• Price: $19.99 USD
• Developer: Petoons Studio
• Publisher: PQube
• Release Date: April 6, 2023

A review code was kindly provided by PQube on behalf of Petoons Studio. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

In Curse of the Sea Rats, the story begins in 1777 on the Irish coast. Trouble is brewing on a Royal Navy flagship, which is ferrying pirates and other prisoners from the Caribbean back to Great Britain to stand trial. Flora Burn, the pirate-witch, decided to turn everyone on board into rats using her amulet. In the chaos that ensues, she kidnaps the Admiral’s son and runs off with her crew. Out of desperation, the Admiral offers the rest of the prisoners a deal: if they rescue his son, he’ll allow them to go free. Somehow I doubt that…

The game’s website describes it as a hand-drawn non-linear action-platformer Metroidvania. It includes a map with hundreds of rooms (some of which are hidden), special treasures, and several different ways for the story to end. Once the opening scenes have finished, you then choose which rat you want to play as – there are four prisoners to choose from, and they each have a unique background.

They don’t say if there are any differences in fighting styles or anything before you make your decision. But you can change out the character you play as at the checkpoint areas where you heal and upgrade your character. Each rat does have a different fighting style and skill tree. For those who enjoy a multiplayer experience, the game supports up to four players in local co-op mode, and each player will choose one of the four rats.

You find out some of the history behind “the Eye of the Serpent,” the amulet Flora Burn used to cast the spell. It’s been around for centuries but Flora only recently stole it took possession of it. She’s still learning how to use it, and the amulet was split in two after her spell. Now you have the other half and can use it to improve your character with their skill tree; there’s one section for physical skills, and another for magical skills.

I like being able to somewhat customize my character like this, but the skill trees only have a few abilities that each character can learn. What’s great is that in single player, you can switch to one of the other characters at a “checkpoint” and they’ll be at the same level as the character you’ve been using. You don’t need to grind with the other characters and play catch up, although you will still need to use energy points and have them learn the abilities on their skill tree.

The combat in which you use those skills is action-based with real-time elements. You’ll earn experience points, energy points, and gold for defeating enemies. There aren’t any difficulty settings in the game, but I don’t think the combat was too difficult. In my opinion, they should have zoomed in on the combat at least, because it was a little hard to make out what was happening sometimes. I did have some trouble in the beginning, and was defeated by a couple of bosses several times before getting the hang of things. Some boss battles have multiple rounds, and later on they also add status ailments to the mix.

Whenever you’re defeated, you’ll be sent back to the last healing checkpoint you used, and losing also means you’ll lose some energy points. This can be pretty inconvenient because it felt like they took away a decent chunk of those points when that happens, but you can get some back by returning to the area where you lost. Thankfully, in addition to checkpoints, they also included teleportation hubs, which you activate using the same points as the ones needed to learn skills.

They try to help you find your way back by providing you with a map, which shows you how much of the map you’ve completed, treasure chests, and also labels the area where you were just defeated. The map made it a lot easier to see where I was going, and it usually would have little “tabs” sticking out of a room to indicate that there were additional paths to take from there. I did wish that the map labeled each area’s name, and that it also had markers for NPCs with quests. I had trouble remembering who was located where, and what they needed, so a quest log would have been quite useful.

When it comes to the exploration side of things, I tend to enjoy finding secret areas and items in games because it makes me feel some sense of accomplishment. For the most part, it was pretty easy to locate the less obvious paths because they’d have planks covering them; all you’d have to do is jump down to get there. But there were a couple of issues that made exploring a bit of a chore for me.

I don’t mind non-linear gameplay. That being said, I still need some kind of direction (like a quest log). I had no idea what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go at what point in time. You’ll learn some field skills like dashing, double jumping, and the powered-up jump after defeating certain bosses. It felt like I was doing things out of order because it seemed like I had to backtrack a lot. There were treasure chests or paths to new areas that were initially too high up for me to get to, but after learning the new field skill I could go back and access them.

I’d go around the map and try to fill it out as much as I could, but would often find myself prevented from moving forward by the dreaded locked doors. There were areas that I’d come across early on – like the Abandoned Lighthouse – that I still had not found the keys for after exploring ~80% of the map. And I had no idea where to find these keys.

Another source of confusion was that the Admiral kept telling me to check back at the beach for assistance, and one of his men kept repeating that the blacksmith should be coming around soon, but nothing happened. I don’t know if those were features that were going to be added to the game or not, but I kept teleporting back there after each boss battle to see if anything would change, but it didn’t.

Honestly, I try my very best to finish a game when I’m reviewing it. And if I can’t, I’ll say so to make sure it’s a fair representation of the game. There were several points in Curse of the Sea Rats where I had to resist the urge to throw in the towel because I was so frustrated with my inability to find a way forward, as well as my fairly frequent character deaths. I started to feel that urge by the time I’d explored 20% of the map, but would never have abandoned a game that early. So I persevered, but unfortunately had to end my playthrough at thirteen and a half hours with ~81% map completion.

My character admittedly died a lot because of some stupid mistakes on my part. I accidentally ended up running into harmful environmental factors such as stalactites and stalagmites over and over again. Naturally, bosses would beat me up in the first few attempts at defeating them, but I’d learn their patterns and win. I’ll even grind some more if that’s what it takes.

But the second round of the Necromancer boss battle was not something I could just grind for; the reason I kept losing was due to the disappearing platforms. Falling there results in instant death, and losses from one wrong move are one of my biggest irritants. After many losses, I regrettably had to “walk the plank” and stop the game there. Battles weren’t so bad when the environment wasn’t a factor, but overall there were too many aspects of the gameplay that did not work for me personally. I think that players who are less easily frustrated could enjoy this, and perhaps a group playing in the co-op mode would also have a nice time.

Although I didn’t love the gameplay, I definitely have to give them credit for their artistic direction. There’s voice acting, plus an excellent soundtrack. The website states that they took inspiration from Disney and Don Bluth (An American Tail and more) for their hand-drawn animation. I think they used that inspiration quite well – I found the character designs appealing, and the backgrounds were lovely.

And although I was aware that the game is set in Ireland, I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Irish mythological characters such as The Morrígan and Cú Chulainn in a game focused on rats. They also made more modern references to things like The Legend of Zelda, He-Man, and The Da Vinci Code. It was nice to see some humor sprinkled in here and there. Going forward, there are some areas where Petoons Studio could make some improvements, but I think they’ve got the rat right stuff when it comes to the creative side.