Bright Paw: Definitive Edition

What I was really hoping would be a cute little cat game for me to explore is actually a buggy mess. Not even 20 minutes into the game and I've already experienced the camera no longer being able to be rotated and an infinite loading issue with the first room of the second act, meaning I can't progress. Very disappointed. I'll assume since this game was released in 2020 that the devs have zero interest in fixing it. That aside, the narrator is also annoyingly impatient; stop to look around to check you aren't missing any of the collectables and expect to be scorned for it!

The art is cozy and attractive and the concept is interesting, but sadly it is too buggy to recommend. In the short time I played I encountered bugs requiring several game restarts involving: volume level, achievement proc, camera, win condition detection. If these bugs should be fixed I think the game would be fun.

I was torn on whether to recommend this game or not. After doing some of the end-game Theo's Dreams content, I'm confident in not recommending it. I bought the game several years ago. I tried to play it many times but it just wouldn't play on Linux. Then a recent update added Steam Deck support! Great, I would finally get to solve puzzles as a cat. A major update after years is a definite point in the developer's favour. The main game wound up being a very mixed bag. The gameplay was limited and almost every "puzzle" was trivial. You choose from several possible moves but, if there are only one or two valid moves, then there's no thinking required. Even worse, you have five available move cards but sometimes a puzzle takes 10+ moves to finish. If you don't know what moves are coming up, it's impossible to plan ahead, making it less puzzle and more blindly hoping things work out. Luckily (due to the limited number of valid moves) that's usually the case. Aside from the puzzles, there's a hidden object search mini game on each map. But you know how many things there are to find, so you just search at the start of each level and you will find every single one by the time you …

It's a good puzzle game but in its current state I cannot recommend it. There's far too many bugs and I had to restart the game multiple times in order to play through it. Was not a fun experience in the slightest having to do that over and over again.

So, since the last update, the game has been stable — I've only encountered one bug in 6+ hours of gameplay, which is absolutely ok. The voice acting in this game is superb, the story and protagonists charming. It is quite easy, you will solve 95% of puzzles on the first try, but it is indeed relaxing and fun. The DLCs are much weaker than the base game, but the content is there. Some Steam achievements did not trigger for me, which is ok, but this might put others off. Overall, you can get this game for pennies nowdays and it is worth it for that. The original review: The game is fun and cute, but the amount of bugs is unbearable. I have played less than an hour, and already encounter 20+ bugs, some of them made me have to restart the game. For example, in one level the last square didn't react and I couldn't complete the level, in another I was unable to move the camera so I couldn't see where to go. It's a shame, because if this game was properly optimized, it would be a really nice relaxing experience.

Game stopping bugs, cant continue on completion of one of the first levels.