A Striking Hidden Cat Game That Chooses Speed Over Cosiness
The first Find the Cats only exited the cat flap two months ago, yet here we are, reviewing Find the Cats 2. We get the feeling that, if we look away for a moment, we’ll come back to find dozens of Find the Cats games. This is going to be one of those franchises – a bit like Hidden Cats in… and Cats & Seek – that will multiply quickly.
Releasing only two months after the first game means that Find the Cats 2 does not have any significant changes that distinguish it from the original. What you might have played in Find the Cats is very much present here: there are thirty images, each with ten cats hidden. Your job is to poke the ten cats with your finger cursor, at which point they will colour themselves in and become more visible. Meanwhile, a timer ticks down, giving you a gold star if you manage to find all ten cats within thirty seconds. This is a hidden cat game against the clock.
‘Find The Cats’ Came Back, The Very Next Day
Our reactions to it are much the same. We still love the sprite-based, pixel art-style. Each of the thirty scenes could be drafted from a top-tier point-and-click adventure. They make us want to jump in as Guybrush Threepwood and immediately start rummaging for items and solve puzzles. In the age of AI, it’s refreshing to play a pixel art game that is so clearly authored and meticulously made.
The cats are still a dolly mixture of easy-to-spot, hard-to-spot, and – on occasion – unfairly hidden. We tended to find seven of the ten cats easily, as you just have to look for white eyes, curling tails or demonic ears. All of the distinguishing features of a cat, basically. Another two cats will be devilish: Find the Cats 2 loves to hide black or grey cats in environments that are mostly black and grey. Perhaps they’re only visible as a single paw or tipped tail.
But occasionally Find the Cats 2 pushes its luck. That last cat will be some blurry pixels hidden among some other blurry pixels; a single ear against a swathe of triangles; or something black-on-black. In hidden object games like these, you want to be outsmarted rather than cheated, and – on occasion – it feels like the C word.
Cuddly, But With The Occasional Claw In The Thigh
Like the original, Find the Cats 2 has some wonky usability. When you tap on a cat, it’s meant to light up and colour in. But grey and black cats remain grey and black. It’s often hard to keep track of what you’ve poked and what remains to be found. Equally, if you use the game’s hint system to complete a puzzle – which is welcome, by the way – there’s no VFX or other visual cue that says “hey, this is the cat you missed!”. You’re left scratching your head about where it might have been.
But, otherwise, the feline-finding is fun. The cats are evenly spread amongst the background and foreground, and there’s no clustering, so you can be relatively sure that a gap in the cats will mean a missing one. The scenes are also a welcome mix of the fantastical and realistic. You can never quite be sure what the next scene will contain. Perhaps it’s a blooming treehouse, or a wizard’s study.
I’m more on-the-fence about the time limits. Hidden cat games tend to be cozy, leaving you to find mogs at your own pace. If you take a while, nobody judges you. But in Find the Cats 2, there’s a persistent sense that you should be going faster. Achievements require you to ‘complete’ levels, which means rinsing them of cats within thirty seconds. The timer ticks up menacingly from the top-left of the screen. There’s no true failure for playing slowly, but Find the Cats 2 has a habit of frowning at you instead.
Unexpected Speed-Running
On the one hand (or paw, if you want), it gives Find the Cats 2 a unique flavour. There are plenty of hidden cat games on the Xbox Store, but there are precious few that treat it like a sport. If you’re a completionist like me, you will be insta-replaying any level where you take more than half a minute.
On the other hand, I’m not convinced it’s a snug fit. The levels aren’t big, and there aren’t many cats to find within them. It feels like you’re being shoved in the back, pushed to finish a short game quicker than you might like. And it exacerbates the frustration of that one last cat. When you can’t find a black cat in a black nook, it can be grating.
Unlike the Hidden Cats in… series, for example, there are no collectibles or bonus levels. Unlike Cats & Seek, there are no highscores or stickers to get creative. Once you have completed all thirty levels (in thirty seconds each), then Find the Cats 2 is done. Even with the occasional replay to get a gold star, I was done within twenty minutes. Which – even at the budget price – is somewhat slight.
If we’re going to get multiple Find the Cats games, I’d love the series to take a timeout. There are multiple small fixes that would make a real difference. All that Ember Box Studio needs to do is pause for a moment and implement them. But I have a suspicion that might not happen: with only two months between the first and second game, a precedent has been set.
Hopefully we’re wrong. The striking artwork deserves better than that. Find the Cats 2 is a beautiful hidden cat game, but with an approach that will divide potential players.
Important Links
The Kitties Are Back In Find The Cats 2 – https://www.thexboxhub.com/the-kitties-are-back-in-find-the-cats-2/
Buy from the Xbox Store, optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/find-the-cats-2/9PHB72Z1MJMG
Buy for Xbox One – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/find-the-cats-2-xbox-one/9ntjfpdh9bqp
Buy for Windows PC – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/find-the-cats-2-windows/9nbr7w8gzwb5
