When it Rains, She Explores. Let's Play Kathy Rain! (Blind)

[Cullen]

You know what they say, thunder only happens when it's raining.

The Game (of Luv)

Similar to how I discovered the Fear & Hunger series, one day the sequel ended up on my Steam home page, informing me there was a whole other game that I missed. Both Kathy Rain 1 and 2 looked pretty interesting, visually reminding me of the first Gabriel Knight, so I tucked them away onto the wishlist for the day a sale would come. That day came recently and I need new things to LP, so here we are. Unlike with Fear & Hunger, I'll actually start with the first game this time.


The Let's Play (of Luv)

This will be a blind first playthrough of Kathy Rain, where you'll get to see my chaotic thought process when faced with both adventure game puzzles and ongoing mysteries. I don't quite know how this game is structured compared to a classic point 'n click, so in the event I leave any turns unstoned, we can double back with additional videos to pick up anything interesting I missed. I'm aiming to get roughly hour long sessions recorded for this game at least twice a week.

Disclaimer of Luv

As a mystery game, Kathy Rain of course gets most of its intrigue out of said mystery. Naturally Absolutely No Spoilers!!! for the game if you're already familiar with it. I want to experience everything organically, so if I miss something big you'll just have to quietly seethe about it until I realize my blunder and feel stupid.

The Videos ( of Luv)

Part 1, Grand Inquisition
Part 2, Mathematical
Part 3, Gone Phishin'
Part 4, Where There's Smoke, They Pinch Back
Part 5, Shocking Performance
Part 6, Full Throttle

Full LP Playlist

If you enjoy seeing me bumble and stumble through adventure games, you may enjoy my previous blind outing of Little Goody Two Shoes. I also make a handful of references to Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, so if you happen to be unfamiliar with that game, Rocket Baby Dolls has an LP for that game that you can use to brush up with.

[Cullen]

In our initial outing, Kathy rolls up completely blitzed and disinterested in what her perky Christian roomie has to say. At least, until she learns her grandfather died. Kathy has an irreverent streak that often descends into bad attitude, but hey at least she's kind to her grandmother!

We're mostly just setting the stage here, it seems. We have our initial mystery, find out what happened to Grandpa Rain that rendered him in a pseudo-vegetative state in the 15 years leading up to his death. To that end, let's harangue the podunk town police force into telling us what they know. They even have a guy named Marks at the front desk, I appreciate the forwardness.

[Cullen]

Part 2 is out! Although we don't get any new locales (seldom do adventure games let us go to hardware stores or super markets to pick up simple items), we do get a number of new potential leads on what exactly Grandpa was up to 15+ years ago. Kathy's comments after the Charles Wade roadblock indicates that we're at the end of the day, though I guess we'll find out next time if there are any other sequence triggers I might of missed. I did realize just as I hit end on the recording that we probably could have called Eileen back with the lead on Lily Meyers, but maybe we'll get a chance to get her help on that again later. The establishing scene let us know she's quite good at digging up people's personal information, after all.

[Cullen]

Part 3 is out! Yeah I know Kathy's hacking gambit at the end is more general Social Engineering, but the lake visit made the pun too tempting. Anyway, despite seemingly being at the end of the day last time, we had a surprising amount left to go. After remembering to check a few loose ends, we make it to a scenic-yet-tragic lakehouse, bond over addiction, find out Joseph Rain might have stumbled into the plot of Duma Key, and find ourselves at the forefront of computer hacking plus photoshop. Next time we'll be the impetus for Youtube Poop!

The other big thing I'll mention is towards the end I get stuck on the photo for a bit due to missing Kathy's hint that I needed to print a zoom in of the Flower specifically. Playing the footage back, I managed to click on the literal frame Kathy mentioned printing the flower separate, closing the dialogue immediately, which is just the kind of thing you can expect from me when playing a game for the first time. Reminder that you can step Youtube videos forward by 10 seconds with the L key if my meandering on the photo gets old for you.

[Cullen]

Part 4 is out! A riveting round of discussion with Eileen is had, and then it's time for some good old fashioned sentence mixing. I feel like this is a puzzle where they could have done well to have Kathy chime in on what she actually expected of the player, because man I way overcomplicated this puzzle in my head and spent an embarrassing amount of time ruminating on a feasible message that would fool Erica.



That big block of nothing in the wave form for my commentary is me racking my brain lol. The way this puzzle ended up actually working is extremely reminiscent of the infamous SNES Family Feud game where the text parser mostly just checks to see if you have the right words/letters in the mostly correct order.

After that embarrassment, we have a rousing game of guilt slinging Scrabble, a surreal dream with a dapper man in a conspicuously red suit, and a whole slew of new locations to check out in Conwell Springs. Odds are good we'll have to swing through the previously available locations to pick up a few things, but I wanted to focus on the new stuff first.

I was surprised at how short Day 2 ended up being by contrast, we didn't even leave Kathy's room! Bit of a shame, I was hoping we'd at least hit up a photo lab, but I can see them not wanting to focus too much on fleshing out the campus when most of the rest of the game will be in Conwell Springs. Here's to the could-have-beens!

[Cullen]

Part 5 is out! You know, I've been waiting all game for a classic adventure game psycho-solution. Killing the plant with coffee as an incidental means to distract Lenny was pretty douchey, but just didn't have quite the punch I was looking for. Glad we could upgrade to felony assault after that. Good thing Goober doesn't have a pacemaker!

This was a very exposition heavy part as well, as Kathy so eloquently pointed out Charles Wade seems to love the sound of his own voice. Some more supernatural trappings are starting to encroach the mystery as well, after a light smattering of them in the previous part. We're also slowly getting wrapped up in the past of Kathy's family, with a big new lead related to that. I'm actually pretty excited to see where the game goes from here!

[Cullen]

Part 6 is out! Goodness gracious, Kathy Rain was a slow burn to start but as soon as Day 1 ended it's been moving at a way faster clip. I managed to accidentally fall forward into plot progression at every turn this go around, to the point I find myself at a loss for words a couple times. Not because I can't follow what's going on, mind, but it is suddenly a lot to take in. I almost assuredly missed an achievement or two at this stage. But hey, new bike paint jobs unlocked!