Year: 2024
Platform: PlayStation 5
Developer: Kyle Thompson
Genre: Adventure
Review Date: 2/15/26
Rating: ***

Pluto is a charming black cat who has sadly just entered the afterlife. Despite having lived their best life as a good cat, they're banished to live outside the Palace Of Happiness and doomed to an eternity of being a janitor. We soon learn that every ghost in the afterlife is a janitor, and that the not-so-great Guardian Of The Afterlife is keeping the Palace all to herself. A daring plan is hatched to infiltrate the Palace and confront the cruel and selfish villain, which puts Pluto on a quest to explore the Underworld and recruit various ghosts to join the cause.

It's a top-down Metroidvania-style game with charming characters and cute and colorful graphics. Pluto is initially armed with a broom, and garbage is the currency of the realm. Upgrades can be purchased and earned through progression, and new skills open up more areas on the map. Naturally, the game becomes increasingly harder, and the jumping controls are very loose and finicky. Fortunately, plunging to your death is usually only a minor setback, but it can become very frustrating when you have to perform several carefully timed jumps in succession. Save points are liberally placed and thankfully refill your exceedingly small health bar. Four hits and you're dead (or rather, sent back to the last save point), which brings us to the biggest pain point: boss fights. The boss fights are brutally difficult, even on the easiest setting, and require way more dexterity than this old man can muster. When it takes more than twenty attempts to win a fight, I get very frustrated and lose interest. By the third boss, I gave up altogether, which is unfortunate because I enjoyed the exploration aspect of the game quite a bit. And that was less than 20% of the way through the game.

Overall, it's a fun and attractive game for the first 4-5 hours and then it becomes unplayable.