"Kathy Rain: Director's Cut"

Spoilers for Kathy Rain and Kathy Rain 2 below.

Playing Kathy Rain 2 got me to go back and replay the first game, and it was interesting retrospectively to compare the two. Like I mentioned in my Kathy Rain 2 review, the first game came out in 2016 and was re-released as a "Director's Cut" in 2021. There doesn't seem to be a comprehensive account of what was changed between the 2016 release and the Director's Cut, but from what I understand and have seen online the interface was streamlined and a character was cut from the game's ending sequence. Supposedly new locations were also added and additional dialogue recorded. Regardless, I know that Clifftop Games considers the Director's Cut to be the definitive experience, so that's the one I've played, although I may go back at some point and play the original release as it is still available.

If I were to narrow down one thing that I think Kathy Rain does better than its sequel, it's atmosphere. The locations, which I assume must have been either hand painted or altered photographs that were then downsized, ooze atmosphere via their lighting and impressionistic qualities. The music is also moody and in some cases quite haunting. Obviously there's a huge amount of Twin Peaks inspiration here, but that's not a bad thing per se. The world of Conwell Springs feels like the right blend of "real" when you're in places like the sheriff's station or the clinic, and ethereal, such as when you're at the cemetery or the lakeside cabin. The different kinds of weather that occur over the course of the story also add to this.

Speaking of the story, while not massively original, it works. Kathy, a journalism student, goes to the funeral of her grandfather from whom she has long been estranged; afterwards she discovers from her grandmother that her grandfather has spent the last fifteen years or so in a more or less vegetative state after some incident out in Conwell Woods. She decides to look into what happened and finds herself drawn into an increasingly strange conspiracy involving the local church, a drowned girl, and mysterious formations of lights that appear among the trees. Although this is, as I've said, not anything we haven't seen before, Kathy is likeable enough (in my opinion) that I want to see her story through, and the mystery itself is paced out in such a way that it sustains my interest over the game's five days. The pacing maybe only wobbles a little because Day Four is so long and involved compared to the previous three, or at least feels that way, especially since you're meant to be talking to Jimmy Cochrane in the mid afternoon in the city at the very beginning of that day's sequence.

The other big part of this is in the puzzles. The puzzles in Kathy Rain: Director's Cut aren't exactly difficult, at least in my opinion, apart from a few slightly more involved ones, but I think that this works well enough to keep the pace of the story going as well. Probably the only aspect of this in the gameplay is talking to other characters, as you usually end up asking them about everything in your notebook and everything in your inventory too. Kathy will tell you if there's no point in discussing something with someone, but you don't know for sure until you try. Further, the only time I think the game ever gets into "cryptic" territory to any extent is in the game's final day, which is intentionally surreal, and during which time you have limited inventory.

Returning to writing, arguably the game's biggest strength in addition to its visual and audio atmosphere is its characters. While Kathy has been criticised a bit for being a bit of a tomboyish "not like other girls" instance of "men writing women", a wise cracking chain smoking motorcyclist, I think the character is written as likeable. Despite initially being characterised as a bit abrasive, it doesn't take long for the game to show us her vulnerability. She seems to genuinely care about her grandparents and Eileen, while she struggles with the memory of her deadbeat dad and the pain of having had her mother committed to psychiatric care, as well as unresolved feelings about a terminated pregnancy. As would happen again in the sequel, a major factor in this in addition to the writing is the voice acting, with Arielle Siegel and Shelly Shenoy being the highlights as Kathy and Eileen, although the cast as a whole is generally fairly strong.

My only other critique would probably be the same one I had with the sequel in terms of visual shortcuts. As cool as it is to have the area select screen with Kathy on her bike, at times it's hard to get a grasp of the layout of Conwell Springs and its surrounds. For example, Kathy's grandmother's house is meant to be on a farm, but because you never see it from the outside it's hard to get a good sense of this. Similarly, you never see the town as a whole except distantly from the cemetery, and the only exterior you get on the streets is outside the clinic; you never see the sheriff's station or church from the outside. For this reason I think the cemetery, lakeside cabin, Conwell Woods and other such areas work better as locations because we get to see both exterior and interior environments in most cases. As with the sequel, I know art is time consuming and difficult to make, but I do slightly still run into the same problem here of having a little trouble imagining the landscape of Kathy's world. The same issue occurs with the university, of which we only ever see two screens, and one only in a cutscene.

Nonetheless these are pretty minor gripes and ones I can forgive in an indie adventure game which does so many other things right; I actually find it hard to find much in the way of negatives given what the game is. I do genuinely think that Kathy Rain: Director's Cut might be one of my favourite indie adventure games of the last ten years and I'd definitely recommend it to any fans of the genre. I think this and the sequel make a pretty good combo. It took me seven and a half hours, apparently, to do my first playthrough back in 2022, and about six to do my most recent one, so between this and Kathy Rain 2 you've got about 18 hours of Kathy Rain goodness if you want some point 'n' click fun. I guess now I need to go play Whispers of a Machine and see how that holds up, although I think I'll miss Kathy...