Kathy Rain: Director’s Cut, developed by Clifftop Games and published by Raw Fury, is an investigative point-and-click game, rereleased from the 2016 version with more content, including story and voice lines, controller support, and enhanced visuals. I played this game on the Nintendo Switch, which gained support with the release of the Director’s Cut version.
Having never played the original version of Kathy Rain, I found the game to be quite streamlined in terms of gameplay and very thorough, even in the small details. After researching aspects that were updated or added to the game with the Director’s Cut, clear improvements seem to have been made specifically with mechanics.
From the first scene of the game, Kathy Rain: Director’s Cut establishes the tone and characters masterfully. It employs a familiar style—backgrounds are static and somewhat detailed, characters are more pixelated as they move across the screen, and their faces as they speak are shown within a border and are much more intricate. The environments in the game are vibrant and detailed, naturally encouraging the player to investigate every possible corner. I even found myself sitting on and watching the sequence that plays while moving between locations, just because I felt like I might notice something new.
Other aspects of the game that contribute greatly to its truly engrossing atmosphere is the sound design, between the sound effects, music, and voice-acted lines. Locations have their own music, the constant sound of rainfall adds a bit of calm spookiness, and the voice acting brings the characters to life. Kathy, the titular character, has a particularly compelling voice actor (Arielle Siegel) that establishes exactly who the character is from the first scene. I was pleasantly surprised with the extent to which lines were voice acted, and this element genuinely enhanced the experience.
The mechanics in this game, while simple, are pleasantly smooth. I have found with other point-and-click games, particularly on consoles, it is very easy to select the wrong object or continually investigate the same thing while trying to move on to the next one. There is a specific control (with one of the joysticks) that allows the player to more precisely select a certain interaction and choose it from this menu, which definitely spared me a lot of skipping through dialogue! Interacting with objects in this game was simple and clear. After I realized the extent to which I could use them, I began to enjoy testing objects in conversations with different characters and within my inventory.
In similar games, there is a hard line to walk in terms of keeping puzzles difficult enough that players feel a sense of accomplishment when completing them and not making them too obscure and difficult. The puzzles I encountered in this game were perfectly in the middle, and not only were they satisfying to complete, but the clues themselves were interesting. I found myself smiling at or intrigued by solutions when I did figure them out. I felt rewarded for noticing small details and filing them away for later, which I would argue is the point of this genre as a whole.
Kathy Rain herself is an interesting, risk-taking protagonist. I often found myself forming an expectation of what she would say in a particular situation, but I was almost always pleasantly surprised by snappy, clever dialogue that brought a new spin to the situation or Kathy’s character. At times I found her a touch over-sarcastic, but this is by no means overbearing or consistent throughout gameplay. Her backstory as well as the plot that unfolds in this game is very intriguing and establishes itself as potentially supernatural and spooky almost immediately. Throughout gameplay, it leaves the player questioning when and if those elements will come to the forefront, which definitely made the game difficult to put down.
Based on Kathy Rain’s original reception as a compelling and successful investigative adventure game, Kathy Rain: Director’s Cut seems to be a great update with smooth gameplay and delightful visuals and sound design. I was genuinely intrigued by the mystery, a bit on edge depending on where I was investigating—due to the very effective atmosphere-building—and felt accomplished when advancing to the next clue. For all these reasons, I would rate this game a 10/10. There really weren’t any areas where I felt taken out of the story, and it moved along quite nicely the entire time I played. I am definitely hooked in for the mystery, and will be clicking on every single item in every single room until the end of time.
Check Out the Kathy Rain: Director’s Cut Launch Trailer:
For more information, visit: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/kathy-rain-directors-cut-switch/
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Nintendo Switch Review
I have been playing video games since I got my first pink Gameboy Advance SP when I was six years old. From that point on, video games have held a special place in my heart and I have been fascinated by the way games involve the player in the narrative and how their mechanics interact with that narrative. As an aspiring video game narrative writer, I jump at the opportunity to play any and all games at my disposal.
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