Originally funded by Kickstarter and published by PQube Limited, Petoons Studio offers us his vision of Metroidvania, requalified as “Ratoidvania” by its fathers. Entirely hand drawn, reminiscent of the cartoons of the 70’s, Curse of the sea rats invites us to embody four prisoners of a crew who, on a fairly well-made journey but without anything very new on the bridge, have turned into rodents.
Made like a rat
The game begins by choosing our main character, Hero against his will among four prisoners washed up on the Irish shore while awaiting our death sentence, at the hands of the British Empire and turned into a rat by the terrible pirate witch Flora. And that’s not all ! In order to regain our looks and our freedom, we are forced to save the captain’s son and break the witch’s spell. A whole program!
Rather noticeable detail when you start the adventure are all the elements intricately hand drawn. The decorations enter real atmosphere old cartoons with very nice animations.
Every hero has his own properties, skill tree etc fighting style : balanced character, distance, big horse or agile samurai, it will be necessary to make a choice. But rest assured this choice will not be final, solo or up to four players locally we can change depending on the situation who will come before us.
A good cat, a good rat
As a original, the game is not necessarily linearwe find ourselves surfing again a maze Map with several branches. As we progress, we discover rest points allow regain his health, improve their skills and especially Save our progress.
This last point is critical to progress because Death is sometimes a punishment. With every defeated enemy, we recover gold coins and from thespiritual energy but when our rodent passes from life to death, all the experience gained up to that point is lost. It will therefore be necessary to find his “body” in order to regain his spiritual energy. The ideal is to consume this energy regularly develop your skill tree which is divided into two distinct parts: the Battle and the magic.
Finally, each member of the team a special attack unlockable. While aesthetically pleasing in use, it doesn’t have any none real influence In combat, basic attacks are often just as effective.
Rats in a maze
As usual, some areas will only be accessible via the unlock a skill Clean in the skill tree, jump, double jump, charged jump and so on. So it will be necessary always get back on their feet to gain access to these areas and recover the treasures hidden within.
But the Worries rector on this card is their clarity. As a matter of fact, only certain points are visible like save and respawn zones, teleport zones that can be activated via spirit energy, vendor and boss locations. It will therefore be necessary play by heart to remind yourself that in such an area a door was locked when you just picked up a key at the other end of the map. Since most requests are “fetch quests”, it follows endless ways to find the right place or even the right NPC looking for an object. A true treasure hunt!
City Rat and Land Rat
The fact of playing with several brings a real plus untiluse of complementary skills our four rodents. character control remains basic, the movements and actions are quite intuitive: one button to hit an enemy and another to enchant him, all this embellished with a few combos. Outside of combat, actions and Platform phases are precise and pleasant.
Apart from making us feel stronger, the fun is really there because the variation in situations naturally forces us to do so alternate and improve each member of our team.
The lion and the rat
The inventory is quite easy to use, but it will still be necessary refill potionsfrom increases and from Care regular enough to Defeat some pretty technical bosses. Money is not very common on the island, it will be necessary to do something meetings of agriculture with the locals to fill our pocket while gaining a few extra levels to be more serene in our progress.
THE Boss are very well worked, originals for some and more complexes to fight for others, the time to properly recognize their attack patterns. Still, I found thatHero Balance was sometimes bizarrefor example with some bosses, some members two four are to be avoided without having to use dozens of potions to end the fight.
Another detail I think is important is that recurring crashes. I had no problems during my duo play session. On the other hand I had repeated alone very annoying crashes losing all my progress We are therefore hoping for a patch from the studio very soon to resolve this very frustrating issue.
Finally, in terms of sound, the soundtrack East rather successful and well-suited to the piracy theme and various environments, with a big plus in the welcome music that sticks in your head.
I loved :
- Good gaming experience
- Four characters with their own abilities
- The development of skills quite significant
- Fun in local co-op
- French translation
I’m sorry :
- A map sorely lacking in points of interest
- Solo crashes that quickly become frustrating
- Not really new to the genre
accessibility criteria
| visual impairment | hard of hearing | |
| ✘ High contrast (target reticle) | ✘ Subtitles with mood hints | |
| ✘ Font color size | ✘ Identification of the person speaking | |
| ✘ Tag enemies | ✘ Customizable font | |
| ✘ Customizable user interface | ✘ Customizable font color | |
| ✘ Customizable mini-map color | ✘ Alternative alarm options (vibration, flash…) | |
| ✘ Color blindness option | ✘ Ambient noise reported (presence notification) | |
| ✘ Text to speech option | ||
| ✘ Game slowdown |
test conditions
| TV details | 4K | Game provided by the publisher | Oui | |
| console | Xbox Series X | Time spent in game | 10 hours | |
| difficulty level | Normal | game over | Oui |
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