Developer: thecatamites
Year: 2026
Genre: Platformer
System: Windows

There was some very silly discourse yesterday about how there are no original ideas in games anymore and that all games these days are just made by game devs who only play video games and do not read books or watch films and while this is wrong on so many levels, boy have I got great news. They finally have a game they can write about on their website! I’m sure they’re all rushing to write about the new thecatamites game right now because it’s fantastic.

God it’s fucking hard for someone of my writing skill level to summarize a game like this but I’ll try. International Obsession is a narrative platformer where you are a spy, I guess, and in a world where mankind has gained the ability to double jump, you are trying to stop a terrorist group who is trying to stop the world from entering our current millenium in the first place and go back to how it was. It’s by thecatamites, who has created other games I highly recommend like Anthology of the Killer. You explore this world by double jumping through environments and seeing what various characters are talking about. As you can see in the screenshot above, it’s got a very trippy low poly look that I loved to walk around in and you get transitional scenes with comic panels of characters talking and I loved those too. I don’t think I’m the best at video games and platforming but aside from some jumping puzzle parts, it wasn’t anything I’d really consider difficult. There’s enemies in here that can knock you around but there’s no health meter and they just knock you back a bit so if you’re more of an adventure gamer, I think you would still really enjoy exploring the environments and experiencing the story that I think is an interesting exploration of nostalgia poisoning. But it’s also just funny and fun to look at so if you just want that from a game, you’ve got that too.

Just a note before playing because I was a dipshit and maybe other folks will make the same mistake that I did. Please carefully read the readme before playing and please pay attention to the controls. There are two buttons for jumping and they do different things. It is not the same jump button in two different spots. This is not the fault of the game, it’s mine, but if you are a weirdo that chooses to play this exclusively on the keyboard because they couldn’t be bothered to get a controller out, maybe you will run into this as well.

But yeah, it’s a lovely game. I think some folks will see that it’s Part 1 of a series but I would still highly recommend it to folks who might be hesitant to check it out when this is the only part that’s available. I’m usually the same way but I felt like it was a very satisfying and self-contained game that took me about 40 minutes to play and did not feel frustrated by the ending.

International Obsession is available for free on Itch.io for Windows/Mac/Linux.