Review by Alyx Jones
Developer: Magic Notion
Composer: Sourced Tracks
Audio: Todd Baker
Reviewed on: Steam/Mac
Kitty Powers Matchmaker is a super fun dating simulation, created by the gorgeous drag queen Kitty Powers herself (or Richard Franke if we’re looking at the credits!). It’s a very different type of dating game. The clients we look after in the game can identify as either gender but can also date either gender. This is a refreshing new feature that is often overlooked in the classic heterosexual dating game. I dare someone to count the innuendos that “pop up” throughout this tongue-in-cheek game!
Upon starting the game you’re introduced to the dating agency that needs to grow. Looking in the options menu, the mix is set at a default of “10” for music, sound and dialogue. The music is sometimes a little quiet but mainly because the dialogue and sound effects are most important to the gameplay. The music is generally used to set the scene and especially in the restaurants, it is purely used to reflect the kind of food served there, as a backdrop for the date. It doesn’t particularly add any obvious reactive element to the date; the music doesn’t seem to change at all regardless of how the date is going. Having said that, for a dating simulation style game, it’s uncommon to see reactive music. That doesn’t mean nobody should try it though!
There are moments in the game where the sound design is amazing. My favourite example of this is not for the faint hearted. When you move on to more harder difficulty restaurants, there are more dilemmas to solve for your client. One of which is holding in a bowel movement of sorts. You can listen to it here (11.26):
You will see why it’s so effective, it’s pretty funny and very cringey. It is an example of what the game is really about, with the audio generally serving well to exaggerate the comedy side of things. It’s not about being a classy, realistic dating simulator. It’s about creating a fun, inclusive game with a lot of humour, which might not be to everyone’s taste, but certainly made me laugh a few times!
The voice acting is another element that adds to the hilarity of the game. Kitty Powers is the only character who speaks actual words, the rest of the characters you come across in the game have a mumble based language of their own (not unlike the sims), with the occasional understandable word thrown in. Although the characters could do with a wider variety of voices, the ones that do exist have their own fun, language in contrast to Kitty Powers’ defined character and voice.
The majority (if not all) of the music used for Kitty Powers, is licensed music. That means it wasn’t written specifically for the game, that it was bought from a library of music and licensed for use within the game and equally doesn’t grant exclusivity to Kitty Powers. Although the music is appropriate, genre-wise and is generally good music, it would have been nice to see a consistent, trademark sound for the game, usually achieved by having the same person write the majority of music for a game. It’s not the end of the world, but it seems like it is missing that glue that would bind all of the games audio and music together. It would also have been nice to see an element of reactive music, perhaps related to if the couples are getting along, because sometimes it felt like the music was happily trundling along in the background but the date may have been going badly, with the individuals hating each other!
Overall, it really is an enjoyable game, with truly quirky sound design, in its craft and its uses, but could have used a more of a unique soundtrack to really polish the entire experience.
To watch me play Kitty Powers click below and/or subscribe to my channel for more games :):
Average Gamer
Kitty Powers is available on the Steam Store at http://store.steampowered.com/app/285740/
Links
Official:
Facebook:
Kitty Powers Matchmaker Facebook Page
Twitter:
Article by Alyx Jones
Edited by Sam Hughes
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