Katanaut, unintentionally, pulled the rug out from under me. I try not to read game descriptions when reviewing, so when I was dumped into a space station with a Kasa hat and a katana, I assumed we were in for a one-hit-kill die-and-retry sort of experience. But when I did die, I spawned right back at the start of the space station with everything reset. I was struck by an unexpected roguelike. This was tough to swallow as I’m in the midst of what the doctors call ‘Roguelike Saturation’.
So, for a roguelike (or lite in this case) to break through that, it needs a strong enough spice to cut through the repetition and keep me moving forwards. Katanaut‘s spice is undeniably its sense of style. Its world is a mixture of bright, futuristic interiors and horrific, mutated remnants of humanity. Blood and gore twinkling in the neon. Style can only do so much, mind you, but it has some good gameplay notes and interesting designs throughout, even if there’s definite clunkiness in the mechanics.
U.S.S Horrible Monstrosity
Katanaut‘s opening plot is a tale as old as time. Our behatted protagonist, Naut, is sent with a couple of friends to explore a giant space station, and figure out why it’s doing nothing but floating around making snarling noises. Given that they’re bringing multiple swords, guns and psychic powers, Naut & Co. clearly aren’t expecting a friendly reception. Sure enough, the station is full of mutated humanoid monsters, who have become stuffed full of tentacles or have burst outward into aggressive tumours. All around, not a particularly fun place to be.
The first thing that leapt out at me was the general design of things, which is generally great. These ripped apart remnants of human beings come in quite an impressive amount of flavours. By which I mean, enemy variation is good. Each enemy generally has their own attack patterns, and are immediately identifiable. If it’s a space suit held together by long tentacles, it’ll erupt into a little parasite fella, for instance. Map design is nice too. Space stations are quite often just dull, grey shapes. Katanaut works hard to liven things up, like the greenery in the garden level or the neon in the commercial zone.
Combat-wise, you have two main tools in your arsenal: your sword and your gun. Guns use ammo, unsurprisingly, but you get ammo back with katana strikes. This is a great idea as it encourages getting in close and slashing, then dodging back and blasting anything still standing. It keeps the pace nice and high. Weapons can be upgraded as you go, and you get a choice of skills each run to keep things fresh. There are a fair few combinations. I had a weakness for drones, so that I could keep up constant damage while I was dodge-rolling everywhere.
Loop-De-Loop
Unfortunately, I think Katanaut‘s swordplay lets the side down somewhat. It just doesn’t feel great. Enemies barely react to sword strikes, so it feels like we’re just wiping our katana against them. Sometimes the sword just straight up doesn’t hit them, too. Guns feel significantly better, especially the shotguns. When I’m in a throng of melee enemies though, the power of the katana gets lost. What doesn’t help is that one of the basic swords can effortlessly parry most blows just through its standard attack. So the best strategy is to jump straight into an enemy and mash the attack button until everything is dead.
Stamina dints that a little bit, as once that’s out you can’t swing anymore. But that strategy carried me through both my successful runs. It doesn’t help the repetition factor of Katanaut. A factor that’s the Sword of Damocles above roguelites. What also doesn’t help is that Katanaut only has limited changes between runs. Unless I missed something (which is very possible), it was all the same biomes and bosses each run. As most of my deaths were against the bosses, this meant that every run began with some near identical busy work until I could have another crack at the boss.
Still, the bosses carry on the great design. The first boss is a disgusting amalgamation of viscera that howls and swipes at you, while summoning long-ranged portals. Half of them are also weak to parrying, but the designs are nice. It also has lovely dribs and drabs of world-building around the place, and there’s a definite sense that Naut is being consumed by something otherworldly. I do find it frustrating that the resolution of the plot is contained behind different difficulty levels, though. Higher difficulties mostly just add new effects to existing levels. There are new monster designs, which is something, even if the bosses are the same.
Katanaut – Stylish, If Clunky
What I did like about Katanaut was the amount of NPCs you’ll randomly bump into. They all give cryptic little dialogue messages. At one point, Naut would start randomly slaughtering these NPCs. The friends he came here with start talking about him like he’s becoming someone – or something – else. It’s these little titbits that kept me coming back, though the sharp increases in difficulty likely mean I won’t experience them all. Katanaut has a great sense of style, and that spreads to the world that it’s building around its protagonist.
I won’t lie, the body horror helped too. I’ve been on record before saying that I love it. It’s like we’re playing through some alternate universe The Thing where everything looks sort of human but also really, really not. It’s just a shame that the melee combat feels so clunky, and that it falls prey to repetition. On a final note, I found it interesting that Katanaut was published by Acclaim Entertainment, Inc. A publisher that went bust in the early 2000s after a string of weird marketing stunts, now revived.
I guess we should be thankful that they didn’t offer a copy of the game to anyone who’d volunteer to play host to a weird, alien tentacle parasite.
