BobOnTheKebab
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Completed
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Time Played
--
Days in Journal
1 day
Last played
May 3, 2023
Platforms Played
This review contains spoilers
I went into this expecting it to be a pretty bite-sized game, but I did not expect it to be as short as it is. There's only three stages. Honestly, it could have been even shorter for me if I didn't have to retry a few levels due to losing. I suppose that isn't necessarily a bad thing, just rather surprising to me. Cat Girl Without Salad is one of those April Fools games, released as a sort of "joke game" where the game announcement seems like a joke but its actually a real game. As a result, these games tend to be rather small scale and aren't meant to be taken seriously at all. With the context in mind, Cat Girl Without Salad is good at serving its purpose as a one-off gag, but you're not getting a game with much substance here. I'm kinda shocked that it has only had one other review, considering the Switch version of this game is 5 years old (8 years old for the original PC release) as of writing this review and it was made by WayForward, a decently well-known developer. I guess the novelty of being an April Fools joke didn't really give this game any more time in the spotlight.
With the way this game was marketed, you might think its some sort of genre mashup game. I know I initially thought that, anyway. The truth is, it's not; it's actually a very straightforward arcade style side scrolling shoot-'em-up. The main thing that distinguishes Cat Girl Without Salad is that the powerups are parodies of game genres, which is where the whole gimmick of it being a genre mashup comes from. You have the default Pea Shooter, then all the other powerups are parodies of the following game genres: Platformer, Puzzle, Sports, RPG, Maze (Pac-Man clone), and Rhythm. All of them were pretty fun to use except for the Rhythm powerup, which just felt counterintuitive to the game design since its difficult to focus on dodging enemy fire when you also need to follow a rhythm to be able to shoot at all. Unfortunately its pretty easy to get hit, and you lose your currently earned ability after only taking one hit with no way to get it back until the powerup pops up again after an enemy death. Considering these are pretty much the main selling point of this game, the sheer ease of losing it and having to rely on the mindless Pea Shooter was a little odd to me. Otherwise, yea, this is a standard arcade shooter, and its a little hard to screw that up.
There's no real story, so I'll just cover the characters and art style. The main character, Kebako, seems to be a goofy self-aware parody of the typical oblivious hyperactive girl you'd expect to see in an anime or something. Her design alone would probably clue you into that with how much of a purposeful mismatched mess it is, full of bright oversaturated colors and contrasting ideas. She has the memory of a goldfish, she likes food and loves to remind you of that, she is a terrible problem solver, etcetera. I have to admit, I found her character to be pretty charmingly moronic. Her assistant essentially plays the straight man to her absurdity, just trying to steer her the right way. Every other character pretty much feels like a loving parody of anime and RPG tropes, some more goofy and others more self-serious. The villains love to monologue at Kebako about their tragic past or how she ruined their lives, but she is utterly baffled by it all and barely even remembers these weirdos. I could see the jokes falling flat for a lot of people, especially considering how tiringly cliché some of it feels, but I had my brain turned off the whole time playing the game so I thought it was fine. It's just delightfully absurd.
Overall, Cat Girl Without Salad is way too barebones to justify really playing much in my opinion, but that seems to be the intention. It's a one-off gag game you play once, chuckle at a little, then probably never touch again. Still, though, its not a bad game by any means, and it serves its intended purpose well. I give this a three stars, not bad in my book but pretty unremarkable and way too short even in the context of what kind of game its meant to be (The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog for instance is another April Fools joke game that had way more content to it than this does).
With the way this game was marketed, you might think its some sort of genre mashup game. I know I initially thought that, anyway. The truth is, it's not; it's actually a very straightforward arcade style side scrolling shoot-'em-up. The main thing that distinguishes Cat Girl Without Salad is that the powerups are parodies of game genres, which is where the whole gimmick of it being a genre mashup comes from. You have the default Pea Shooter, then all the other powerups are parodies of the following game genres: Platformer, Puzzle, Sports, RPG, Maze (Pac-Man clone), and Rhythm. All of them were pretty fun to use except for the Rhythm powerup, which just felt counterintuitive to the game design since its difficult to focus on dodging enemy fire when you also need to follow a rhythm to be able to shoot at all. Unfortunately its pretty easy to get hit, and you lose your currently earned ability after only taking one hit with no way to get it back until the powerup pops up again after an enemy death. Considering these are pretty much the main selling point of this game, the sheer ease of losing it and having to rely on the mindless Pea Shooter was a little odd to me. Otherwise, yea, this is a standard arcade shooter, and its a little hard to screw that up.
There's no real story, so I'll just cover the characters and art style. The main character, Kebako, seems to be a goofy self-aware parody of the typical oblivious hyperactive girl you'd expect to see in an anime or something. Her design alone would probably clue you into that with how much of a purposeful mismatched mess it is, full of bright oversaturated colors and contrasting ideas. She has the memory of a goldfish, she likes food and loves to remind you of that, she is a terrible problem solver, etcetera. I have to admit, I found her character to be pretty charmingly moronic. Her assistant essentially plays the straight man to her absurdity, just trying to steer her the right way. Every other character pretty much feels like a loving parody of anime and RPG tropes, some more goofy and others more self-serious. The villains love to monologue at Kebako about their tragic past or how she ruined their lives, but she is utterly baffled by it all and barely even remembers these weirdos. I could see the jokes falling flat for a lot of people, especially considering how tiringly cliché some of it feels, but I had my brain turned off the whole time playing the game so I thought it was fine. It's just delightfully absurd.
Overall, Cat Girl Without Salad is way too barebones to justify really playing much in my opinion, but that seems to be the intention. It's a one-off gag game you play once, chuckle at a little, then probably never touch again. Still, though, its not a bad game by any means, and it serves its intended purpose well. I give this a three stars, not bad in my book but pretty unremarkable and way too short even in the context of what kind of game its meant to be (The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog for instance is another April Fools joke game that had way more content to it than this does).