Developer: Magic Notion
Publisher: Mastertronic
Platform: PC (Steam)
Review Copy Provided By: Mastertronic
Release Date: April 22, 2015
Kitty Powers is beautiful but tough, like beef jerky in a ball gown. (You got me: that’s Titus from The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt. But I suspect that most men who don dresses like to think that they are both of these things.) By tough, I mean tough to put down. So mostly just a thing of beauty, then. Beautiful, hard to put down, and now available for desktops. Let me pump my breaks for a moment.
You may be familiar with the name Kitty Powers from all that time spent cruising the app store of your choice; Ms. Kitty’s Matchmaker can be found on iOS, Android, and Kindle platforms. Or maybe you’ve spotted K. Powers’ guest appearance in the RPG Super Glyph Quest. Or, if you’re in the London-area, you might just recognize her from her reigning championship as the proud owner of the “Biggest fake tits in Guildford 2011-2013.” A British drag queen with the same colorful personality that you might expect from an oversexed unicorn of her caliber, this saucy empress loves big hair, pink, and now desktop gaming.
Kitty Powers’ Matchmaker has been available on mobile, but hopes to tap into a whole new audience thanks to Steam. In this daring simulator, players are enlisted by Kitty to help expand a branch of her dating agency. The game revolves around pairing up hopefully compatible partners, arranging dates, and trying to predict which dynamic duos will hit it off. In addition to the thrill of watching two cartoons hook up (not watch, necessarily…maybe that’ll be available as DLC during an update down the line [she said, jocularly]), players will watch the agency grow right before their very eyes. Chock full of witty banter and queenicisms, this game is one that most will get wrapped up in for a little comic relief. Players kick things off by advertising the agency at one of several in-game locations, and Kitty starts users off with some in-game coin, “because [she’s] generous like that.” Well, then.
The first thing Kitty helps users with is setting up a profile in-game. Here, users build an avatar, complete with a personality (thanks to a handful of quiz questions) and likeness of their own design. Kitty’s will even upload here agents’ dating profiles online if players choose. When this happens, players are entered into the pools of those who are looking for love online at the Kitty Powers Dating Agency. If this feature is selected, players can check in with their avatar periodically to see what their character is up to. For privacy, the traveling avatar does not include a player’s actual username, but rather a randomly selected name to help bypass stalkery and other online security pitfalls. Then its time to roll up your digital sleeves.
Users can expect to meet their first client after Kitty shows them to her office for the first time. Kitty will walk through a run-of-the-mill date with newbies, explaining that she’ll offer hints about which matches are the most likely to be successful and where players can take their clients to dine. Select the dish that their date would most like, using tips from the waiter at a cost if you’re stuck on what dish is what. From here, players spin the Love Handle—not to be confused with the Disco Stick—which will help to determine a handful of topics that our lovebirds can chat about.
Dating agents help to walk characters through their date, coaching them through the wining and dining in hopes of helping characters of all sexual orientations find amour. In Kitty Powers’ lobby, agents (players) will receive a dossier full of notes about their potential clients. Players will use this information to pair clients. From here, users can expect to help their potential lovers dress and select a restaurant, where players will use a hidden camera and in-ear mic to help their clients make the right move on any given date.
Players will engage in a handful of other tasks, too, like remembering which order desserts are served in, and selecting the correct waiter to summon with the bill. If dates go well, your affluence as a matchmaker increases; if dates crash and burn…well, I don’t know. All of mine have gone well so far, so…boo ya.
There is in-game currency in this game, but there are no micro-transactions to speak of. What is worth mentioning, however briefly, is that Kitty served as her very own creative director before working with teams at EA and Criterion and creating art for Media Molecule. This bitch has class; according to this sassy broad, she’s been making games since roughly 1996.
Connect to Facebook to set your friends up on dates and matchmake those that you know, as well as compare scores. Those who earn the most points in a week earn a bonus for being the most fabulous.
Review Overview
Score:
4/5
If you like mobile games, this port is right up your alley. Characters say absolutely silly things in their dialogue, and all of the personalities in the game, save for Kitty Powers herself, are procedurally generated (which I assume is British-speak for randomly selected); this means that players will never encounter the same character twice. Measures like these make for an absolutely replayable game, which I absolutely adore. The downside to this dating simulator are, in short, that it is a dating simulator. If that description, in and of itself, doesn’t turn you off, then I’d have to say that this is a title that won’t do you wrong.
