The concept for Copycat is rife with opportunity. Lovingly and fully voice acted by a cast of Australian locals, Copycat is driven by the concept of a nature documentary narrator following your cat, Dawn’s, adventures through adoption and rehoming. Your new life is upended when a “Copycat” tries to take your newly found place in the family with an elderly lady named Olive. Olive and her daughter also have a lot of real life issues that they’re having to handle, and you get caught up in the effects of all of them, while also battling with the implied trauma from your last family. People tell me I’m an emotional guy, and this game does nothing to prove them wrong. Throughout the game I was on a rollercoaster of emotions, all of them culminating in an incredibly fulfilling ending that was worth the price of admission.
Being a cat has its perks! The simple controls allow you nimbly dart about the house and your surroundings, exploring all the little narrative notes available on the various suburban and rural areas. There are some linear segments in the game that allow for more restricted movement, like running on fences or along roads, but even those parts allow for a good amount of leniency when it comes to failing or hitting an obstacle. One of the most intriguing things about Copycat is that you never know how you’ll be asked to tackle the next part of the story. You may be navigating through a stealth section, or chasing prey as a big cat, or searching for specific ways to accomplish a task in a more freeform fashion. I was continuously delighted by how Dawn the cat’s mental state and thoughts were portrayed by the visuals and gameplay designed to emphasize the story beats being told. It rarely felt too forced or saccharine, and at many points made me say “whoa” or have goosebumps creep up on me as things built to a crescendo.
Visually, Copycat had a lot going for it. Since its locale is based in Australia, we get a bit of the lovely countryside and charm of the people that voice act for the game. The house and neighborhood we spend most of the time in is homey and real, and we get to experience the stories of those around our main house through little notes that float in the air, along with the thoughts of Dawn. The camera work is done expertly, highlighting lighting that moves our focus between characters and side stories around the world. There are “dreamlike” sequences where you’re playing a more fantasized version of Dawn as a big cat, as the nature documentary you’re envisioning yourself in is brought to life in a pixelated world. These parts of the story do a good job of bringing us further into the headspace of being a cat, where they’re often acting much bigger than they are. Their “big cat” counterparts have the strength and drive that they are often associated with embodying, even in their much smaller domestic cat bodies. The parallels between us as humans trying to have tough exteriors and fight through confusion and tough moments in life are visually brought to life through many of these setpieces, and it’s deftly written in a way to let the player draw their own conclusions on how to feel.
Part of what makes Copycat effective is the knowledge that, to most of us humans, cats are usually just around us as we live our lives, concurrently being a part of our world we love, but also a part that we sometimes forget is also there during all of our very real emotional human interactions. They may not always know what’s going on specifically, but seeing through a cat’s eyes and having moral concepts laid out to a big picture mindset was very touching and thought-provoking. We’re shown scenes and moments that may seem shocking, but happen every day around the world, and to a cat, probably are more confusing than anything. This was so unexpectedly portrayed that every time I knew something was about to happen that was surprising, it still landed the emotional punch it wanted to because of my place in the world as Dawn, a cat that just wanted to belong in such a wild situation. By the end, I was bawling, and not because I was relating to the cat, but because I felt the realness of such love that is displayed in the hardest of circumstances around the world. The stories that are able to be told in such uncertain times should comfort us, and the knowledge that sometimes a change in perspective is all we need to know that we always have a home to find or come back to, no matter how the world around us changes. The developer, Spoonful of Wonder, has delivered an unforgettable little title that cat lovers will adore, and all others will enjoy.
Thanks to the dev/publisher for a review code.
