"Become a cat! In this cozy life sim RPG, you'll lead your colony into the mysterious Wildwood. Hunt prey, harvest herbs, collect magical treasures, & defend your new home from intruders. Build a thriving town to recruit new cats. Get to know the residents, fall in love, & raise a litter of kittens!"
Game description on Steam
Cattails: Wildwood Story is a sprite-based video game, and the sequel to the previous game by the developers, Cattails. Made by Falcon Development, you play as a cat who, after the destruction of your colony's previous home, leads your colony to a new territory- the Wildwood.
Upon arrival to the Wildwood, you're visited by your colony's Guardian Spirit, known as the Forest Guardian, who tells you they sense an evil here. Over the course of the gameplay, you discover more secrets of the Wildwood and work to purify the evil from the land, alongside recruiting new members for your colony, building up your town, hunting, fighting, and plenty of other things to fill your time.
Cattails: Wildwood Story provides examples of:
- All Love Is Unrequited: Glimmer apparently has an unrequited crush on Krampy, and expresses intense sadness if they get married to Talon.
- Ambiguous Gender: All characters are referred to with purely gender-neutral terms and they/them pronouns, including the player character. The only gendered terms in the game are ones you can select for yourself, such as king or queen.
- Abandoned Area: A location in the upper-left section of the map is an abandoned farm.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: You can be one, if you want. Somewhat subverted, as besides the god-like character and Umbra, the player is the only unnaturally colored cat, and you can easily choose to be a normal color.
- An Interior Designer Is You: You have full control over your den, including building new rooms, placing furniture, and customizing the wall/flooring material. You also have full control of the layout of your colony, right down to the ground type.
- Anti-Frustration Feature: Time passes extremely slowly in the mines, which is very helpful as exploring the mines can take a long time.
- Artifact of Power: The Power Paws, rare tokens you can find that increase your stats, such as health or attack speed.
- A Place Holds Memories: The four dark temples around the map, which can later be purified and made light again.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Glimmer has shades of this.
- Dating Catwoman: If you spare the Wildwood Champion at the end of the main storyline, the main antagonist of the game, they can be befriended, dated, and even married.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Potentially, if you spare the Wildwood Champion at the end of the story.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If the player cat runs out of health, they'll black out and wake up in Krampy's clinic, and may lose a random assortment of items from their inventory. The player is then automatically returned to their den, the game auto saves, and they wake up the next day none the worse for wear. If your buddy runs out of health, they will make some excuse that they suddenly have to go and return home.
- Divine Date: You can befriend, date, and marry the Forest Guardian themselves. As well as the Wildwood Champion, if you spare them at the conclusion of the main storyline.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Forest Guardian is never given a name, though they probably don't even have one. Same with the Wildwood Champion.
- Expressive Mask: Krampy's plague doctor mask.
- The Faceless: Krampy, who is never seen without their stereotypical plague doctor mask. For whatever reason, their kitten, Jack, dons one as well.
- First Girl Wins: Arguably, if you marry Coco (even though their gender is ambiguous, as with every other character), since they were the very first cat the player ever met, back at the beginning of the original game. The Forest Guardian even has some special dialogue commenting on it, and takes on the role of officiating at your wedding (which they don't do if you marry anybody else, because with any other cat, it's Coco who officiates).
- Glowing Eyes: Umbra has bright purple ones. They share this trait with their creator, the Wildwood Champion, though for some reason the Champion only has them in their uncorrupted form.
- Heel–Face Turn: The Wildwood Champion, if spared after their final defeat.
- Hidden Depths: Several of the cats you recruit are deeply reluctant to trust you at first, but they open up to you as you befriend them.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: The "Wacky Entity" found on the secret island two tiles south of the Beachside Woods, who speaks in strange noises. However, the player can still understand them; they're very polite and friendly, though seemingly a bit lonely, and very eager to play a minigame called Wacky Whiskers with the player.
- Interspecies Romance: Possible with Umbra, a sentient void cat, or even the Forest Guardian. As well as the Wildwood Champion, if they're still alive after the end of the storyline.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Jag comes off this way at first; Talon and Charlotte are also VERY strong examples. All of them will warm up and reveal a softer side if you befriend them.
- Married Animals: As with the first game. This time around though, just about every character in the game can actually be romanced.
- Mundane Object Amazement: The "curios" found throughout the game world that can be donated to Glimmer's museum. They're all incredibly mundane objects from the human world, but apparently cats consider them valuable artifacts. Naturally, Glimmer hilariously misidentifies all of them (i.e, they think that a pencil is meant for cleaning teeth).
- Pair the Spares: There are a few cats that might pair up and get married to each other if the player has a high friendship with both of them (and of course isn't romantically involved with either of them); however, this will only happen if the player outright encourages it.
- Panthera Awesome: The Forest Guardian, who takes the form of a lioness. The Wildwood Champion, as well, who takes the form of a tiger.
- Parental Abandonment: If you become good friends with Jag, they reveal that they were orphaned at a young age. The same applies to Spark, whose other parent left them after they and Ember broke up.
- Really Gets Around: Zephyr, or at least they claim as much.
- Secret Character: Umbra, a sentient void cat added in the 1.10 update. The bundle that the player must complete to recruit them is by far the most difficult one in the entire game, and only becomes available after the conclusion of the main story.
- Also the "Wacky Entity", referred to as "entity" in the game file, and simply as "???" in the game itself, a very bizarre, floating, completely black creature with tentacles. It resides on a small, secret island found by swimming two tiles south of the Beachside Woods, and speaking to it allows you to play a hidden mini game called Wacky Whiskers, for which the entity will give out prizes (in the form of unique furniture) for reaching high score benchmarks. It is never mentioned by anyone at all, and it has no role whatsoever in the story. One can go through the entire game completely oblivious to its existence.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: By default, you start with one star of friendship with every cat. Your relationship will never decay any lower on its own; the only way to drop to zero stars is by deliberately giving them gifts they hate.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Every cat will react with anger and scold you if you offer them a red rose or a shiny trinket while dating or married to someone else.
