Oooer Missus

Right from the start I knew I was going to have a lot of fun with Ms Kitty Powers. For my first session with this little minx, I was grinning ear to ear and laughing out loud.

For those not in the know, Kitty Powers Matchmaker is a dating sim from developer Magic Notion. The Kitty Powers I have been fiddling with is the Steam PC version, but is actually a port from a mobile phone game. This would have normally made me run a mile, but Ms Kitty has charm and none of the messy microtransactions associated with a lot of mobile gaming.

Who the hell is Kitty Powers!? I hear you squeal. Well, here’s something you don’t get every day: Kitty Powers is the Drag Queen host of the game. Not only will Kitty help guide you through the trials and camp tribulations of helping people find a perfect love, she’s also the developer of this game. I shit you not. The developer of this game has taken on the most fabulous persona of Kitty Powers: High hair, pouting lips, dubious breasts and darlings, she’s rather fabulous.

How to Date: Drag Queen Style.

You start the game with an intro from Ms Kitty Powers and she hands the keys over to your dating agency office. You need to earn some reputation from your clients and of course, earn some money as well. You’re shown a map of your local town that includes places that you can advertise your dating agency. The more places you advertise, the more diverse your potential clientèle. So to give some examples, advertising in a coffee shop with get you hipster types, advertising in the comic shops gets you geeks, in the disco you get glam types etc.

Back to the lobby and your customers are waiting and looking for lurve. The range is limited at first, but the idea being is to match like for like. You get a chance to see their hobbies, interests etc. Then using Kitty Powers ‘Little Black Book’, you search for a date that will be compatible for your client. Choose what you think is a suitable love-match for your client. From there you are presented with a choice of restaurants (British, West Indian etc.) A quick mini-game to choose the type of restaurant and you’re off on the date and the quest for a booty-call begins.

The character tropes are quite funny. To start you are limited to just a couple of types, putting two geeks on a date and the conversations were making me either laugh out loud, or having violent urges (given geeks usually make me want to punch them, job well done Magic Notion).

The meal with your date is split into sections, each section a silly and funny mini-game. At the start of a meal choose your dates food, get it wrong and it pisses them off. Between courses you spin a wheel and it chooses the topic of conversation. It’s a game of observation, a game of sometimes luck. The mini games are varied and fun. Sometimes you’re given the option to lie if you’ve given the answer to a question that clashes with your dates. to lie, you spin the wheel of misfortune, this determines whether your date falls for your caddish ways or not. Lie too much, you can still form a relationship, but that won’t last and your reputation will suffer. I found myself getting into this all much more than I expected, screaming at the screen at times, in hope of not messing a date up.

As the game progresses more and more features unlock, more restaurants with higher difficulties, more places to advertise (meaning more very charming character tropes), more extensions to the agency, meaning more subjects to play with on dates. There a lot of game here for the budget price, but make no mistake, this is a budget game. It’s made with a charm, flare and warmth and it’s bizarrely addictive.All the NPC’s are randomly generated, you can even choose to have your own character uploaded and used anonymously in other peoples and friends games. It’s a breath of fresh air that same sex relationships are the norm as well as different gender. It’s also credit to the charm of the game that the genders of the characters isn’t an issue.

The idea of a Drag Queen at the helm seems to have raised eyebrows in some quarters, but Kitty Powers is good old fashioned theatrical fun. The humour is at the level of the Carry On films and the likes of Are You Being Served. Harmless, light and frothy innuendo abound. One side of me wished Kitty was a bit more catty and bitchy, the other side of me applauds the innocent charisma.

I’ve found Kitty Powers a real little treat and frivolous pleasure. Also a mention to the writing as well, the dialogue is often in a British slang and accent, a rare treat and raised many more smiles from me.