Some games thoroughly deserve a sequel. A Building Full of Cats was the triple-threat of being extraordinarily cheap (£2.49 – go buy it), unexpectedly satisfying, and all for a good cause. It raised money for cat shelters while raising awareness of the adoption of cats, rather than purchasing from breeders. It’s one of those purchases that came utterly guilt-free. In fact, you could feel like you were benefiting the world while having a rather good time.
Now, take everything we’ve just said, increase the price a teeny weeny bit (£3.29 and worth every penny), put on a vampire cloak, and improve the game at the heart of it manyfold. Voila: you have A Castle Full of Cats. If you like cats, enjoy hidden object games, and want to hand some cash to charity, then consider A Castle Full of Cats to be a hearty recommendation.
The premise is slightly more complicated than it was in A Building Full of Cats, but it’s all the more fun for it. You arrive at the titular castle, expecting to rub some cat bellies, but it’s been cursed. All of the cats have been turned into ghoulish creatures of the night, and it’s your task to find them and magically restore them to their feline selves. It’s all rather spoopy and horror-light, about as scary as a rewatch of Hocus Pocus.
Reverting the cats into their furry selves is as simple as spotting them in their bat, ghost and skeleton forms within A Castle Full of Cats, then clicking them with your cursor. But they’re an elusive lot, hiding in pots, drawers and behind bannisters. A Castle Full of Cats is a hidden object game, then, where finding the beasties is the main gameplay.
A bat HUD appears in the top-left of the screen, tallying them up. There are two numbers here: the one on the left wing is the visible cats, the ones you can see with the naked eye. The one on the right wing is the hidden cats, and these have to be found by tapping away on drawers and suitcases to see if the cat pops out.
Where A Castle Full of Cats differs from its predecessor is how the hunting is structured. It’s where it feels like a marked bound forward, addressing an issue from the first game, as well as making the exploration of the castle more enjoyable. Because A Castle Full of Cats is, for a lack of a better term, a Metroidvania. In the main hall, there are big doors with numbers on them, and you need to spot that number of cats in the castle to open those doors. You don’t have to find every cat – something that felt overly punishing in the first game – you just need to satisfy a generous tally. And those cats can be found in any room.
Better still, there are objects to find in the rooms, not just tabbies. These objects are keys, googly eyes and more which allow you access to treasure chests and sarcophagi in other rooms. That’s the Metroidvania bit: you’re often backtracking to old rooms with a new key, seeing what glittery trinket or secret passageway you’re about to unlock.
What a step up it represents. Suddenly, you’re getting a sense of the castle’s layout. You’re finding out more about the curse and the characters inside. And you’re mentally logging stuff to come back for. Meanwhile, the pressure is off. You don’t necessarily have to stick around and find every cat (but it’s sometimes we did for the kicks anyway); you can come back and hoover them all up later. We can imagine it working for A Hospital Full of Cats, a Winnebago Full of Cats and plenty more games in the future – if you don’t mind, Devcats Games.
Props to the art, too, which is just swell. Everything is completely clear, which can and has scuppered hidden object games before. It’s thoroughly adorable, with no two cats being the same, and all of them being variations on ‘awww’ and ‘squee’. Better yet, the artists have taken on the burden of drawing each cat twice. Not only are you finding a ghoulish version of the cat, but a happy uncursed cat replaces it when you find it. We didn’t need double the amount of art, but we got it anyway.
If we are getting more games in the series in the future (pleeeease), then we’d like to make some formal requests. There are no cat totals on the game’s map, which means that spotting a room that has been recently unlocked or, more importantly, contains some remaining cats, is more difficult than it should be. We’re not sold on the hint system, either. It’s better than the first game, which only allowed you one hint per room, which could only be used on visible cats. Here, you have one hint per room, and it can be used on both visible and hidden. But it’s still only one hint, which feels a little restrictive. An unlock that resolves the problem comes way, way too late in the game.
But we are most definitely picking nits. Because we haven’t even returned to A Castle Full of Cats greatest feature. This is a joyful game that puts money into cat shelters, and that alone should be enough to get the wallets opening. It’s a bargain that throws in an extremely satisfying hidden object game which – if we’re being honest – could and should be more than £3.29.
