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I picked up a really unique game called Kitten Burst during the latest Steam sale. I wasn’t very far into the game when I knew I’d be writing about it here once I finished it. So here we are!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1592360/Kitten_Burst/
Kitten Burst is a flying cat racing game with musical bullet hell boss battles set in 2000s cyberspace. Yeah, I really did mean it when I said this game was unique. You could argue it’s worth playing for that reason alone, or even for the killer soundtrack… not that you would ever need to. At its core, Kitten Burst is just a solid, fun game.
The races in Kitten Burst are set up checkpoint style with you being allowed to hit the points in any order you choose, and often there are more checkpoints in the race than are required for completion. I think this is a great choice because it allows most of the races to have a lot of interesting routes depending on your build. Some routes might be more attractive if you’ve used your upgrade points to optimize for speed, while you may go for an entirely different route if you’ve chosen to focus on something like maneuverability instead. It’s also important to mention that you charge boost by flying closely to obstacles. It’s a fun risk and reward mechanic which makes it so the fastest path between two points might not necessarily be the most direct one.
Something else I love about the races is that you’re your own opponent. You’re racing yourself with no predefined goals. Rather than having a required time to beat, you’re simply given more points the faster you complete each race. Leveling up both your cat and your own skills at the game means you’ll always have a reason to go back to older races again and again.
The bullet hell boss battles are really fun too. Part of their appeal to me is how they’re all tightly synced to the music to the point where you sometimes feel like you’re playing a rhythm game. Every one of the boss battle songs is great and getting to hear the next one quickly became something I was always looking forward to.
I guess that brings me to the soundtrack. The OST release is something like three hours long which is insane for a solo dev indie game! And as I said, it’s good too, and very memorable. Each song takes musical inspiration from the area you find it in. Helped by the really diverse levels, the soundtrack takes you through a lot of different electronic subgenres.
So yeah, I just wanted to bring some more attention to a great game that most people probably haven’t heard of yet. By the way, that Steam sale I mentioned is still ongoing if you’re reading this in the next several days after posting. GLHF!
— JP / 2024-07-06