‘Katara’ Unravels a Mystery as You Ascend a Well

Katara is a simplistic-looking clamber from the depths complete with some impressive storytelling.

For reasons you can’t remember you’ve found yourself at the foot of a well. It’s not just any old well, though – this well stretches down far beyond normal measure, and there’s a very strange smell.

Katara is another title from John Vanderhoef, a creator who I keep running into due to their penchant for tucking narrative into all sorts of formats. Katara has you take on the role of a boy left at the foot of a town’s well. Although the graphics are – as you have no doubt noticed – incredibly simplistic, there’s a really strong narrative which runs throughout it, and this makes it more than worth the 10–15~ minutes it’ll take you to run through it.

Coming back to the visuals for a moment though – characters in Katara (Spoilers: there are other humanoids) remain as square boxes as at the start, but all of the platforming puzzles are also based around that square shape. There’s something strange about having a character that fits perfectly through the spaces they need to traverse, especially when they start their journey unsure of their reason for being.

As you climb up and up, a narrator slowly peels away your reason for being where you are, and the hard journey which you went through. Ultimately, it turns out that there is a reason beyond that of childlike curiosity, and you are presented with a simple, split-in-the-road choice which defines the ending you receive.

If you’re interested in a short, but intriguing narrative experience, then you definitely can’t go wrong by checking out Katara.

Katara is available now on itch.io.

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