Nyaa-Kuza is an illustrated half-action interactive fiction title from the self-dubbed Catzooka Studios out of the University of Utah’s EAE program. Play as Mochi, an ex-Nyaa-Kuza brawler cat, whose cat wife, Hime, has been “catnapped” by the syndicate.
You’ll traverse the outskirts of a Japanese city interacting with leads and allies in a conventional visual novel style to find Hime. At other times, the game is highly interactive with button-mashing fight scenes with cat gangsters. The game is free on Steam, and I sincerely suspect you’ve never seen a game like this.
I Love University Games and Interactive Fiction
I literally just posted a university game from Steam yesterday, only to discover another one today. And this one was actually also released yesterday, so I don’t know what’s going!
If you really want to dive into these gameplaying opportunities, I sincerely suggest you give university program games a chance. Based on friends, followers, and those I follow, university gaming programs are getting huge! Not only am I seeing games, but software to make games. We may be approaching the singularity, friends.
Anyway, this game’s pretty cool. I’m famously fond of any kind of interactive fiction or visual novel storytelling in games. There are several genres these games can span. In fact, there are genres these games can cover that other games cannot cover
Nyaa-Kuza: The Quick Facts
This is a short game. The dialogue lasts the pace of around 20 or so exchanges before the upcoming combat scenes are interspersed. You can use a gamepad/controller in the combat scenes, but I found the mouse and keyboard to be a little easier. And on the subject of easy, each combat scene gives you a choice of hard or easy mode.
I always choose the easy mode for everything, but it was still quite challenging. Actually, I spent around 5 minutes trying to take down one boss. That’s not surprising for a boss, but a boss in a visual novel is a pretty cool interaction. I had to try different things to figure out how.
I’m not sure what the consensus is on Yakuza-themed games. I’ve certainly seen them in games before, but I’m not so sure if most people realize what Yakuza even is. That said, I thought it was kind of, oddly, cute when combined with this cat theme. What a great title too: Nyaa-Kuza!!
Seriously though, it is a really great idea for a short interactive game experience. The art in the game is efficient but also pleasant to look at. I rarely feel unhappy with a generous pink/blue neon palette in games. I’m not sure how that started, but it seems pretty widely accepted for stylizing and good with that.
Fight to the End
If you want to check out this game, it is free to play on Steam. I will provide the link below. It was a good game, should be enough left to form your own opinions. There’s some cat ninja action at least. I cannot confirm nor deny if your cat character will have 9 lives.
There will be plenty for you to discover on your own though, so check it out if you want a fling with cats that are in the Yakuza. Thanks for the game Catzooka Studios and the University of Utah. And also for all the cat puns!
And thanks to you for reading MrDavePizza.com. I review all sorts of games regularly, mostly indie. So have a look around to see what you can find. And read as much as you like! It’s free.
