Repetition and Fatigue Hits This Hidden Object Game Hard
I’m so used to playing hidden cat games that I assumed that Kat-tastic Hidden Object was one of them. We weren’t quite on the money: Kat-tastic Hidden Object is a hidden object game where the hunters are cats, and the hunted are very much not cats.
There’s a plot to make things clearer. The game follows the very on-the-nose ‘Detective Kat’ as they’re employed by Sir Whiskers, a noble cat (aristocat?) to investigate who spilled their milk. It’s not the most high-profile of cases. More encouraging is that he has misplaced some gems, which went walkies about the time of the dairy disaster.
Possibly the Worst Pun We’ve Ever Seen in a Game’s Title
This is the first of a few cases that Detective Kat takes on within Kat-tastic Hidden Object. They tend to have a simple solution, but there’s often a paw print nearby that indicates that someone – a kind of Moriarty – is behind them all.
This is all told within some visual novel-style chatty bits, featuring photo-realistic cats in ruffs, suits and fancy dresses. Part of me likes the presentation – who doesn’t like a cat in a monocle? – and the production value is generally higher than you’d expect from a hidden object game, let alone one from Ocean Media.
A couple of things rub me up the wrong way, though. The writing has the odd habit of letting cats talk, but they rarely listen to or react to each other. It’s a lot of people speechifying and I found it oddly annoying. More controversially, the backdrops didn’t make visual sense to me if I looked at them in detail, which only raised my AI suspicions. I have no idea whether AI was used to make these illustrations, but they have that sensation.
A Tangled Ball of Hidden Objects and Puzzles
The cases will go something like this: you will be asked to find out who is haunting a library or sabotaging a garden party. Then you will be whisked to a hidden object scene – with a difference. The difference, at least from Artifex Mundi games and other commonplace hidden object games, is that you’re not looking at a scene or landscape: you are looking down at a table. There’s a lot of stuff on that table, stacked up and obscuring other stuff. By finding items that your client wants, you are removing them, and therefore revealing more items to rummage through.
Kat-tastic Hidden Object does something that I find really cool, at least as a hidden object fan. If you find and collect a banana, for example, it’s possible that the removed banana will reveal some paper words underneath. These paper words are a new shopping list. You now have an expanded list of items to be found, unleashed from the hidden object scene itself. I’ve not encountered this before and I’ve played an unholy number of these games. It creates fantastic moments where you are hunting for something that doesn’t seem to be on the table at all, only to remove a leather satchel that reveals the item you want AND a new list of items to find. Integrating the shopping list into the scene is so simple yet elegant.
Sometimes, Adding More Puzzle Varieties Doesn’t Mean Better
The following step might be something called ‘Matching’. Similar to the hidden object scenes, they’re a mess of items on a table, but this time you need to match identical items. Matching two dolls, for example, will remove them and expose further matches. Get rid of everything and you will find some Mahjong tiles.
These Mahjong tiles take you to a very simplified take on the game, as you remove three-of-a-kind tiles that feature nests, birds, cat toys and more. There’s a sidebar where you can store tiles – you don’t have to match precisely three tiles at a time – and helpful tools like a randomiser, which make the puzzle almost farcically easy. If you’re a Mahjong fan, you might feel insulted by the level of challenge.
Finally, there are jigsaw puzzles that – thankfully – let you auto-sort them into side pieces and not-side-pieces. These puzzles grow in size over the course of the game, but start small and end up as 100-piecers.
That loop continues, over and over, for the course of the game. The longer cases might ask you to complete the loop three or four times over, going from hidden object to jigsaw to Mahjong repeatedly. A couple of minigames butt in at the halfway point – a simple merge game featuring balls of yarn and a mouse-catching game that oddly reminded me of a fly-swatting game way back on Mario Paint. You’re just hovering a paw and slamming it down on mice. But most of the time its hidden objects mixed with puzzles.
For an hour or so, I was enjoying my time with Kat-tastic Hidden Object. The novelty of an ever-changing picture and shopping lists hidden under items was refreshing to me. I have an allergy to video game versions of jigsaw puzzles, but they were implemented well and painless, while the Mahjong was as frictionless and smooth as a sphinx cat.
That joy only lasted an hour, though. The thing is, the items in the hidden object scenes come up multiple times, across multiple puzzles. You’ll be spotting and matching the same circular scarf, the same deer embroidery. And you’re staring at the same table backdrops. Hidden object games tend to mix things up by sending you to new locales, but Kat-tastic Hidden Object doesn’t have that luxury. It’s just items on a surface, over and over.
Not a Cat-astrophe, But Close
It made me realise how much I miss having places to go. Kat-tastic Hidden Object feels like it’s stuck in the same spot. I got excited when the story started to go to horror-themed locations, because I wondered if the spoopy theming would stretch to the puzzles but, alas, no. I was greeted by the same scarves and water bottles.
If the scenes reflected the cases more, I would care more about the story. But, again, the connection is dubious. It meant that the story washed over me – the writing and characters who talk at, not with each other, didn’t help – and I found myself forcing myself onward rather than enjoying the process. I was motivated more by achievements than the story itself, which is rarely a good thing.
Kat-tastic Hidden Object is a grab-bag of good ideas that I can see Ocean Media pilfering from. If I were them, I would be grabbing the detective framing and the hidden object mechanic: picking up and removing items, then exposing new shopping lists. But there’s a lot that deserves to be left behind. The Mahjong, jigsaws, repetition and singular theme can be consigned to the past.
Far from purr-fect then. Unless you’re a hidden object completionist, I’d get my hidden object cat treats elsewhere.
Important Links
Cats, Clues And Cosy Puzzles Await In Kat-tastic Hidden Object – https://www.thexboxhub.com/cats-clues-and-cosy-puzzles-await-in-kat-tastic-hidden-object/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/kat-tastic-hidden-object/9P4GD820XD96
