Kinectimals

Go straight to the game's presentation video.



Welcome to Lemuria and a world of magical landscapes and cute and playful members of the cat family. Kinectimals is all darling cats that you have to take care of (train, play with and so on). The game explores the possibilities offered by Kinect, for added realism and immersion with our four legged friends.

Content: plenty of challenges and mini-games!

The island of Lemuria is made up of five environments that are released throughout the game: beach, mountains and so on. At the beginning, the player is welcomed by Bumble, a sort of flying inhabitant of the island. While Bumble amuses the kids, adults find him rather annoying. He guides you through your discovery of the island and the different activities on offer during the gameplay.


You gain points by taking care of your favourite cat, which you choose from five species: tiger, cheetah, lion, panther or leopard. The game consists in teaching it new movements (by miming gestures, with or without whistle) or using accessories for gaming (ball, frisbee, bungee, remote controlled car and so on).


The various activities take the form of a mini-game and are suggested to you by Bumble as you make your way through the game. With the points thus garnered, other landscapes become accessible with their lot of new activities.
There are also competitions, with medals to be won if you've trained your feline friend well.

Playability: the Kinect is well used overall

Kinect is of course controller-free. Once again, we like the direct interaction between the game your body. Move your hands towards the screen and you can caress your big cat virtually, turn around and you'll have him rolling on the floor, or if you put your hands in the air he'll stand up on his hind legs - all pretty similar to what you'd get from one of these animals in the flesh! Of course, not everyone will want to have to roll around on the floor...



The only thing missing is a real sensation of touch. Of course, it's nice not to smell of these beasts, but a true sensation of touch is missing in these virtual relations.



The mini-games are also varied and mostly a success. Throwing balls is a bit approximate however and controlling the remote controlled car isn't easy because of the speed of the vehicle, which contrasts with the responsiveness of a system such as Kinect. As usual, there's a certain amount of latency with Kinect. Thankfully, this doesn't matter most of the time.

Graphics: cute and colourful

In Kinectimals, all the elements are there to give you a sensation of travel. The different environments are superb and use a palet of lively colours, while the little cats are very well modeled and animated. With their gorgeous fur, you could almost think they were cuddly toys. Everyone agrees, they're simply too cute!

Of course, you don't get photorealism. Kinectimals hasn't been designed for that and anyway, realism in a game with big cats would mean losing a few limbs.

The audio is also nice. The tigers, leopards, lions and so on pur like cats and the music is generally lively and not too aggressive. Just a shame that Bumble is so annoying!

Kinectimals presentation video