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0 Cattie is a Retro Action Platforming game developed by Vergiu Games. The game was originally released on Steam on Nov 14th, 2023. Now thanks to EastAsiaSoft and their porting wizardry, the game is available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and the PlayStation 4/PlayStation 5.
Time to be paw-ful of where you pounce
Gameplay
Cattie is your normal platformer except you play as Cattie the cat. You may ask: why is Cattie surrounded by death and peril? I honestly don’t know. The game itself is linear with no story. But this fact is actually a positive in my opinion. Anyone can make up an epic backstory for Cattie. And no one will be wrong. Throughout my playthrough I came up with two narratives. My first being that Cattie is stuck in a VR testing facility. And the second is that curiosity got the best of Cattie and they just wandered on into a dungeon for fun. Which does seem a very cat-like thing to do! Whatever the reason, this game has some serious speed running potential.
In the game, you have to make it through 100 levels, without risking one of your lives. Getting from point A to point B is relatively straightforward as you don’t have to kill everything you see. Unless your inner hunter comes out. Hey, if you want to claw them to death, you do you! If you do die due to enemies or terrain, you’ll come back to life from where you started. However, the enemy’s location is not static and does move if you’re defeated. Making learning any enemy patterns pointless.
The start menu does allow players to pick a level before and after beating the game. But I got confused about what to input to use. This is due to a whole keyboard key being present. I do also wish the developers had included a level editor. Or a way for others to play them on console versions.
Graphics & Audio
As I mentioned at the start, the game is labelled as Retro and it’s for a good reason. Cattie is presented in an ’80’s Gameboy design. Completely Black and White, with grey being the only other colour present at times. It honestly felt oddly satisfying playing a game like this on the Nintendo Switch. As though it was the way it was meant to be.
The 8-bit soundtrack that accompanied me through my journey in Cattie was mew-sic to my ears. A part of why I loved the soundtrack so much is because it’s a genre I grew up listening to. So I may be biased, but I never grew tired of the in game music. In fact the soundtrack kept pushing me on forwards as I sat there bopping away. Although, I’ll be honest, I haven’t ever come across any 8-bit music I don’t like. That doesn’t mean I ever want to, but if you dear readers have some to challenge me with, please do drop links in the comments!
Longevity
I completed this game on a train ride back home. Which translates to just under an hour of gameplay. I definitely wish Cattie had more levels. Whilst it was fun blazing through the levels at the speed of the train I was riding, I feel like this is also a flaw. Saying that, whilst writing my review I did go to to that very popular speed running website we all know and love, to check out if people there were playing Cattie. I was am amazed to see that the fastest someone got through 50 levels was 11 mins and 07 seconds. As I mentioned earlier in this review Cattie really does have huge potential within the speedrunning community. I hope others attempt the 50 levels record or even a 100% run as currently there are no entries for that. At the time of writing this review that is.
Final Thoughts
Cattie is a fun little game to play when on a road trip, waiting for an appointment or during some evening downtime. All in all it’s short and sweet. I do hope the developers over at Vergiu Games consider adding a level editor down the road to extend some gameplay. The price of the game is very fair for the amount of time you’ll put into it. Perfect length for platform experienced gamers, whilst also offering a challenge for kids if you want their entry into gaming to be smooth and easy.
Cattie has truly earnt it’s Thumb Culture Gold Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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