Glaciwaker Entertainment usually has one or two interesting titles to show off at Tokyo Game Show, and this year they had a really cute one on display. Titled Hazardous Journey, it’s a game where you have to lead a little kitty cat through increasingly dangerous terrain. It mostly uses an isometric viewpoint not unlike that seen in Monument Valley, but rather than solving somewhat chill spatial puzzles, you’re instead trying to guide your cat around tricky timed obstacles.
The graphics in Hazardous Journey are quite frankly gorgeous. The level the developer was showing off at Tokyo Game Show was themed around Japanese traditional culture, with cherry trees in full blossom and mochi pestles smashing down into giant buckets of the chewy treat. A look at some of the later levels of the game shows that things won’t always be so bright, however, so expect a good variety of treats for your eyes. Since everything is rendered in 3D, the camera is able to move at times to provide a better perspective for whatever set of hazards you’re tackling at any given moment. There are also lots of cool animations that help bring the levels to life.
The difficulty in the game comes from the narrow pathways that you need to navigate combined with traps and obstacles placed in your way. If your cat falls off its precarious ledge, you’ll be sent back to the beginning of the level to give it another go. To further complicate matters, each stage features a set number of pick-ups placed along the way. You don’t need to get all of them to clear the stage, but the game does keep track of how many you’ve found on each level. Many of them are as easy to find as following the main path, but others will require you to take a few risks.
Hazardous Journey is still a good ways away from being finished, so we won’t be seeing this one before mid-2019 at the earliest. Still, it’s definitely one worth keeping an eye on. It looks fantastic and while the gameplay seems like it might be overly simple at first, it’s more challenging than it appears. Getting all of the pick-ups in a level and making it out intact is a decent enough challenge to keep you engaged while trying to pull the little kitty to its mysterious goal.
