One of my favorite features on the iitch.io website is the randomizer. When I'm bored and want to find something to play, I normally use this feature. Most of the games I find are basic, and I can’t really make a full review on them, but on the rare occasion, I find something with enough substance to it to cover. Feta Feles is a game made by The Tophat Demon and was originally published in 2015. However, in 2021, that game was remade due to the death of Adobe Flash Player. I will be reviewing the remake, which is called Feta Feles Rebirth. Let’s dive in.
This game actually has a story, unlike most games I seem to review. You, the player, have to help a cat that wants to become powerful. To do this, you go through levels, killing enemies to collect hearts in order to power up and kill the cat in the level. It’s a very basic story, but it does the job. The controls are very simple, you just use WASD to move, drag the mouse to aim, and left click to shoot.
The first thing I took notice of is the game’s art style. The game uses simple flat colors, mainly black and white, with the backgrounds of the levels being made of one solid color. The art style is going for an eerie look, and it does succeed, but it does remind me of another game. The game looks similar to Undertale to me, especially when it comes to the cutscenes. The cutscenes show your pet cat in the center of the screen, in a pixelated style, and in black and white. There are also text boxes that look very similar to the style of Undertale’s textbox. This game definitely reminded me of Undertale in terms of the art, but that’s where the similarities between the two end. I should mention that I don’t think this similarity hurts the game in any way, it’s just something I noticed when playing.
Now let’s talk about the gameplay. The game is labeled as a bullet-hell-styled shooter. It controls like a twin-stick shooter, similar to Robotron, or Centipede Infestation. The controls work well, I’m just more used to using controllers than a keyboard, and mouse to play games. In every level, you have to collect hearts to fill up a meter. There are various types of enemies, each being introduced further into the game. Weaker enemies drop fewer hearts than stronger enemies. You can’t die by the enemies, but you still want to avoid taking damage, because every time you do get hit, your meter goes down. I'll come back to this later because I have mixed feelings about this idea. When your meter is full, you transform and become stronger. All you have to do now is find the cat, and kill it, without letting your meter be drained by enemies. The concept is creative, and I've never seen this before. I do like the idea, but what about its execution.
The idea of killing enemies to fill a bar to beat a level is a good one, but the execution is somewhat flawed. Before I continue I want to mention that I’m not the best at these games, nor do I think I’m terrible, but an issue I’m going to bring up deals with difficulty. To put it simply, depending on how good you are, levels can be short, and simple, or long, and drawn-out. If you get bombarded and get hit a lot, then your meter will significantly deplete. This means that all the work you did to fill it up is now gone. One of my most hated things in video games is replaying levels, and redoing things due to dying or messing up in a later part. This is similar to that, draining a progress bar significantly means you have to play for a lot longer to accomplish the same task. However, I wouldn't fully remove this idea, and replace it with a health bar. I would’ve kept the draining progress bar idea, but I would make it so getting hit drains less of the bar than it does currently. When you get hit once, the progress bar decreases in a large amount, you can have half the bar filled, get hit like three to four times due to a bombardment of enemies, and lose the entire progress bar. I think decreasing the amount of loss in the progress bar would’ve been better, and make the game feel like less of a drag.
The last thing I need to mention is the music. The music in this game is good, even though it only has a handful of tracks. The music compliments the setting and general mood of the game. This game presents itself very simply, but it works. Simple colors, music, and nice sounds are all that are needed to create the mood and make a game feel something. I really do enjoy the simple art of this game.
I really enjoyed Feta Feles Rebirth. Despite my tangent about how taking damage depletes the progress bar, I didn’t really find anything else wrong with it. I should mention that the game lacks a save feature, so if you play it, you have to complete it in one sitting, and the game is not short if you’re bad like me. I recommend this game to people who like spooky, and eerie-style games, as well as games like Robotron, and Smash TV. The Tophat Demon has made a bunch of other games, so maybe I’ll review another one of his games in the future.
Feta Feles Rebirth Game Link: https://x54321.itch.io/feta-feles-rebirth
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