Recent reviews by Ghostie

Carto is a very sweet, cleverly designed matching & shape based puzzle game. There is a strong focus on exploration featuring plenty of adorable hand-drawn characters and locations.

Puzzles mainly play by manipulating your map to gain access to areas previously not accessible, usually netting you a new map piece and/or progress in the story. There are other types of puzzles in the mix to keep the game fresh and challenging.

Honestly I thought this was a much older game because it plays so awkwardly. Controls got a little better when double jump was introduced but for the first hour of the game I was getting stuck on a lot of ledges instead of jumping over them without any clear explanation. I even had to kill Scrat to get out of a ditch I went down to smash some boxes.

The camera would frequently disagree with where it should be looking, in particular when close to walls or under objects. It’s disorientating at best but as it’s directly connected to directional movement it’s a liability and causes unfair deaths. This was emphasised as a substantial proportion of the game is set in enclosed ‘cave’ spaces.

Combat looks and feels unnatural, disconnected. Easily winnable by spamming attacks. Once I realised I could just walk past enemies, I felt no need to actually engage. Health points only really seem to matter when it comes to boss battles and perhaps the occasional secret collectable, otherwise just providing an extra buffer on top of the plentiful checkpoints.

Despite all the checkpoints, the only way that I could find to return to hub was at the beginning of the level, meaning if you start a level, you have to complete it (Albeit primarily just a problem for end game collectable hunting, having to redo boss fights wasn’t fun).

It isn’t all bad though, I liked the exploration although the levels are very linear outside of hunting collectables, good variety of enemy types to encourage different playstyles, a few fun action sequences, the aesthetics stay true to the movies and Scrat is adorable.

Final notes: some sound effects are vile, like fingernails on a chalkboard; puzzle doors have the exact same code every time; it’s not always clear if a path is walkable until you try to jump on it and slide down an invisible wall; I had to change my screen resolution every time I started the game.

It’s not shovelware but this game is definitely not worth the current asking price unless you really love Scrat and have patience for platformers that are extremely rough around the edges.

This is not a cat café themed management type game. I can hardly say I was expecting ‘Recettear’ style gameplay but understand there is nothing remotely management about this game like you might expect. You can buy and create recipes but that’s about it, each recipe only needs to be made once to be able to sell many and you don’t even control the price.

I still love ‘Calico’ though, filled with flaws and extremely shallow but so very sweet and wholesome. Noticeably - one bug I encountered had a cat stuck orbiting around me for the rest of the game but I honestly didn’t mind.

‘Calico’ offers brilliant customisation options for your avatar and is very inclusive of many body types and representation. The same goes for furniture in your café/house and you can adopt animals other than cats. At times the game can feel very ‘Ghibli-esque’ in presentation and story, it’s a magical slice-of-life. The quests are very positive and the way to bake is hilarious. Unsurprisingly, there is no combat (not that there needs to be); quests focus primarily on adding themed items and animals to your café, finding lost items/animals and exploring; forming a very relaxing and chill experience.

I hope if a sequel is ever made (or future updates added) the café side of the game is greatly expanded on - the potential is there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGMt0qWTDp0