Catmaze is a charming Metroidvania that suffers from less than excellent gameplay.

We'll start with the bad. The controls are a unresponsive and floaty -- I've never walked off cliffs because of failing to jump so many times in my life. You fight using familiars, all of which have slightly annoying attack patterns. Enemy hit boxes are a bit rough around the edges. Don't even get me started on failing to drop through platforms while holding down and jump. All of this adds together to taking a lot of frustrating damage from enemies that would be easy to avoid and defeat in other games. I decided early on to just keep a full stock of potions, and I never had a game over as a result, but everything felt much more difficult than it should have. Honestly, if it felt a little worse to play, I probably would have dropped it in the first half hour.

That said, I still enjoyed my time with the game in the end. The map and exploration were, thankfully, well enough done. Nothing mind blowing, but nothing frustrating. There was an acceptable amount of backtracking, and the rewards for side quests were well worth it.

The pixel art was charming and was effectively created a nice variety of environments. The portrait art for main characters felt like something an amateur would upload to deviant art, but I wasn't too put off by it. Similarly the sound effects came across a bit amateurish, but not grating. The soundtrack was fairly limited, but the tracks that are there were plenty enjoyable.

I loved the Slavic mythology influences. The story was fairly basic, but it drew on different enough inspiration from the average game that it felt fresh. I really enjoyed the characters and their stories. You got to know about each of the antagonists and see them as beings with their own goals, which is fairly rare in a Metroidvania. I found myself feeling emotions related to the story during the ending, rather than just being happy I beat a game, which, again, is fairly rare for me in a Metroidvania.

In the end, I'd recommend Catmaze if you're in the mood for a bit of a different fantasy story along with your Metroidvania and don't mind putting up with the controls.