Purrfect Date

So, I picked up a number of things in the Steam New Year's sale, including Purrfect Date. Okay, so, I knew it was gonna be weird going in. It's about dating cats. Sort of. But I'd been wanting to try it, also because it's an indie game AND it's British-made (London, in fact). 

It bills itself as a combination visual novel, dating sim, and "dark" British comedy. I've finished one chapter and I dunno that it's particularly dark (so far) but it's definitely British humour. It's not necessarily an otome or a joseimuke, honestly, even though I stuck those labels on here as well. Mostly it's...odd.

But odd is good. I like odd. I am odd.

The story: you're a research scientist newly hired to work on Cat Island. It's just you, the Professor, a taciturn guard, the Marigolds (husband and wife, apparently, who do the menial work) and a boatload of cats. There's the "normal" cats and some "wild" cats. There are also some pirate/merchant captain cats you meet towards the end of Chapter 1 (and who knows, maybe some more). The "tame" cats sort of sabotage you your first night so that you get bitten by one of the "dangerous side of the island cats" and start your transformation. This makes it so you can talk to them. They want your help in concocting an antidote (which obviously begs the question...are they all probably former research assistants?). From then on, you have four choices for your day: rest, research, recon, or romance. Once you complete all of the research steps, you move on to the next chapter, so (as far as I can tell), you want to make sure you complete all the other stuff before you do that. If you don't rest every now and again, "something bad might happen" but I haven't let it get to that, so I dunno what the bad thing might be. :-)

So. Am gonna bullet point some things that I felt were different or an oddity compared to other games of this type (is there a type for this?).

• You don't actually play as ONE MC. There's an initial set up screen where you choose your portrait and I thought this was going to be "you" for the game, but it appears now that it's basically just "you" for the chapter. Because you're gonna turn into a cat whether you like it or not before you can possibly concoct an antidote and finish your investigation.
• As such...there's no "starting over" to do another route...well, it starts over in that you're a new human research scientist, but the story itself continues and the previous "you" is now a cat on the island.
• There are VERY few decision points and, honestly, I'm not sure they seem to make any difference. Maybe they do. But there aren't many of them. In this way, it's much more a railroaded visual novel than a dating sim. The only dating sim part to me seems to be in the cat you choose to romance. (Have since read a review that seems to indicate that you CAN fail in the romance aspect, but I started with the Irish cat with the penchant for grog and he was easy)
• There's something slightly janky about the click to move on/hurry up the text. I'm not even sure what. It just feels...off? Slow? It's not terribly annoying, but it is a nuisance.

So far, I'd say it's interesting and funny. It's not a particuarly, um, romantic game. I mean, the images are obviously leaning towards the very cartoon-y side and...you know, they're cats. It's not like they're pigeons or something.