I like mature games. I'm desperate for mature games. I did a game giveaway where the requirement was recommending a mature game. I like that this game wasn't all cotton candy and sugarpuffs like most games are, being family friendly for eight year olds. I like that this had a main character struggling with severe depression. However, there were several things I didn't like.

I felt the game wandered too much. It's like when you make a movie and shoot five hours of footage, but then go into the editing room and cut it down to two hours. You trim out all the boring parts, and unnecessary parts, and tighten the pacing, and so forth. I feel this game needs that. At the very start of the game, I was walking. There was no combat, I was not fighting anyone, I was not talking to anyone, I wasn't being chased, I wasn't even looking at beautiful vistas, I was just... walking. I walked across a scene, then another, then another. Then, to shake things up, I walked across another. I was several minutes into the game and nothing was happening!

Normally people's excitement for a game is very high when just starting, as they don't know what the game will be like and the possibilities are infinite. I'm not saying every game has to start with a car chase or an explosion but simply walking is one of the quickest ways to bore me. I really dislike situations where, after hours of play, you finally make your way to the very end of a dungeon/ building/ starship and, after defeating the boss, you then have to schlep ALL the way back to the beginning. All of the walking before I even got to the ambulance put a damper on my high spirits for the game. The slow pace of the first chapter with all it's walking back and forth and walking through scene after scene after scene burnt away all the excitement I had had and I think really lowered my pleasure for the entire game.

When I talked to the old woman I refused to serve her, and she said I was on my own. I'm not sure, but I have the sense that I missed some vital info. Much later in the game she mentions how I know what the candles mean, when I had no clue, and still don't. It makes me wonder what I missed. I also assumed that there would be some obvious clue as to who the parasites were, since she said I would easily know. I expected a glowing aura or special tattoo or something. When the first parasite was revealed and I had had no clue, I felt that what she had told me was unreliable. As such, I immediately dismissed everything she had said, and then felt rather lost and aimless for the whole game. There was never any real mention of parasites again so I just felt... lost.

Some of the events seemed poorly connected or illogical. I don't remember where but I recall at one point I was doing something, then suddenly I was somewhere else with no explanation of how I'd gotten there or what was going on. It felt like pages were missing from a book, and I thought this was a badly written section of an indie game. I also thought the interaction with the wife in chapter 4 was very bad. It may be that I missed an alternate solution, but she killed me three times in that house. Three times and she never got the least suspicious? Really? I also don't know why she shambled everywhere like a zombie.

Reading the threads here it appears many of you were scared during play? I wasn't scared once. I was even scornful when Susan was scared, particularly in Joe's(?) apartment.

I felt the argument with Susan's husband was ridiculously drawn out. I understand that her depression is core to the game, and this fight is where it came from, but good god, I just wanted it to be over!! If there had been a "skip argument and save half an hour of your life" button, I would have pushed that in an instant. I didn't feel anything for her or her husband and, like the game start, the boredom I felt over this drawn out fight embittered me more against the game as I resented having to go through it. It's tiresome and worn out and I've seen it a thousand times in movies and books and games. I don't relate to it and don't want to be subjected to it over and over again.

I thought the final encounter with Eye was quire far-fetched. If Eye is paralyzed, how the hell is the apartment filled with cameras and deadly traps? Do you honestly expect me to believe that his dad did all that? "Sure son, I'll fill my home with deadly poison traps that I'll build myself , and let you invite people over repeatedly to kill them (because gas masks NEVER fail, and traps NEVER go off accidentally). Oh, I'll also get rid of the bodies for you. I'll also build you an airtight room, put cameras up, and get you millions in equipment, all while living in a shitty apartment in a very bad neighborhood. I'll even cause your oxygen tanks to leak during this final encounter".

I didn't understand why Mitzi never had any lines at the end saying "get out Susan!" She apparently wanted to kill Eye so badly that she didn't care about the oxygen tanks and was perfectly fine blowing herself up. But she was fine blowing up Susan too? That doesn't seem like her at all.

Lastly, posters here seem to see Eye as evil, even getting off on the deaths of others. I didn't see that at all. It seemed clear to me that the reason Eye spent all his time online talking about suicide was because that's what he wanted for himself. Sure, there was jealousy of others. Just as Susan says early on how she's jealous of all the other people who seem to be happy while she isn't, I'm sure Eye was also jealous of people who could live, when he couldn't. His main desire though was to kill himself, and he couldn't.

Do any of you know what that's like? Can you even imagine? Can you imagine how much pain and misery and hopelessness you would need to want to commit suicide, and then, on top of that, NOT be able to??? Can you possibly imagine a worse fate? A life so terrible, so horrible, that all you want to do is die, and yet you can't? It immediately minded me of "Johnny Got His Gun". For those who don't know, it's about a soldier who loses his arms, legs, ears, eyes, and mouth. He can't communicate other than by moving his head, and he signals SOS over and over as he begs someone to kill him, yet nobody does. Here's a clip from the very end of the movie. Metallica also did a video with clips from the movie.

I did enjoy the game, it's just there were portions that I hold against it. I want to thank Novotnus for his graciousness and generosity. : )

Hey, Blue, you're quick! :) This actually worked for me - weird world that changes and rearranges itself when you turn your head around and doesn't follow the laws of physics. And the dead deer. For me, that dead deer (that works as a guide in the beginning of the chapter), tied and stabbed, was a message: 'something is in the woods, and it's probably after you now... or just may try to hurt you for it's own entertainment'. The game pretty much shows you what the candles mean - every time you blow one, someone at the edge of life and death dies. All Queen tells you if you decide to serve her is that you need to make a sacrifice of blood and a sacrifice of soul in order to leave the Otherworld.
And I guess she meant that you'll recognize the parasites by their actions :) Well, I was. During Joe's otherworld (but that's maybe because I 'knew' Joe from Downfall). And sometimes I felt... uncomfortable. I guessed he had followers, just like Hannibal Lecter was using Tooth Fairy in Red Dragon. That's the only way to explain his high-tech equipment and deathtraps in the apartament.
And his victims (at least Jack) were killed outside of his apartament. Jack killed himself following Adam's instructions. That probably was the case in most of the other murders. But she never shoots until Susan gives her a go :) Then why won't he ask his father or whoever helped him with the equipment to assist him? Euthanasia \ mercykilling can be morally ambiguous, but I guess most people will agree that it's not as bad as helping someone in multiple murders. You're welcome, Blue :)

I had three other games I was considering playing but with your wonderful gift, I gave it priority and bumped it to the top of the list. I played it all in one sitting. I didn't feel that at all. The gate with the animal heads showed someone was killing animals, and had been doing so long before I ever showed up. I assumed it was a hunter and didn't feel threatened at all. If anything, and it's a stretch, I felt this hunter might be trying to stop others from helping me. It's pretty weak though, as the raven was still helping me. I totally missed that. I thought perhaps they were chapter markers or something, showing that I had finished a portion of the game and was moving on the next mission. I thought the cutscene when I blew was giving me a little intro of what the next mission was about. Did you ID the doc before you were in the basement? Not being able to figure it out until the last minute meant (to me) there was no point. Hell, if being friendly meant you were actually a bad guy, then I was justified in suspecting Mitzi for most of the game. I kept waiting for her to just attack me already. I got the sense from the dad that Eye had killed folks lots of times in the apartment. Dad is not the sharpest computer user, so how would he know in the slightest that Eye was urging people to kill themselves? Why all the traps and safeguards and cameras if nobody came around? Just moments before she was trying to argue that Susan should have the mask so she wouldn't die. Then, when Susan shows up unharmed, she tells her never to scare her like that again (I think). After all that concern for Susan, her complete dismissal of Susan's wellbeing seems bizarrely out of place. Euthanasia is indeed difficult for some. I think it would be most difficult for someone to do to a loved one. There's a story of a woman who gave birth to a child with no brain. AFAIK, this child can never "live". It can't have a personality, or memories, or enjoy life. It simply eats and breathes on automatic, like someone in a coma, only with no chance of getting better. Even still, the baby's parents have kept it alive for two years. I'm not at all surprised that the dad can't kill Adam.

Don't forget the well-known case of Terri Schiavo. Or Dr. Kevorkian. Some people think life should be saved no matter what. Did you watch the clips I linked about Johnny Got His Gun? The full movie obviously explores it more, but I think keeping people alive "just because" is not good. Existence is not enough, people need to live. There's no doubt in my mind that someone like Eye would spend so much time arguing for suicide, because he wants it so desperately for himself. It's all he can think about.

Hmm, I really liked how slow and disorientating the first couple of chapters were. Still, the whole thing fell apart for me once the 'Eye of Adam' stuff took over as the main story and after I'd laughed my way through that absolutely rubbish scene with Susan's husband.

Based on the other threads and reviews on here I know I'm in the minority with this, but... I just don't get what's supposed to be so great about it. (Especially since I read a review somewhere else that listed all the problems I had with the game and the story, then scored it 9/10 anyway... ?!) I'll agree that all the Queen of Maggots and hospital scenes were great, however things like Susan signing up on Facebook, having painfully unfunny conversations with babysitters and meeting psychopaths who sound like they came from a bad Monty Python sketch were... not great.

Plus, I sat through all those miserable, droning monologues just to end up with "So... now I write a blog. Ho-hum."

Yeah once you realize Joe's in the game and her neighbor it's a huge shock!

I've seen that so often in game reviews that I stopped reading them ages ago. "Hey all, here's my 27 page review of this game and all the problems it has from not being able to install to deleting your bank account to blowing up your home. 10/10!!!!" The reviewer is clearly deceiving gamers who only look at the final rating and don't read the details. That, I liked. This isn't a kill the aliens-save the world game, with the president of the planet giving you a medal at the end, it's a game about depression and one person's journey. Essentially, depression is the dearth [sic] of hope, so the ending, with her connecting with the world again and taking her first steps to finding friends is the signal that she's on the path of recovery. One step at a time.

It's like watching an apocalypse movie where all life is destroyed but in the final shot, we see a small green bud growing, and we know that there's hope for tomorrow.

There are a lot of things I dislike about the game, and I'll agree that I don't think it "brilliant! (-Ebert)" or "tour-de-force (-Siskel)" or the like. It's NOT awesome IMHO (and I didn't like the anti-gay slurs), but it does score solid points for having mature content (very rare in games) and for including depression in a fairly realistic way (NEVER see in games). I really liked the music too, so points to micamic for the score!

It's kind of like the movie Hard Candy. Some may not like the content or feel it goes too far, or even simply isn't entertaining, but others liked it for its novelty and being something rare. It's the rarity perhaps, being refreshing in a world of Super Marios and Halos, that causes people to like it so much.

Well, you deserved some entertainment after your migty quest :)
And a little recommendation for you: Deadly Premonition. It's strange, weird, crazy... but I loved it. My thoughts were:
- Someone is here.
- That someone is capable of killing.
- He\she\it just killed that nice deer that was guiding me.
- Corpses of my character are everywhere around.
- This world rearranges itself.
- Are those cars in the forest burning?
Enough to keep me uncomfortable :) Actually, the Queen wants you to take Mitzi's life by blowing the last one. I got suspicious about him when Liz told me he stinks. 'He's really dead or he's a killer', I thought. I don't think he would be willing to show himself to most of his followers... Also, I guess he liked to observe the staircase or even spy on people inside their flats.
And even if someone visited him, it doesn't mean he killed them in his flat (if he used the same method he used for Jack, well, he would die along with the follower). I just assumed 'dark side consumed her' for a moment when she saw Adam for all that he was. She finally reached her goal she was pursuing for quite some time and just let the anger overcome her. I agree with you about euthanasia. It should be legal if someone is suffering, has no chance of geting better and wishes to stop the pain.
But Adam's followers were already brainwashed to believe suicide is the best thing for them. Why wouldn't they help their mentor?
And why does Adam keeps 'trophies' of his kills (photos of the victims) if all he wants is to die? It seems he takes pride in his deeds... Loved the movie... The demo kind of spoiled it for me :)

I added it to my wishlist; I'll see how it looks in a year. Half the reviews here mention how buggy it is ATM. I guess for me the real fact was that I was dead. I was not a living woman walking in a real forest with possible dangers, I was the spirit of a dead woman wandering some sort of afterlife. As such, I wasn't really concerned about "dying" since I was already dead. Ah, I didn't know that at all. I thought red herring; it was too obvious. I still say she wouldn't have been so consumed by bloodlust that she didn't care about blowing up Susan. I wouldn't call them brainwashed. Brainwashing involves getting people to do things they would NEVER do. These were people who were already close to despair, on the fence of life and death. Adam nudged them, but they were receptive to it in the first place.

As for the photos, I heard they were shots of the devs? In any case, I could see them as inspiration for himself. "One day... one day that'll be me..."

well, I like the moral argument about Adam's actions, in my opinion all the things in his place were an stage, he prepared it to lure a broken person who would not comit suicide and much likelly wanted him dead, basically it was all a morbid experiment.
He may not be evil, but I find his lack of regard toward life (even killing his own father and being fully aware he did) quite close to evil.

I sincerely appreciate your opinion, even though I highly disagree with it. In all honesty, I think it's a good thing to have a less positive opinion on the game, it helps people get other perspectives of it.

I'm not "better" nor "worse" than you for having liked it, and I have thought about this for a long time: this is a game that should play and feel very differently to whoever plays it -- which is true of most video game genres out there, but even more so with this one, even if you forget the fact it is a somewhat "classic" point and click (more like "move and interact", but, still, just a variation of the point and click formula).

The whole story/script was written by a single guy -- a nurse, nonetheless! -- so, obviously, it is a bit one-sided and has some flaws in terms of the "knowledge" of philosophy and/or psychology, some people I talked to found it to be riddled with clichés, to the point they couldn't bare the whole talk about depression and suicide. And that's ok. Personally, I've struggled with suicidal thoughts, social and relationship failures that lead me to deep depression stages for most of my life, and since I don't believe in psychology/psychiatry or religion, I really found this game to be able to help me in ways no other method could. It was my personal voyage, I could see myself in a lot of things Susan said and "felt", I started to feel attached to Mitzi as if she was a real friend, and I had lots of trouble trying to figure out how I felt about murdering or "dealing retribution" to the "parasites". By the end of the game I felt less like a horrible, self-centered, egotistical person, and was able to see some good and value in me, albeit small. I haven't been struggling with those past issues as much, ever since I finished The Cat Lady and, for that, alone, I would, indeed, rate it 5/5, 10/10, A++, whatever your rating preferences are, despite its many gameplay flaws.

I come from a literature background, having majored in English and Portuguese Literature, and, therefore, I understand that my valuing of narrative, script, character development and story over other gaming elements (such as music, cinematic value, graphics and even gameplay) isn't common to everyone. I'm also aware that I'm probably more conscious of the fact that "art" (and I do consider this game to be art) is subject to multiple interpretations, viewpoints, conclusions and readings, and I totally understand why you wouldn't get most of the things you referred in your post. I probably missed some things others saw, I probably saw a few things other missed, but, to me, that's the beauty of games like these, the fact that anyone can have a different experience and draw different -- if any -- conclusions out of it.

With this being said, this isn't a very gameplay-heavy video game. It's slow-paced, it can be boring, to some, at times, and, to those, I leave these words of advice: if you're not a fan of point-and-click adventure games, if you don't particularly enjoy games that are more of an "experience" than a game, per se, chances are you won't enjoy The Cat Lady, as much as you may be interested in it for it's mature themes, for some "Silent Hill" resemblance you may have heard about or any other comparison out there. Just don't get mad at the game if you fail to enjoy it, you're entitled to unlike it.

All in all, 3 stars (out of 5, I'm assuming) isn't bad at all, especially when the game turned out to be so flawed to you, BlueMooner.

Frankly, I *was* suspecting Mitzi, up to the "cancer" scene... and maybe, even a little longer. I suspected Liz, because she was overly friendly. I suspected single mother (from upstairs), and heck, even suspected our "most cute babysitter in the world". Thinking about that, it seems that I was suspecting almost everyone, for a time - which, for me, speaks *very* good about climax created by game - it fits well into *both* parasite's twist, and usual reaction of people suffering depression (especially, suspecting someone who is "too friendly).

I was little surprised, that scene of Susan's arguing with Eric seemed "unnatural" to someone. Damn, it's maybe because I know first-hand, how much stupidity and nonsense argues of unhappy marriages can contain. For me, it was a spot-on. Not to mention, that I *knew* something bad will happen (due to obvious hints about Susan's child being long-dead), so I was far from bored at this moment.

Of course, you're entitled to your own opinion, BlueMooner, but - to me - it seems, that you might have rushed The Cat Lady too much, not allowing yourself to experience it more deeply. some things - like, lack of realization that Mitzi's life was depending on your decision about candle-blowing, or fact that you missed whole "soul for soul" thing (which, BTW, reminded me of Planescape: torment, in a good way), or suspect Bryan of hiring murdered, really suggest "too fast" approach, you know, like when you're eating some delicacy as it would be your everyday fast-food. Or, it's just simply not *that much* your kind of game.

Cheers,
/Estel

To me this game is far from being 10/10.

I'm still uncertain as to whether Susan was imagining the whole "killing parasites" thing or not, on one hand she's receiving items from her trips to the nightmare worlds and coming back to life after being murdered but then on the other hand there's absolutely no follow up to any of this. It's a game that for me better suits the "it was all a delusion" trope but then the game acts like its all real so it just seemed weird.

A lot of the scenes just came off as ridiculous, the fight between Susan and her husband ok I dealt with it cuz stupid arguments do happen but what the hell was the point of the crazy 911 call when inside David Firth's house? Who by the way I've seen too many of his videos to take that character at all seriously and only helped to disappoint me when it didn't turn out to be a dream.

I don't believe the OP played the game "too fast" as there's really no way to actually rush this game considering its like 70% long ass dialogue. Unless you expect people to sit at the end of each chapter and reflect on what has happened for an hour which I think would only help to highlight the game's problems.

I'm seeing that largely reviews for this game have that "Gone Home" feel, where thanks to the game's subject matter people seem to want to project brilliance onto the game which isn't actually there and as such giving the writer MUCH more credit then he deserves.

The quality of writing and believability of the plot aside, I had genuine fun playing the game. It was thrilling! The hospital escape was a bit less interesting, but from that point onwards the game got better for me. I especially liked the whodunit chapter as both protagonists had fun despite the seriousness of the Eye crimes (to the point of crossing out apartments on the crudely drawn map of the building). Committing burglary or investigating tenants by coming up with ridiculous pretexts was well done in the gameplay sense. The chapter inside the cannibal couple's home was very tense. Some parts of the game might have been executed better, but all in all playing this game was an enjoyable experience.