Ever wanted to experience life as a cat that doesn’t involve VR? Well, ‘Little Kitty, Big City’ from developer Double Dagger Studio has got you covered with this charming, yet brief, game.
The main objective is as simple as it can be: You’re a cat and you need to get home. Not gonna win any Oscars for a deep narrative, but it gets the job done. There are some animal characters you can interact with, like a duck, a crow who you can give shines (which you can find scattered everywhere or by putting cans in recycling bins) to for hats, a tanuki, a gecko, and other cats, though these mostly just boil down to small little side-quests you can do. The tanuki is an interesting character as, once you talk to him, you’ll unlock a special fast-travel system. In exchange for feathers, which you get from pouncing birds, you can use the fast-travel to go from place to place. I will admit, I didn’t really use this system outside of the quest line as the map is pretty small and easy to navigate. I did find the camera to be just a bit of a pain to use, especially when navigating the tight spaces when climbing up to reach the cat’s home. The controls also felt just a bit slippery and finicky at times, especially when it came to jumping as sometimes it felt like I knew I could reach an area, but the cat would randomly jump off and not let me land properly.
Speaking of quests, the side-quests are ridiculously easy and won’t require much in the way of moon logic, so you won’t have to worry about giving gum to a person to blow a bubble that you need to shoot down and then pan for the contents in a pile of mud in order to get a gold tooth. Nope, all the quests involve using your feline abilities, like pouncing and headbutting, which the later happens when you sprint (or what the game calls ‘The Zoomies’) and run into something. There are some you’ll have to smack with your paws and these are probably the trickiest as you can’t really control where what you’re smacking is going to go, outside of which paw you use. You can also climb vines but you’ll need stamina to do so, which here is represented by paw prints. In order to get the max amount of stamina, which is four paws, you need to eat fish and, thankfully, finding fish is pretty easy to do, with only one of them requiring some good timing. You can also go around and pick up cans to recycle for extra shines and this actually leads me to a question: Why can’t I pick up the tennis balls in the cat’s mouth instead of just smacking them? There’s a quest you can get where you have to retrieve a bunch of balls for a dog and, the only way to return the balls, is to smack them with the wonky smacking mechanic. It would’ve made that quest just a bit easier if I could bite the balls instead of smacking them. Lastly, you can either show the wandering humans love or annoy them, which includes knocking them over or scaring them, which will make them drop either their food or phone.
This does lead to my main complaint: Outside of the main objective and side objectives, there really isn’t much to do when you’re not doing one of the many tasks. Yeah, you can explore the city looking for collectible balls and find shinies to give to the crow or vending machines, both reward you with hats, but that’s pretty much it. The hats themselves, on that note, are purely cosmetic items and really don’t do much, outside of making the cat look either silly or cute. I was kinda hoping that the duck hat would allow the cat to walk on water or something, but nope; They’re just cosmetic items. I also would’ve liked just a bit more in the way of gameplay variety. Imagine if there was a hidden area where, when you take a nap, you can become CatZilla and wreak havoc upon a city? Or a hidden mini-game that has you fighting mice ala Devil May Cry…actually, that last one sounds amazing! Why isn’t there a DMC-style game where you play as a cat fighting mice? I’d buy that game in a heartbeat!
‘Little Kitty, Big City’ is harmless fun and I can see kids getting some enjoyment out of the game and I can also see this being a good streaming game. For me, personally, while I did enjoy some of it and I did enjoy the simplicity of the game, for the asking price of $24.99 USD, I would’ve liked just a bit more content, outside of what’s on offer.
Gaming Furever Review Scores:
Graphics: 9 - It’s not AAA, but it still is a good looking game and the animations on the cat are cute, especially the facial animations.
Sounds: 8 - Not really much in the way of sounds, but what’s here is good and the music is peaceful to listen to.
Story: 4 - It’s basic but it gets the job done. You’re not gonna find a story to rival Kagemusha here.
Gameplay: 5 - The controls are sometimes a bit slippery and jumping is a bit annoying, but they didn’t really hurt the gameplay.
Value: 3 - $24.99 USD is just a bit much for what’s on offer here.
Final Score: 5 / 10
Recommendation: WAIT FOR A SALE
Game played on Xbox Series X
