Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche

I don't normally write reviews for games in this format but Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche is a game I deeply care about, it isn't anything groundbreaking but the concept is fun and the characters are stupid and lovable. The game wears its dumbness on its sleeve and you can tell the developers had a lot of fun putting it together. I'll try not to spoil anything insane in this review, if it at all looks interesting please give it a chance! The game is very short and a majority of the enjoyment I had with it was the characters and their dialogue. To give a little history on this game, initially an over the top mock-up of the game was shown on the WayForward social media accounts for April Fools day in 2013. Due to a positive reception from fans the game was put into production and later released in May of 2016 as an exclusive free download to Humble Bundle Monthly (now known as Humble Choice) subscribers as part of their "Humble Vault" which now no longer exists. To my knowledge after the Humble Vault shut down the game was inaccessible to anybody who legitimately wanted a copy. Until 2020 where the game would be re-released on the Nintendo Switch for April Fools day, alongside a LimitedRun physical release. Finally, this year 2025 the game was re-released once again onto Steam for April Fools day. I don't own the Nintendo Switch edition but it appears that this Steam version of the game is almost identical to the one from 2016's Humble Vault. Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche is a joke game first and a side scrolling Shmup second. The game is only 3 levels long and takes less than an hour to beat, each level features full voice acting and a full length original song to accompany it! After each level is a boss battle against the character you've been bantering with throughout the main level. You take control of Kebako the Intergalactic Bounty Hunting Cat Girl, accompanied by her second in command Squiddie. Kebako has a variety of weapons you can pickup throughout the stages, all of which are based on a retro game. These weapon cartridges deal more damage than the standard pea shooter but are all quite gimmicky in the way the bullets move, all of them involving more input from the player than just holding the shoot button. Kebako will lose her currently equipped weapon cartridge upon taking a single hit of damage, weapon cartridge spawns seem to be random so you may not get the same one every time you play. Enemies also drop healing items in the form of junk food, they also have a chance to drop salad which if you read the title you should know to avoid at all costs. After you beat the final boss you unlock an alternative game mode that allows you to switch to whichever weapon you like without the fear of losing it upon taking damage. I personally had a lot of fun replaying levels with only the Dance Gun to see how high of a combo I could get with it! There is also some secret dialogue and additional score awarded to you if you destroy the item pickup the boss rewards you with after defeating them. I'm happy to finally have this game on Steam for more people to experience, I really did not think they'd ever do anything with Kebako again but I am happy to see they still remember her for every April Fools day. I also heard she makes a cameo in River City Girls 2, which I'm still yet to play but if I do end up seeing her in that game I'll be really happy!