I Am Cat Review (PC)

We can all agree that cats, especially those with short tempers and mischievous tendencies, are great forms of entertainment. Moreover, there’s an ironclad market for cat-centric content, which means, for indie games like I Am Cat, there’s a familiar formula to manipulate and incentivize right off the bat. It doesn’t really matter, either, if the mechanics are shoddy or if the settings aren’t as clean as they should be, because at the end of the day, where there’s a cat, there’s a sale. And if there’s one thing I can guarantee when it comes to cat-based sandboxes, it’s that folks will always be willing to pay for the privilege of being able to control a household pet for a few short hours. That’s marketing, right there. Touché.

Of course, there’s a lot more to I Am Cat than a strong marketing strategy and an impenetrable target audience; it’s also a great virtual reality game in itself, and one that, despite being marred by a disappointingly high level of pay-to-progress schemes, has a lot of potential. But, it seems I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, so allow me to rewind it back to the beginning, to the initial point where I found myself filling the paws of a generic household feline. Care to join as we unpack it, piece by piece, hairball by hairball? Then let’s jump right in, kittens.

Oh, Paws

I Am Cat isn’t really a piece of work that needs any sort of formal introduction, as it is, more or less, a first-person cat-centric simulation game in which you, the feline in question, scratch, scrape, and effectively clamber your way through a series of household chores for reasons only a bog-standard Persian kitten could fathom. Think just about any sandbox or simulation set piece that makes a blatant attempt at making fluffy critters and four-legged felines’ daily conundrums appear game-worthy, and you’ll have a solid sense of what I Am Cat aims to encapsulate, in a nutshell. The question is, does such a painstakingly simple concept warrant an entire game? Eh — yes, and no.

To say that I Am Cat is a full-fledged RPG wouldn’t be entirely true, though it does make the occasional stab at the genre by introducing familiar ideas—basic quest lines, unlockable items, and a choice of digestible mini-games and other extracurricular activities, for example. There’s hide-and-seek, football, basketball, and a surprisingly dense collection of puzzles and other environmental objectives, too, thus making it a rather hefty sandbox for what it is. However, there is one major issue that I can’t help but feel the need to address here, and that’s the in-game paywalls. That’s something that deserves its own subheading, unfortunately.

One Small Step for Paywalls

To make it perfectly clear, I Am Cat isn’t a complete game. Well, it is, to some extent, but as it turns out, the main game—the thing that you fork out $20 for—only contains one portion of the map, which is the main house. And, of course, you can venture beyond ol’ Granny’s beloved homestead, where you have the opportunity to bathe in additional quests and mini-games, but only if you pay a little extra for the icing on the cake. That’s an immediate red flag, right there; you half expect a full-priced game to come loaded with all of the necessary ingredients, including the entire map and its respective features. Alas, that isn’t the case here, as it more or less grants you passage to an introductory spiel on how the game works, and then asks that you pay for the privilege of seeing more of it.

So, what can you do, if you’re somewhat restricted to the tight borders of Granny’s home? Well, for starters, there are quests—gimmicky activities that either involve batting away at things with your paws, or maliciously attacking your owner for reasons that only a feline would understand. Aside from that, there are several secrets to unravel—puzzles, if you will, that require you to use your flexibility to reach certain areas around the house, as well as locate hidden items that serve as key components for relatively mindless tasks. Naturally, there is no time limit to achieving all of these objectives; it’s more the case of allowing you to freely explore and tackle things at your own leisure. And that’s fine. Well, until the novelty wears thin and the pay-to-win paywalls become more noticeable. That’s when the game jackknifes into unforgivable territory. Tut tut, devs.

Janky Paws

For a game that centers its entire premise around a cat, you would half expect the controls to at least mirror the authenticity of a feline’s behavior and fluid movements. Unfortunately, though, that isn’t really the case in I Am Cat, as a significant portion of the game’s mechanics are marred by some poor design choices and a lack of technical polish. To say that it’s wooden wouldn’t be entirely accurate, as it does often come clean with some genuinely interesting moments—utilizing the power of the paws to drag, scratch, and collect items, for example. However, as far as the movement goes, it doesn’t really carry the fluidity that you would expect from a cat-centric simulation game. And that’s a problem, given the fact that it pours a lot of its effort into recreating a lifelike experience with a humorous twist.

On the bright side, I Am Cat does have some great visual effects and backdrops for you to unlock and toy around with, and not to mention some cutesy and, true to the spirit of the game, cat-like animations, too. Granted, neither of these things are likely to hold a candle against other, slightly more established titles of its kind, but even still, it does the feline justice, at least to some degree. And as for the actual journey of a cat’s gradual transition from house pet to common menace, well, let’s just say it isn’t the worst I’ve ever seen. It isn’t exactly something I’ll be likely to remember in the distant future, and again, it didn’t help that, for the time I did spend in it, most of the game’s materials were firmly rooted within countless paywalls and what have you. Still, I’ll settle for mediocrity.

Verdict

I Am Cat could’ve been better, should it have taken the gratuitous steps to unleash all of its content as part of a single package. And yet, it seems as if greed was the main culprit here, what with the bulk of the game’s content being a mere marketing ploy to dig deeper into the consumer’s pockets for funds that, quite frankly, shouldn’t be a factor. It’s a shame, really, as the game could’ve been quite enjoyable, yet, as with any game that utilizes shameless cash-grab techniques to deliver the breadth of its world, it’s awfully difficult to look beyond that. It’s certainly fun in short bursts, I’ll give it that, but once the veil has gone, it doesn’t take long to realize exactly what it is that you’re subjecting yourself to: a get-rich-quick scheme with little to no heart or soul.

I’m not going to say that it’s all bad, because I Am Cat does have a few decent spells of its own—a vibrant setting to explore (albeit a small one), quirky quest lines, and some humorous moments, to round off just a few of its most notable features. With that said, it simply fails to capture a free-flowing gameplay experience that feels both authentic and engaging, and it doesn’t help, either, that its mechanics are unapologetically janky and, shall we say, wooden. Stray, it most certainly is not — but, I guess, that’s sort of like comparing the Millennium Falcon to a fourth grader’s toilet roll-based school project; it’s two entirely different leagues.

Naturally, if you’ve the money to spare, then you’re probably going to enjoy scraping the barrel of this cutesy cat simulator. If, however, you had high hopes of experiencing a complete game right off the bat, then boy — watch out, kittens.