Little Kitty, Big City

Matt T. Wood spent years at Valve working on Half-Life 2, Portal 2, CS:GO, and Left 4 Dead. Then he went home, watched his kids play with their cats, and decided to make a game about being a cat in a city. The result is the most charming three hours you will spend this year.

You are a black house cat who fell out of a window. You need to get home. That is the entire plot. Getting there involves collecting shinies (bits of metal) to trade to a crow for hats, eating fish to gain stamina for climbing, and completing quests for a cast of fifteen animals scattered across a compact Japanese-inspired neighborhood.

The cat behavior is committed. You trip humans by swiping their legs, then steal whatever they drop. A specific quest has you trip a person carrying a bagel so a rooftop cat can eat it. You knock things off tables. Fragile things shatter. NPCs sigh and clean up after you. You can squeeze through gaps, crawl under fences, and nap in seven different spots around the city, including a copy machine, inside a gecko’s mouth, and on a warm pile of laundry in a laundromat.

There are over 42 hats collected from gacha capsules and quests. There is a duck dad who lost his four ducklings and needs your help finding them. There is a Tanuki who unlocks fast travel. The writing is warm and funny without ever trying too hard.

The honest criticism: it is short. The main quest can technically be completed in under thirty minutes if you know where to go. Full completion with all collectibles takes four or five hours. At $24.99, that is a tough value proposition for some players. The jump targeting can be imprecise, and the camera occasionally fights you in tight spaces.

Despite all of that, it holds a 96% positive rating on Steam from over six thousand reviews. The charm density per minute is extraordinary. A free update called Picture Purrfect added cat customization, new characters, new areas, and more cosmetics.

If you need forty hours from every purchase, wait for a sale. If you want to spend an evening knocking things off shelves and wearing silly hats as a cat, there is nothing better.