A new adventure begins when a heart-shaped stranger arrives on Kitty Island, bringing the news: Kittey’s parents are missing! As Kittey searches for them, he must face what remains of a broken world soon approaching its end. Kittey’s adventure may lead to some uncomfortable truths. Make sure to keep collecting those strange Power Hearts that litter the world, though. If you get enough of those, you’ll surely win! Right?
90s throwback
Heart chain kitty looks and feels like it was made in the late, maybe even early 90s. Heart chain kitty is a 3D platforming Collect-a-Thon with an animal mascot as the main character. This is a continuation of a freeware game series made by the same developer called “A Game with a Kitty”.
Straight PC port
Heart Chain Kitty on Switch is a very rough port of a rough game that came out on PC prior. Like I always say; if you port a PC game to a console make the controls fit for controllers. Heart Chain Kitty doesn’t do this, instead, it uses a cursor moved by moving the stick. Heck, even the buttons used within the game are a straight copy from the Xbox controls which means pressing B (same position as Xbox A) will make you select within the menus.
Messy controls
The camera controls are atrocious and take you back to the old days, maybe even worse. The camera has some slipperiness to it, so when turning it around, it keep momentum and goes further than you stopped it at, this made me a little bit dizzy. In some sections that camera snaps in place which makes the camera really jittery. The bad camera also makes judging depth really hard. I often had to redo really easy jumps because I thought the place to land on was closer.
There are a lot of different movement and attacking options you can unlock but nothing fixes the messy controls that are all over the place. Kittey jumping is off. The momentum you have in the air and the floatiness falling down, together with the camera controls, make the game almost unplayable.
Psychedelic void world
There are a little over 40 levels that consist of almost psychedelic worlds. The art style is super weird and the entire game has a filter that makes your screen look dirty. The same goes for everything within the environment and characters as well. They all look really blurry and fluffy instead of sharp and defined. All the objects in the world are really static, flowers and grass don’t move to name a few. The world overall is void of life, a blank canvas.
Messy on all fronts
Here is a small list of things that really bothered me outside of visuals or pure gameplay. The transitions between “Cutscenes” are really bad as well, and I’m not talking about the plethora of load screens. The transitions are similar to those found in PowerPoint, fun to play around with as a kid but not professional at all. The pop-up text/chat boxes are also hideous. They are massive and cover about 1/10 of your screen. You also can’t even interact with characters if they are not facing your direction. This is such a pain because; one you jump with B as well as interact with characters & two the characters randomly decide to turn around.
Game progression
There is no autosaving done. Not even after a chapter is completed. There is also no option to save the game within the menu. The only way that your progress is saved is when you activate checkpoints placed around the world.
Speaking of game progression, the game isn’t clear on what you need to do. The questing tab in the menu tells you about what you need to do but is really vague as well as doesn’t tell you where to go to complete these quests. There are also little restrictions to keep you from straying off the path. This all makes it so that it is really hard to know what you need to do and actually progress in the game. There are some secrets to unlock as well; Secret (2D) levels, multiple endings and hidden bosses, but none of these things makes the flaws of the game any better.
Conclusion
I don’t see any reason why you should buy this game. The core platforming gameplay is off, the world is void of life and the game progression is unclear. The game tries to market itself as: “If you like collect-a-thons like Banjo Kazooie or Mario Sunshine, this is the game for you!” which is the biggest lie I have ever heard. There was not one section within the game that was better than even the title screen for both games. I suggest you save up some money to buy a game that is worthwhile.
