This Disney-like Cat Platformer Looks the Part but Doesn’t Feel it
20I Like the Nostalgic Aesthetic of this New Cat Platformer but the Game is Far Less Lovely
Code was provided for critique purposes.
I've been interested in Stars in the Trash for some time. A cat platformer with the aesthetic of '80s Disney animation and a name that implies a cute story of hope and the comforts of home in an otherwise rather cold world. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. That scratchy nostalgic aesthetic held a potential to belie something much grander and touching.
see, and stop me if you've heard this before, cats are funny creatures. Their seemingly endless ability to do the exact opposite of what owner's want from them has stumped and amused the internet basically since its inception and animals are one of only a few things to never lose their relevancy in such a fast flowing era.
They were never a fad, they never exist in a vacuum encompassing a certain era, their application has, when we look back at the macro meme era, but their presence has remained invasive in almost every aspect of the internet, and, well human history. Looking back, we have the Countess of Castiglione and her shrine to her deceased dog, you have the ancient Egyptians' treatment and reverence of cats, you have me cleaning poop seemingly placed directly next to my bed in my first weeks of looking after a cat. This animal worship often says more about ourselves than it ever could the animal and that makes setting a game through the eyes of a cat interesting when done right. It doesn't need to be inherently profound, none of my previous examples are intrinsically but it gives it a chance to earn that same timeless quality.
Despite a striking aesthetic, I don't think Stars in the Trash has that ability and here's why.
If you have fond memories of Oliver and Company, The Fox and the Hound, and even The Lady and the Tramp, there's a good chance this art style is activating something good in your brain. It mostly works really well and sets up a warm atmosphere almost immediately. This doesn't stay fully consistent the whole time but it persists long enough for the game's tone to work. 90% of the time, it's cats, and 10% of the time, it's Cats the Musical. Most of my small problems with its aesthetic come from animation rather than the art. The faces the cat pulls mid-movement can sometimes be quite distracting and movement as a whole is a bit janky.
Your little cat moves very quick, yet the game constantly slows you down to show you cutscenes or generally take your eye off the gameplay. This means stoppages are choreographed by the cat suddenly walking very slowly, breaking the pacing of the game. Then suddenly, it is platforming by holding onto ledges while scaling a church on the run from an employee of the pound. Okay, I glazed over a little bit here but the tone is very weird and it moving from knocking items of the side and being scared of cucumbers to climbing a monstrously tall build Nathan Drake style feels bizarre and not in a fun way.
Being an ever curious cat, the start of the game has you attempt to leave your house to scare birds and chase cats, only to be stopped by a watchful yet agin dog. When you finally get out, you help out dogs, cats, and go on the run from the pound. It's a simple setup that explains the tension in the story but doesn't adequately address why the mechanics are the way they are.
I often felt like asking "why am I doing the things I am doing" and the conclusion I draw is that this is effectively a traditional platformer shoved into the facade of a cat. The intro feels so quintessentially feline, the aesthetic and tone scream, or should I say meow cat, but the gameplay doesn't. That doesn't feel as intentionally designed as the rest, and the game lets me down as a result.
Take the first mini-boss you encounter, a hoover in a basement that is shocked into life with a single batting of your paw. There's a creativity to playing on the irrational mind of a cat by making this thing truly monstrous, and to beat it, you simply dodge through wafts of smoke, rolling away from its sucking move, and hit it a bunch. Combat is stilted and slow, locking you into rigid animations, and this hoover fight shows that off immediately. There are multiple chunks to this fight, but every one of them, bar the last one, is finished by running away, running back, and hitting a few times. It's a creative aesthetic covering a tired shell.
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