A Middle-of-the Pack Game That Would Benefit from Varied Cats
For my sins, I am an enjoyer of hidden object games, and I try to play them all on the Xbox. But that’s become increasingly difficult. We’re getting two or three a week, and that number is trending upwards. Even if I limited myself to cat-based hidden object games, I would be playing a new game every week.
It’s a tough environment for a game like Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine. There’s a lot of competition out there, and quite a few are feline. Plus there’s a behemoth to beat: the Hidden Cats In… series is polished, charming and substantial. Meow Moments is having to operate in a rather large shadow.
Swords and Space Stations
Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine offers two scenes, one ‘myth’ and one ‘machine’. Translated into Crystal Maze terms, the scenes are Medieval and Futuristic.
Each scene has a wodge of stuff to find. There are 100 cats and 100 ‘not-cats’ that need to be discovered in each black-and-white drawing. Plus there are 100 balloons, being sat on and held by those same characters. The balloons can be found at any point, while the 200 characters need to be found in the order that Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine wants you to.
I’m a little indifferent to the artwork. That’s purely subjective and I am sure there are people who will like the wide-faced, slightly stumpy cats. My problem is that they mostly share the same features: they don’t look particularly different from each other. When you are looking for specific cats, that becomes a problem. Mostly, you are spotting them by how they’re posed and dressed. Over here is a wide cat looking away from the camera. Over there is a wide cat looking surprised. The same goes for the human characters, who are mostly quiffy white boys and long-haired white ladies.
Cats Hidden in Plain Sight
This homogeneity is a problem in the ‘Myth’ level. Aside from a cobblestoned area in the centre and a jousting field in the top-left, the backdrops also look the same. You can’t do a spot of deduction to eliminate locations by examining the thumbnails on the top of the screen. You have to look around the whole picture for every single one of the 200 characters.
I found the ‘Machine’ level to be about 300% better. The scene takes place on a space station made up of floating discs. Each disc has a different carpet, meaning that you can immediately whittle down where the character might be. Some carpets are shared – damn you, graph-paper! – but there are otherwise a decent number of clues in the images that run across the top of the screen.
An artwork foible is that the zoom makes things blurry. I don’t understand why Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine didn’t optimise the resolution so that the artwork is crisp and legible at full zoom. It makes Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine feel slightly cheap as a result, like you’re playing something that has been ported poorly from another platform, when I don’t believe that’s the case.
Some Gems in the Litter Tray
Aside from these visual niggles, Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine plays rather well. The cursor was a little slow for my taste, but it was precise. When a cat or other character gets coloured in, the black-and-white sketch of it is replaced by a far more appealing watercolour. That version of the art is clear at full zoom. And there’s satisfaction to finding and then popping a balloon.
As you would hope, there are neat little stories in the artwork, offering micro-interactions in the scene. A meditation chamber is interrupted by various characters; a number of Romeos try to woo a Juliet; an alien grabs some cats in its tractor beam. There’s fun to be had in these moments, and the hidden cattery pushes you to explore them.
And the longer you play Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine, the easier it becomes. The opening moments are a pain, as everyone looks the same and the picture is massive. But as cats and characters get coloured in, those coloured figures start to appear on the fringes of the thumbnails at the top of the screen. Not only are they eliminating potential targets, they are offering clues.
Complete the scene and the spectre of replay appears. There’s no real reason to replay Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine. There’s no randomised mode or endless mode. There’s no highscore or timed mode.
You Can’t Even Buy a Tin of Cat Food for £2.49
It’s also not a big game. Two scenes isn’t hugely substantial, and Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine can’t hold a candle to the Hidden Cats In… series where you have thousands of cats across a dozen scenes. But there is a significant caveat: Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine is £2.49. A couple of quid for a couple of hours’ entertainment is not to be sniffed at.
I arrived at the opinion that Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine was fine. I wasn’t charmed by the artwork, and the fuzzy resolution and identikit characters are clear areas for improvement. But the Machine scene in particular is detailed and offers helpful backgrounds to make things painless.
Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine wiled away a couple of hours. I alternated between slightly bored and slightly engaged, which is hardly the most enthusiastic of recommendations. But for the low price, that might be just enough to dip your paws into your pockets.
Important Links
Meow Moments: Celebrating Myth & Machine – A Cozy Xbox Adventure – https://www.thexboxhub.com/meow-moments-celebrating-myth-machine-a-cozy-xbox-adventure/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/meow-moments-celebrating-myth-machine/9NNKN9X5DRF4/0010
