It’s taking me a long time to formulate thoughts on Catherine. It’s my favorite game this year and a rare instance where hype meets expectation. There’s so much to say about it but I’ll focus on an often-overlooked aspect of design – gameplay that integrates with and adds to the narrative.

Catherine is a puzzle game with a morality component that wouldn’t be lost in an adventure game. The story is told of a commitment-phobe, Vincent who simultaneously finds out his longtime girlfriend may be pregnant and gets himself entangled with a mysterious girl-of-his-dreams. Over a week, he starts having recurring nightmares of never-ending steps which he must ascend or fall to his doom. It’s said that if you die in your dreams, you’ll die in real life. In between the puzzle levels, he’ll speak to strangers who share his nightmares and he finds out more about his predicament.

Your dialogue choices will affect the story paths as well as the strangers’ lives but not the puzzle levels. In most games utilizing a morality component, there’s usually a clear-cut right and wrong answer which leads to players usually going for a completely ‘right’ path or a completely ‘wrong’ one. I doubt if this is an intention but removing feedback from the gameplay adds ambiguity to the player’s choices and pushes the player to consider the morality bar as a choice between A or B as well as between right or wrong. The question-and-answer segments and dialogue choices are shallow as compared to other games of choice like Heavy Rain but subtle touches like this contribute some depth to otherwise routine interrogation.

Symbolism and metaphors play a significant role in the game. The stacks of crates in the puzzle levels can be seen as a representation of life. The climb to the top is arduous and there are hard decisions to be made (pull this or push that?), each bearing consequences. Along the way there are lost sheep and pitfalls but try enough times and you’ll succeed.

The distinction of time between day/evening and night sets the tone of unease when venturing into the nightmares.

Day/Evening (Story)

• Reality
• Safety zone (bar is a place of familiarity)
• Dialogue-centric as a result
• In moral dilemma – what should Vincent tell K/Catherine

Night (Gameplay)

•  Dreamscape
• Danger zone (unexpected surprises may spring from boxes)
• Action-centric as a result
• Goal is clear cut – to get to the top

Unlike the questions asked of the player, the contrasts in both time zones are non-ambiguous and creates a sense of foreboding; a sense of chaos.

The structure of Catherine is actually quite typical of puzzle/arcade games with each level consisting of a recurring intro backdrop followed by a timed gameplay level. The game probably benefited from this arrangement and had its gameplay and story developed concurrently for one segment and then cloned the rest of the segments with that template. What discerns it from the crowd of Puzzle Fighter and Mr Driller clones though is a coherent story flow that links each level.

Played Catherine? Thoughts?