s Cut put it on my radar. There’s nothing like a good point and click where you can get lost in the puzzles and narrative, and Kathy’s adventure didn’t disappoint in that regard. As a character she came across as the edgy teen, her dialogue sassy and sarcastic, but quite honestly I liked her more for it.

The most fun I had was trying to figure out the unfolding mystery, as well as the various obstacles—usually people—that got in the way. What pleasantly surprised me was the horror that came out of nowhere, the weirdness that came from the Twin Peaks inspiration getting altogether freaky.

I was one of the few who bought Kathy Rain back in the day and I enjoyed the point'n'click adventure enough to purchase the Director's Cut shortly after its release despite knowing those improved versions often are more likely intended to cash in. In this case though it was about an independent project in "hobby" production alongside a full time job between 2011 and 2016 that in some parts still felt rushed and showed some inconsistency.

It didn't matter that much in a surreal story highly influenced by David Lynch and his Twin Peaks, but to get this out of the lane, what I also wanted to support to pave way for a possible sequel turned out familiar but more polished, so I decided against dissecting Kathy Rain for a comparison, accepting the Director's Cut as the definitive version intended by Clifftop Games' Joel Staaf Hästö.

Hästö regrets a couple of his original decisions according to the interview linked above, but Kathy Rain sure profits from taking place in the mid-nineties. Recapturing the atmosphere of pixel art and a revival of the supernatural via shows like the X-Files goes very well with the absence of mobile phones and google that can destroy a lot of the mystery tropes.

Like I've mentioned in my recent review for Full Throttle Remastered (the playthrough actually interrupting my Kathy Rain sessions because her Corley Motors vehicle reminded me of having Schafer's game in backlog) it was also a good time slot for bratty girls to take over and protagonist Kathy, a student of journalism, appears a lot more gruff than Veronica Mars as one of the other possible inspirational sources.

It's quite possible it shows that the sarcastic and motorcycle riding Kathy Rain was written by a male, but what draws me into that game from the first minute is that both Kathy and her christian roommate could have totally been part of our clique back then. If you grew up watching Roseanne rather with a crush on Darlene than Becky you might instantly like her as well.

With Kathy Rain returning to her hometown for the funeral of her grandfather we get an insight to her shattered family structure leading to putting clues together for what might have happened in the past. Though this builds up in proportion, in a way it's the opposite of another retro Twin Peaks adventure from the same era, Thimbleweed Park, that geeks out on Plato's cave allegory to have us look to the outside, whilst Kathy Rain is rather pushing us to look for the insides.

That makes sense though, as Kathy Rain's hard shell as so often is put up as protection with her being actually vulnerable. What connects the inheritance of trauma to the incorporation of environmental abnormalities into a religious narrative and its misinterpretation sums up the absurdity of how human beings seek for a truth in their own selective perception to legitimize their actions quite nicely. With an ambivalent internal logic set up in the best surreal sense, this graphic adventure has all the potential to speak to you depending on your individual point of view either.

In that vein, Kathy Rain is a lot more concerned about its plot and creating an interconnection of events than to bore you with countless red herrings and weird item combinations. For the most part, even though you might drive back and forth between a limited number of locations, it's quite rewarding to try the possibilities and only a few lock puzzles might distract you from the atmospheric flow. It only happened on one occasion I got stuck, because I didn't combine two inventory items to trigger an obvious conclusion. It's possible to fail in some situations, but the game will reset to a convenient point.

Having spent my teenage years in the nineties, I can't deny Kathy Rain feels somewhat natural to me. It doesn't depend on obvious reference as much as a lot of the recent retro games and with the detailed pixel graphics and voice acting directed by Wadjet Eye's Dave Gilbert, it might as well have been released as one of the earlier CD-ROM exclusive adventures of the time.

Even though the Director's Cut improves on the controls and drops the dial for a perfectly functional cursor, Kathy Rain is an almost perfect in-between of when point'n'clicks have been quite laborious and when they got streamlined into graphic novels reducing interaction to a better page flip. That means the game has rather modern features without erasing the unwieldiness to a point it couldn't be authentic anymore.

See, I understand young folks being bothered by having to climb the Katmobile for any change of scenery in Kathy Rain for instance, but from a perspective of having to run around on maps extensively even in the nineties, just having to click on an icon with even some of the obsolete territories being grayed out is darn tootin convenient. I wouldn't go as far as declaring it a feature, but instead of being a bug, it rather celebrates the grace of imperfection.

Depending on how you rush through the game you can finish Kathy Rain in between six and ten hours and as much as I'd love to dwell in that world forever it's probably for the better to leave me wanting more as long as there are interesting ideas to incorporate. Whilst you find clues via communication as much as hacking and lock picking, you will have to use contemporary technology as much as encourage hilarious performances, yet the game isn't overwhelmingly comical.

Sure there is room for more and as well I feel about the game, at the age of 43 I've just seen plenty enough to not have my mind completely blown by what Joel Staaf Hästö achieved with Kathy Rain. But I don't expect that these days as much as well. To me it's like the graphic adventure equivalent to a party at a random house where you join a discussion in the kitchen at four in the morning chatting about wildest theories with like-minded people you didn't even know before.

It makes me look forward to that other occasion, hoping Whispers of a Machine (check this review how it turned out), that I've had in backlog for too long now, can live up to that overall pleasurable impression I've had from Clifftop Games so far. What I hope for even more is Hästö expanding on Kathy Rain, if he's got the ideas. It sure can't be the same and it was probably for the best to straighten up the original first, but now I'd really like to hang out a couple of days more with those characters.

Would you like to read more of my backloggd adventure reviews?
Detective Gallo
Broken Age
One Night Stand
The Little Acre
The Wardrobe - Even Better Edition

(Note that I have not played the original Kathy Rain so I only have my playthrough of Director's Cut to base this review off of.)

I wouldn't say this is so much of a mystery point and click as a psychological horror point and click, but it still kept me engaged through its relatively short run time despite my prior expectations. The puzzles are nothing complex and be can easily solved by looking at one or two proper clues for directions, which is a great thing in a genre that's often known for obtuse problems with somewhat vague hints. The plot never gets too exposition heavy nor too overbearing or to levels of mindfuckery that took me out of the game (compared to some other narrative heavy games I've played, at least), and in fact I appreciate how much it told with pretty terse dialogue and environmental features. The start is a bit slow admittingly, but it definitely gets grittier once you're near the end of Chapter 3, and ramps up nicely from there. I'm not going to go into too much depth regarding its darker themes (such as abuse, regrets, mental illness, etc), but I think it touches upon these quite nicely without sounding too preachy or overbearing as well, which I appreciated. I do think that some of the characters could have been expanded upon a little bit more, but considering the short game length, I understand the limitations and fortunately no one seems exaggerated to the point of being a walking stereotype. If I really had to nitpick, the only major complaint I'd point out is that a lot of time was spent traveling back and forth between places (maybe 33% of the game was just driving on the motorcycle or walking inbetween places for me?), and I think this could have been eased by condensing the amount of content in some areas instead of introducing a few areas that you visit once or twice, and then never again. I'd say that Kathy Rain's a great little point and click if you're looking for a dark (but not Silent Hill 2 levels of dark) adventure game to tide you over during a rainy afternoon; it's not one of the greats, but it handled its run time well and it knows its place.

In 1995, journalist student Kathy Rain learns that her grandfather has passed. Its been over a decade since her mother dragged her out of their hometown and Kathy's more than a little guilty that she never tried to reconnect with her kindly grandparents. Returning to Conwell Springs, Kathy soon becomes intrigued by the strange, vegetative state her grandfather was in during the final years of his life. As she begins to investigate the wider circumstances, her hometown reunion takes a few turns for the bizarre...

Its been about five years since I played the original Kathy Rain so I had forgotten most of the details of the plot. Still, I largely followed a guide since I was retreading ground, so I probably finished this about half the time I would normally. All that in mind: I still like this game! Its a gritty little Twin Peaks piece, with punk vibes, stunning music and visuals, and an engaging story.

Kathy herself is a really enjoyable protagonist. A gritty punk protagonist is always a great underdog premise for a character. Generally bitter and sarcastic, but self-aware enough to have a laugh at her own expense when someone makes fun of her angst. Secretly dorky enough to genuinely enjoy playing scrabble with her Christian roommate on nights off. And the game is willing to go to some grim places about her past that does give you a sense of the wider tragedies and problems in her past that she's trying to move on from.

That said, at times this can be somewhat hamfisted and dangerously close to exploitative. The game touches on themes of abortion, abuse, and mental illness and I'm not often 100% sure its qualified to do so. It feels generous to assume the 90s setting could explain some people's reaction to the concept of mental illness, but I don't want to dismiss it either. There's also the depiction of Nathan, a disabled man with a childlike mentality. On one hand, characters are always kind to Nathan and it never feels like he's the butt of a joke. On the other hand, his disability is never fully explained and he's given a connection to supernatural forces that are... dubious and unclear. Its possible he merely strolled through the supernatural plot and was lucky enough to be ignored. But its hard to get a read on that plotline.

Still, my real curiosity returning to this game was how it worked as a Director's Cut. While much of the game is unchanged, the new version takes the time to expand on details that were confusing or left hanging. In the original game, Nathan's mother Sue abruptly vanishes as Nathan's subplot kicks into overdrive and Nathan's story ends as soon as it begins. Here, Sue and Nathan are given more time to breathe and get an actual ending. The game adds a montage to the climatic finale that features various characters, including Sue and Nathan, heal from their decades-long struggles. Its a nice moment and it makes me believe in the sincerity of the devs.

Finally, and hardest to explain is like... Kathy Rain is probably supposed to a lesbian? I just look at her and go "well yeah, that's a lesbian" even if the game doesn't seem to know she is. And that was easy to ignore five years ago. But the thing is, two years ago, Clifftop Games released a Nordic cyberpunk noir game called Whispers of the Machine. And that's a great point and click on its own, but it ALSO features a protagonist who is obviously a lesbian yet is inexplicably straight. That game even has an ending where Vera can run away from her old life with another woman, except she's hallucinating her dead boyfriend the entire time and trying to reenter a relationship with that maybe ghost. And after both of these games its like, what's going on here Clifftop? Its like they're really into lesbian aesthetics but don't understand its a lesbian aesthetic. I don't know what to do with that. I could just be projecting, but its so unbelievably jarring.

Anyway, despite this being a lot of complaints, the game is good. Twin Peaks style point and clicks are good.