Kathy Rain

One for fans of old school Point and Click games like the good old LucaArts titles. The graphics are mock retro, almost pixel art, and there’s a mystery to solve (the death of your grandfather). The protagonist is a heroine with a troubled past. Fantastic if you still miss the ’90s.

If you like quality Point & Click games, this is one for you. Kathy Rain takes you back to 1995, to play as a young journalism student who goes back to the hometown she left years ago, to attend her grandfather’s funeral. Nothing too outlandish so far, but that’s just the intro.

Kathy, the heroine, finds out from family about a strange phenomenon that occurred ten years earlier. Her grandfather passed out during a walk in the woods, a strange event that doctors put down to a stroke... Kathy then decides to start asking questions, bringing up macabre memories with a direct connection to Kathy’s and her family’s past. Mystery, humour, horror, and the supernatural: Kathy has something about her that drives us to keep pushing ahead to discover the dramas that befell her family.

A homage to 1990s Point & Click games

Instead of using modern 3D graphics, the game opts for a pixel art aesthetic. Fans of the genre will find it easy to manage the inventory and interact with objects, and be perfectly at home with the pixelated graphics. The 40 pixel art scenes were hand-drawn, and the devs decided to use a 4:3 aspect ratio for the game, in 240x320 definition, in tribute to the golden age of LucasArts games like Monkey Island.

We were genuinely blown away by the quality of the writing and plot, as well as the complexity of some of the puzzles.

One tip: pay attention at the beginning as it starts a bit slow, but it really pays off in the end.