Review: Little Kitty, Big City

Available on: PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch, Xbox

Cost: €24.99 or Included in Xbox Gamepass

Genre: Exploration, Adventure

Developer: Double Dagger Studio

Publisher: Double Dagger Studio

In this chaotic and adorable exploration and adventure game, play as a little kitty trying to find it’s way back home. It’s an open world playground for this mischevious cat with trellises to climb, slippers to steal and jars of jam to knock over. Make friends, complete quests or cause a ruckus in cute collectable hats in your adventure to find a way home.

Story

When you fall off your cozy apartment balcony, you must use your cat like skills and aloofness to find a way back home, with the help (kind of) of a cheeky crow. As you adventure around the town, you’ll meet a variety of unique characters, some that can help, some that can hinder, in your quest to get home. Complete tasks for them, and you may receive some help, or if you’re lucky, a funky hat!

The story is fine, nothing to exciting, but it sets up the game fine with a reasonable plot to follow. The characters that you come across are fun enough, but again, nothing too exciting.

Gameplay

As you travel around the city, you can both help out characters with their tasks, from smashing jam jars to helping to find some missing ducklings, but you can also cause a little mischief, from tripping up passers by to steal their sandwiches, to knocking over plant pots and stealing slippers. The game’s “mischief element” is quite similar to Untitled Goose Game, so if you enjoyed that you’d probably enjoy this game too.

The mechanics work okay, jumping on ledges and climbing fences works well, I didn’t find them too difficult to control. But the biggest issue I had personally was motion sickness. There are a lot of settings you can change to help with that, and they did help, but as someone who really struggles with motion sickness in games I had a hard time playing this game in anything but half hour chunks.

Graphics and Visuals

Visually the game is very cute. The details around the city are charming, and the spaces feel relatively full. I liked how you could just run into shops and cause a bit of havoc, and there did feel like there was something to do around every corner. The hats you can collect are just adorable, and the game is bright and vibrant with a clean design.

Longevity

There’s many hats to collect, so that would definitely give a reason to go back and play. To collect the hats you need to collect shinies, which are pennies and screws you come across that you can trade with the crow for more hats, or a variety of tasks to complete from residents of the city. There’s a list of achievements too that you can go back and complete. Personally, when I’d finished the story though I felt like I’d had my fill, and the story and characters aren’t charming or exciting enough to have a big desire to go back to.

Conclusion

Overall, Little Kitty Big City is a very cute looking game. Unfortunately, for me that’s kind of where the fun stops. The story is simplistic, the characters are just fine and the collecting of shinies felt a bit tedious. I did enjoy completing the tasks for the residents though, and the chaos you can cause is pretty fun, I enjoyed smashing plant pots, ruining paintings and tripping up business people passing by. This element is very similar to Untitled Goose Game, but that game really works as a whole package, Little Kitty Big City is lacking the character and humour of Untitled Goose Game. And as a personal niggle, I really struggled with motion sickness in this game, but that doesn’t affect everybody. If you can pick it up cheap or play on Gamepass, I’d definitely recommend for the cute silly elements, but aside from that, I wouldn’t bother playing the game again.