Curse of the Sea Rats

Introduction

Curse of the Sea Rats began as a Kickstarter campaign built almost entirely on the strength of a single pitch: a hand-drawn, "ratoidvania" adventure following four British prisoners turned into rats by a pirate witch, exploring a folklore-soaked Irish coastline to reverse the curse. Petoons Studio delivered on the pitch's visual promise in full when the game released on Steam on 6 April 2023 — this is one of the most consistently praised-looking games in its price bracket — and then spent close to two years afterward trying to close the gap between how it looks and how it plays, a gap that its own review corpus never stops talking about.

The animation is the whole selling point, and it delivers

There's remarkably little disagreement about Curse of the Sea Rats' presentation. Hand-drawn 2D character animation layered over detailed 3D backgrounds, with real light and shadow work, gives every screenshot and every combat encounter a hand-crafted, classic-animation feel that's rare at this price point. It shows up as the opening line in review after review, regardless of whether that review goes on to recommend the game — "the graphics, the animation, the music, they're all just dripping with charm" is a fairly representative summary, and it's echoed almost word for word across dozens of others. Voice acting and music draw the same consistent praise, giving the setting — four cursed prisoners scrabbling across a folklore-heavy Irish coast — real atmosphere to match the visuals.

Where the animation works against the game

The problem, named specifically and repeatedly across the review corpus, is that the same full commitment to hand-drawn animation that makes the game beautiful also makes it feel unresponsive to play. Several reviewers draw a direct causal line: because every animation plays out fully before the next input registers, movement and attacks feel locked-in and delayed rather than snappy. One reviewer states it plainly: "ALL of the focus was on the animation here, massively to the detriment of the gameplay. Every animation is fully committed, making the controls sluggish." That's not an isolated complaint — it's close to the central thesis of the negative review corpus as a whole.

Combat compounds the problem in a genre where responsive combat is usually the baseline expectation. Multiple reviewers point out there's no dodge roll and no reliable invincibility frames, meaning contact with an enemy or projectile is close to unavoidable rather than a punishable mistake. Hitbox accuracy is questioned just as often — reports describe weapon swings visually connecting with an enemy without the hit registering, while small hazards like thrown bombs deal disproportionately large damage. For a genre built around Metroidvania-style precision platforming and combat, that combination is a real structural weakness rather than a matter of taste.

One specific bug is worth flagging on its own: a reviewer reports that the game requires reaching 100% completion before a particular late-game boss fight, and that missing this window permanently locks that save file out of ever reaching full completion, forcing a restart from scratch. It's a single account rather than a widely corroborated pattern, but it's specific and plausible enough — and serious enough for anyone chasing full completion — that it's worth going in aware of.

A developer that kept showing up

What separates Curse of the Sea Rats from a typical "gorgeous but abandoned" story is that Petoons Studio didn't disappear after launch. The patch history shows real, sustained quality-of-life work: version 1.0.20 two weeks after release, 1.1.2 by late April, 1.3.7 by June 2023, and then — notably, given how long after launch this is — a free "Ghost Ship" survival mode and "Jolly Roger" casual mode added in March 2025, nearly two full years after the game shipped. That kind of long-tail free content is unusual for a game this size, and it shows up directly in the review corpus: several reviewers explicitly say they bounced off the game near launch, came back after patches, and found a noticeably better experience the second time. "Many issues were probably fixed as the updates rolled out. We had a blast playing this game," reads one 2024 co-op review — a sentiment that would read very differently if written in April 2023.

Co-op is a real differentiator, when it works

Four-player local and Remote Play Together co-op is one of Curse of the Sea Rats' more distinctive features for the genre, and reviewers who played it with friends or partners consistently rate the experience higher than those who played solo — "much better with friends" is a near-verbatim sentiment across several reviews. It's not without its own problems: a 2025 review reports co-op-specific bugs, including being unable to attack or be attacked after certain room transitions, so it isn't a flawless multiplayer implementation. But as a differentiator against the many single-player-only Metroidvanias in this price range, four-player co-op support is a genuine point in the game's favour when it's working.

Final verdict

Curse of the Sea Rats is a clean example of a game whose art and whose mechanics were built by teams operating at different speeds. The animation, voice acting and setting are good enough to earn praise from reviewers who otherwise can't recommend the game, and that gap between "this looks incredible" and "this doesn't play well" is close to the entire story here. What earns it a more forgiving score than a typical style-over-substance disappointment is Petoons Studio's genuine, sustained post-launch effort — patches through mid-2023 and free new content as late as March 2025 — which several reviewers confirm made a real difference. At NZ$15.75, with co-op support and years of free additions behind it, it's a reasonable pickup for players who value atmosphere and don't need combat to be tight. Players who need responsive, modern Metroidvania combat should look elsewhere, or wait to see if Petoons Studio's pattern of patching continues.