Cataegis - The White Wind Demo

Back when Contra was a thing and gamers were used to the fact that video games tried their best to make the players sweat and curse, no one batted an eye to the excruciatingly punishing gameplay mechanics. Nowadays, it is customary to include scalable difficulty levels and make the experience as carefree as possible for everyone, which is not always a good idea.

Cataegis - The White Wind disregards all current trends and it tries its best to frustrate you as much as possible, in order to bring back a few memories. The game is a classic arcade platformer and it features a knight with a sword in the main role, while the rest of the world is populated by robots and futuristic buildings. It may not make too much sense, but the challenge is there, and that’s all that matters sometimes.

Story-wise, not much detail is given on the plot or what happens behind the scenes, but it obviously doesn’t matter all that much anyway. The fact that you have a sword that can apparently shoot lasers is all you need to know, although the repetitive level design may make it a bit difficult to get in the proper mood to enjoy the atmosphere and the locations.

The gameplay is no different from what you may have seen in old school platformers, which means that your primary goal is to avoid the traps and kill the enemies that appear in front of you. In fact, the foes are scripted to always spawn in the exact same spot and attack you in a specific pattern. This pattern is much easier to exploit in the case of boss fights, although that doesn’t make the actual fight any easier.

As you have probably figured out by now, the graphics are retro as well, which means that it takes a while to get used to them. However, it is quite obvious that the designers took their time to come up with environments and characters, although the backgrounds get repetitive after a while, and they do not seem to present too much interest to the eye.

When it’s all said and done, Cataegis - The White Wind holds potential, and it can turn into quite the addictive game, as long as the developers keep improving it. As of right now, the experience is a bit too repetitive and dull to be declared anything other than mediocre, but there is clearly room for improvement.