A Hidden Cat Game That’s More Kitten-Sized
If you’ve wondered who the market is for all these cheap cat-finding games on the Xbox, then you wouldn’t need to look further than my house. There’s a little gaggle of “yay!”s when a new one arrives, and a minor scuffle over who plays them first. My wife doesn’t like ‘spoilers’, so won’t watch while the others play, while my kids can’t help themselves: they will point at the cats when mum plays, even if she hisses at them.
There is also a touch of snobbery in our household. The ‘best’ cat games are the Hidden Cats in… series. No matter the city or country that is the focus, they love them dearly. The worst, though, according to my family, is the Cats Around Us series (or what was seemingly previously called Cats and Seek). They get sniffy but still play them, of course. Apparently the cats are less cute, there’s less ‘colouring in’ (the Hidden Cats series does admittedly have a cool system where completed areas get painted in) and – the real kicker – there’s too much of an emphasis on time attacks. If you want to get all the achievements, you need to do things at speed.
That’s the context in which I (and I really mean ‘we’ – the whole family digs into each game) came to Cats Around Us: Giant Cat. That giant cat became an elephant in the room. Was it here to improve things?
Spotted One!
Cats Around Us: Giant Cat gets off to a cracking start with its story. It’s about a giant cat (duh) who has padded its way into town and done what cats do, namely trash stuff. It’s rolling about, sending the townsfolk running and screaming. The only hope they have is a witch, who comes up with a very cat-appropriate method of calming the cat.
We know that is the story in Cats Around Us: Giant Cat, because the hidden object scenes are presented as a comic book. It’s a fantastic touch: all a hidden cat game needs is pictures, and that’s what a comic book is composed of. But the format also allows a story to be told, which is a niche that the genre hasn’t really delved into yet. It’s not a particularly deep story with dramatic themes, but it adds something.
Finding felines is a simple affair. The comic book is split into four ‘pages’, with each page gating the others. Each page has twenty-five jigsaw pieces to find and a clowder of cats. With your cursor and a handy zoom function, you are finding and clicking on cats, which in turn adds a cat to your tally and colours them in.
Yes, the Giant Cat does count as a hidden cat. It makes me happy that the developers didn’t skip it. There’s something joyful about half the comic book lighting up orange because it’s just so big. There’s an added bonus too: there are plenty of cats ON the Giant Cat, and they now stand out against the coloured backdrop.
The other cats may be harder to find, but they’re far from difficult. About the only complication is what is considered a cat. Some cat windows and cat-shaped topiaries don’t count, but humans dressed as cats do. It’s not a wrinkle, just an observation.
Smooth As A Cat’s Bottom
Everything works well and the cat-finding is problem-free. The jigsaw pieces have a bolder outline, so are easier to spot. You will probably catch all cats on a single sweep. The controls and click-areas are appropriately precise, and the cats light up suitably once you’ve pounced on them.
It’s the substance of Cats Around Us: Giant Cat that lets it down. It feels a little churlish to complain about when the game is £2.49, but there isn’t a whole lot of game here. Each page took us roughly five minutes, as there twenty-five to fifty cats on each, plus twenty-five jigsaw pieces. That’s twenty minutes maximum.
When the cats are all easy to spot, things become quickfire. I started chasing achievements that weren’t there: can I spot ten cats in ten seconds? The felines are that in-your-face. The low degree of challenge isn’t inherently a bad thing, but when it’s coupled with a small number of cats, it makes the game momentary.
Some Puzzling Additions
Cats Around Us: Giant Cat does point to some other things you can do. There are jigsaw pieces to find for a reason, as you can make a 5×5 jigsaw with them. I understand why there are only 25 pieces, since that’s the exact number that you find in the scenes, but it does mean that the jigsaws are similarly lightweight.
To give them their due, they control well. We have played dedicated jigsaw games on the Xbox that are less sophisticated in how they rotate pieces and snap to the correct place (although they do have the irritating ability to hide under locked pieces, becoming impossible to click). And the pictures are different from the hidden cat comic pages. They act as little intermediary scenes that flesh out the story.
There’s also a Speed Run mode, which is a welcome pivot from previous Cats Around Us games. Instead of time limits being mandatory, they are now optional. You can complete a level as quickly as possible and then set it as a time-to-beat for the rest of your household.
I’m not convinced that it will get a huge amount of traction. The cats don’t change position, which seems like a baseline for that kind of mode. Otherwise, you are just memorising the cat’s locations and the main factor is how fast you can maneuver a cursor. We played it for the achievement and largely ignored it.
A Small Step Forward for the Series?
Your dedication to the hidden cat genre will decide whether Cats Around Us: Giant Cat is worth picking up. While £2.49 is a low barrier to entry, there’s not all that much here. There are more cats in a single scene of Hidden Cats in Istanbul, for example, and that game comes packed with seven or eight scenes, plus it has a better colouring system, finer art, humans to find, etc.
But we’re a household of Hidden Cats In… fanboys and fangirls, so perhaps we need to be more patient with Cats Around Us: Giant Cat. It’s a step-forward for the series, with comic book stylings that fit nicely. Dropping the emphasis on time-limits feels wise too. And that price is less than a can of Purina.
If Cats Around Us: Giant Cat can find a solution for its biggest failing – that it’s kitten-sized, even for the price – then it might move closer to the top of its cat-egory.
Important Links
Cats Around Us: Giant Cat Pounces Onto Xbox – https://www.thexboxhub.com/cats-around-us-giant-cat-pounces-onto-xbox/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/cats-around-us-giant-cat/9P9KPR2ZFS9L
