Game review: The Cat and the Coup

The Cat and the Coup is a narratively-focused serious genre (Edutainment) game by Peter Brinson and Kurosh ValaNejad (click for full credits hosted on the game's site). Available for Windows and Mac PC systems as well as being hosted and distributed via Steam.
The game's premise has the player taking the role of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh's cat who, during the course of being a playful feline, leads the ghost of Mossadegh through an abridged history of noted significant moments of his life strung together in a Wonderland-style series of rooms.

Summary of analysis
Simple and effective tutorial elements, admirably accomplished gameplay, minimal interface and easily-learned control scheme, graphics that escape my ability to adequately describe, and effective sound.

Tutorial/New player experience
The tutorial elements of the game are summed up in the space of about twenty seconds in the pre-launch screen. Move the cat around and swipe at objects in order to keep the narrative moving along. There are also hints on where to go that pop up to aid the player, keeping the game from making one of the big mistakes in game design: entrapping a player at no fault of their own.

Gameplay experience
Unlike purely entertainment games, the Cat and the Coup serves to intrigue the player into wanting to learn more, one of the goals of the growing genres of serious games and Educational-Entertainment (short-form: Edutainment) games. I'd very much have to say that it accomplishes this goal admirably through a combination of the abridged event texts and, what seemed to me at least, the unconventional graphics. In my opinion, and possibly others, one of the best ways to get people drawn into a desire to learn is to engage them to interact and to trigger curiosity like a reflex.

Interface & Controls
Fully keyboard-driven controls movement and interaction. There are user-interface elements in the way of a hints system, but nothing that overtly screams, "Hey, you're playing a game."

Graphics
Give it a play for yourself, it only takes about fifteen minutes, whereas me attempting to quantify a description of the game's graphics would take about an hour or two to find words for illustrating it properly and maybe a quarter of that to thoroughly read through. The best I can do to simplify it is that it compares to descriptions of animistic spirit journeys that I've read about.

Music & Sound
The music wonderfully compliments the gameplay and the sound effects are implemented well. There's little else I can say about this element due to the length of the game really only requiring so much in audio resources.

Commentary
There are only two points that I can really call detraction: a heavy memory requirement (cited 2GB of RAM) and that I had to rely on external resources to seek out and read through a detailed source of the story that the Cat and the Coup effectively acts as a short documentary  of events. To be fair, though, I tend to seek out secondary and often tertiary sources of information habitually anyway.
I'm always glad to see both attempts and innovation in the genre of serious games, especially as more of public education goes voluntary and interactive. I'd urge anyone interested in similar topics to take the time to give this game their own analysis and to follow-up in learning more, especially in verifying presented information (in more than just the media of serious games, too).