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Review: Catana: Red Flowers
Catana: Red Flowers began its journey as Red Flowers, originally presented as a darker, gritty action platformer – reminiscent of a blend between their earlier titles Strides parkour, Dead Hook with its extreme violence, and Against with its swordplay segments. Then after a period of silence, it resurfaced with a more child-friendly cartoon style, which I found personally disappointing. However, has playing it shifted my perspective?
Game Details
Release Date: January 15th 2026
Developer: Joy Way
Publisher: Joy Way
Price: TBC
Reviewed On: Meta Quest 3
* Access Provided For Review *
A Strange Combination
Originally, Red Flowers was advertised as a high-octane action platformer, but with its rebranding to Catana: Red Flowers, it keeps those core elements while adding a confusing twist of a cooking game aimed at saving your granddad’s restaurant in the hub. This hub also serves as a sandbox area where you can unlock and play various mini-games. It feels like all these features were included to serve as filler content more than anything else, and the shift towards a more family-friendly approach allowed the developers to integrate options like managing the restaurant, taking part in mini-games, or just messing around.
The adrenaline-pumping action elements strongly remind me of the game Ghostrunner. In this mode, you’ll dash through meticulously designed linear levels, combining parkour moves with your grappling hook to bridge the gaps in the stages, all while eliminating enemies in your path as you strive to reach your destination as swiftly as possible. When it comes to executing all of this, Joyway’s experience from their previous titles truly benefits them. When everything aligns perfectly, the controls and the flow of the levels feel incredibly smooth, keeping you in constant motion.
While the gameplay provides a seamless and fluid experience, there are certain aspects that detract from this part of the game. These shortcomings stem from the limited variety of enemy types, featuring basic grunts that serve as little more than fodder to slice through, alongside a shielded variant that requires you to use your grappling hook to remove the shield before you can attack with your sword. Additionally, there are enemies armed with guns, which you can defeat by deflecting their bullets back at them with your sword. As a result, it feels like none of the levels truly evolve or escalate as you advance through the eleven stages available. This leads to concerns about the length of these segments; your initial playthrough and unlocking the stages only takes about an hour. There are also speed run stages and an endless mode, but the main incentive for returning lies in those speed runs. This means you’ll need to enjoy that type of challenge to find any replay value in this aspect of the game.
Now we move to the hub world, where the primary focus is on saving your grandfather’s restaurant. Here, you’ll be cooking a variety of meals to serve customers within a time limit, while ensuring that a selection of drinks is always available at the drinks stand. Your objective is to earn money and build your reputation, which can be used to upgrade the restaurant, unlocking new meals and features. Alternatively, this money can be spent on cosmetics for the action runs, creating a thinly veiled sense of connection.
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This transition takes you from the high-energy action and physical movement to a more leisurely activity. However, as previously mentioned, I believe this shift serves more as filler to extend the game’s longevity, rather than enhancing the action aspect with additional levels and providing different weapons that could have complemented the idea of being a ninja cat, like using shurikens to tackle distant enemies. Nonetheless, it can provide a moment of respite if you’re looking to take a break from striving for better times.
Among the two, I find the high-energy aspect of the game to be my favourite. This could explain why I wish they had placed greater emphasis on this mode and introduced some more variety and levels to foster a sense of escalation, or even better, a storyline to keep players engaged. However, each player has their own preferred mode and may enjoy the cooking aspect more. I believe that creators who specialise in child-friendly VR content will find ways to create viral shorts or TikToks using the sandbox feature.
The unusual combination of these two game genres presents a big issue for me. If someone were to ask, I would suggest seeking out separate games that focus on one genre. While both gameplay elements are well-executed, they lack the depth that standalone games provide and feel somewhat haphazardly combined. For instance, I would recommend Joyway’s excellent Stride Fates for its action, upgrades, and engaging story, and then suggest something like Zombie Bar Simulator, which offers much more comprehensive cooking and drink-making mechanics.
Cartoony, Bold And Colourful
In the original trailer for Red Flowers, the setting was a realistic and gritty oriental environment. However, with the rebranding, the world has transformed into a vibrant and cartoonish landscape. This shift results in a peculiar mix during the action sequences; even though your character is now a humanoid cat, the human Yakuza-style enemies from Red Flowers remain, but with animal masks added. When you return to the hub world, it retains its colourful, cartoonish aesthetic, yet the inhabitants are different humanoid animals. This makes the presence of humans in animal masks during the action scenes even more perplexing. The contrast is heightened by the fact that you are a humanoid cat, while the only human in the hub appears to be your grandfather, leaving you to ponder what he has been doing amidst all these humanoid animals.
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I’m uncertain if this is the true reason, but it appears that these visual modifications aimed at creating a more child-friendly atmosphere have been influenced by the popularity of games such as I Am Cat, which is likely to attract a younger audience – this impression is further amplified by the game offering a movement system that closely resembles that of I Am Cat.
The audio in the game fulfils its purpose, yet it doesn’t offer anything revolutionary. During the action sequences, you’ll experience adrenaline-pumping music that complements the gameplay, alongside the sounds of your footsteps and the rush of wind, enhancing the feeling of speed. This is paired with the sharp sounds of your sword as it cuts through enemies and deflects bullets, the grunts of foes as they fall, and the occasional meow from your character, since you play as a cat.
In the hub world, the atmosphere shifts to soothing oriental melodies, accompanied by the familiar sounds of cooking and drink preparation. You’ll also hear the cheerful noises of the locals celebrating their meals or simply going about their day, all while your character’s meows punctuate the scene. However, I found it peculiar that while your character meows, the other humanoid characters sound distinctly more human, creating another odd contrast in the game, but this time in its audio landscape.
Comfort
The Verdict
Catana: Red Flowers is a game that is filled with peculiar choices and combinations, resulting in a game hat feels more like a patchwork than a re-imagining. Initially titled Red Flowers, it was a gritty, realistic, high-octane action game reminiscent of Ghostrunner. However, the rebranding to Catana: Red Flowers transformed it into a more child-friendly, brightly colored cartoon style, replacing the protagonist with a cat. While it retains the high-octane action aspect, it has strangely introduced a hub world where players save their grandfather’s restaurant by earning money serving customers to expand the establishment. This addition feels more like filler rather than the team doing a meaningful expansion of the action levels, which can be completed in about an hour. The odd combinations don’t stop there; the action sequences feature human Yakuza-style enemies, as seen in the Red Flowers trailer, now merely wearing animal masks, while the hub world is populated by humanoid animals like your character. All these choices seem mismatched and illogical. Although it offers two game genres and a sandbox that could work well together, none of the modes provide enough depth to keep players engaged for long. I would have preferred if they had simply stuck to Red Flowers, enhancing the action with more weapon variety, more diverse enemy types, additional levels, and a compelling story to maintain interest. It feels as though the team noticed the success of games like I Am Cat and opted to give the action sections a more cartoonish appearance and vibrant colour palette, adding the restaurant as filler content to appeal to a younger audience, and created the hub sandbox in hopes of achieving viral success like I Am Cat, rather than completing the originally intended game.
Copyright / The VR Realm / 2016 -
