Cat Quest III looks like a purrfect sequel

destructoid.com:

Cat Quest III is taking the series to new heights as it goes fully open world. You’ll be able to explore the seas with your own ship (complete with cannons), while swashbuckling all the way. We got a chance to check how the threequel is coming along in a hands-off preview format, and from what we can tell; it’s shaping up to be something special so far.

I’m in love with this game’s vibrant visuals.

The waves shimmer as you explore this world, and the whole “actual map” motif really helps the style sing. Everything you see in the background can be explored, and even the clouds are drawn in an artistic way like you’d see from a graphic novel. As you’d expect from a Cat Quest game, the world features cameos from pop culture, which keeps things bright and cheery.

Cat Quest III will be a step up from its previous games based on what we’ve seen of the sequel. The visuals aren’t the only thing that’s a step up either, as it’s “5-6 times bigger than Cat Quest 1,” according to the CEO of developer The Gentlebros Desmond Wong. “The main reason for this is due to the ship which makes traversal much faster,” Wong notes, and the team wants to “make the world feel intimate like in the previous games.” Many open world games have big dull open spaces, so that’s a relief that the studio is going in with that mindset. If you want to find everything in this new open world, Wong expects a 15-hour playthrough, but if you just want to play the main game, he estimates playtime at roughly 10 hours.

While developing this open world 10-15 hour experience, Wong says The Gentlebros are inspired by The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and The Elder Scrolls series. However, it has been challenging for the studio as “a lot of the solutions [they] had