If you’ve been lucky in life, then you know that special mark an animal can leave on your soul. The one that makes them feel like family and losing them is near equal to losing a human loved one. Some could argue that it’s sometimes worse, especially if you’re that individual who has known far more companionship from our furry counterparts, than our human ones. Well, as I’m one of those people who have been blessed by a connection that’s just too hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it, my heart tends to bleed a little more for a game like Copycat than your average person. I knew going into this title that it was quite possible a tear or two would be shed, and while I maintained my composure for the most part, those with a lesser tolerance to emotionally damaging pain, aren’t going to get out unscathed.
The Story
Let’s say you haven’t heard of Copycat yet, and you’d like to know the general gist of it before getting involved. Well, it’s a game in which you play as a cat who has been recently adopted by a little old lady. She intends to have you keep her company in her aging life, and since you’re no spring kitten yourself, you go home with her, even if it’s a tad unwillingly. Despite your fears, you’ll warm up quickly to Olive and you find the home to grow more comfortable as the days pass. That is, until her health problems and horrifying daughter get in the way. There’s a darker story hidden in the cat scratcher as well, with whispers of a previous cat floating through the household. You were just a replacement, and what you had started to believe was your final place to rest your head and enjoy your days with a kind human, quickly have you hitting the streets and honing your feral instincts. It’ll be up to you to decide if you’re going to fight for your place in the home, or give up and give in to your fears and loneliness.
To avoid further spoilers, we’ll keep this section short, but we have to say there wasn’t a moment where we didn’t feel on the edge of our seats with this one. A lovely job to the writing team for making the story feel relatable to humans, yet portraying the life of a cat and sharing what might be going on inside their minds as well.
The Gameplay
Despite surface appearances, I was pleasantly surprised by the way they structured the gameplay in Copycat. Rather than playing like an open-world RPG in which you’re the cat, going around and discovering everything the world might offer you, they have it instanced into certain scenes, if you will, that make the story-telling the wonder that it is. You’ll start in the shelter, playing as Olive and picking which cat you want to adopt. Then, you’ll move to the home area in which you can run around stealing Olive’s food and causing utter chaos. Heck, we even got an achievement for painting every room of the house with our adorably colored paws after discovering some uncovered cans of mischievous goo just waiting for our impulsive cat instincts to consume us.
There’s a wonderful balance of playfulness in the activities and mini-challenges that await you in the game, with painful story scenes that force you to remember this isn’t a tale of a happy house cat. This mix-and-match approach is honestly what got us through the hardest parts, and put a smile on our face even when we’d, only moments ago, felt the opposite.
We also have to compliment the variety of trouble-making that can be done as it feels almost too accurate to what our own house cat does to us on a daily basis, so extra points for making it feel real to what a cat would do and think. We particularly adored the narrator who would constantly encourage our bad decision-making, reminding us that cats need to be cats, even when we humans don’t understand their reasonings.
All-in-all, we were honestly pleased with the gameplay in Copycat. From knocking over every vase to extinguishing the toilet paper rolls, and even getting into cat fights with the neighborhood punks whilst running away from the angry barking dogs. It was a cat-tastic experience.
The Complaints
Now, it’s hard for us to enter this category with any true complaints. What Copycat does, it does exceptionally well. This isn’t meant to be a life sim in which you play and live as a cat, fetching food when your hunger bar is low, and seeking pets when your enjoyment levels are just below maximum. There are other wonderful cat games out there that are already fulfilling those niches. No, instead, Copycat gives us a look into the true life of what an adult cat that’s been given up for adoption is going through. The pain, the memories, the distrust. While they tease you into thinking it’s a fun experience with side activities, at the core of what it is, Copycat is the truth. So often us humans write animals off as unfeeling, but if you’ve ever had that special bond mentioned at the beginning of this review, then you’d know that that’s a misconception that humans convince themselves of because if they don’t they have to face the reality of what we’ve done to the animals of this world. It’s easy to tell yourself animals don’t feel, as you’re throwing them away to the next willing home. Maybe you brought them home on Christmas day only to realize they don’t fit the model of what you’d expected. That’s probably because animals are all different, like us, and they all have varying emotions and personalities which develop based on their environments. Give them a good and healthy environment, they’ll thrive, do the opposite, well, we end up with Copycat.
Ultimately, I have no complaints about Copycat. It was exactly what it was supposed to be, and sure I could say something along the lines like “we needed more back story on Olive”, or perhaps “I wanted to know what happened to our little kitty”. However, those just aren’t facts we actually need, are they? Those are just details that provide context to the pain you’re supposed to feel when you’re playing this game. So, my advice would be to feel it. Tap into what our cat friend is feeling, and maybe even get a better understanding of Olive and what she’s going through in the process, and perhaps you relate to that. Regardless, it was a wonderful experience, audio and all.
Need us to find one thing to nitpick on because you aren’t satisfied without some critique? Olive’s face when she’s peering into our cat cage is horrifying. There.
The Rating
To spare you the suspense, Copycat is receiving our humble Pillow Fort Stamp of Approval. So often we look for the full package in a game, not satisfied unless there are forty-plus hours of gameplay in it, but honestly, it was the most wholesome three hours we’ve spent in a game for a while, and if you’re that person who loves to get hit where it hurts while playing as an adorable cat, then we can absolutely recommend you add it to your Steam library.
For those who do prefer a more whole experience and something less story-driven, we’ll forgive you if you skip this one, but consider tossing it on your wishlist for a rainy day. You never know when that little bug might entice you into chasing it down straight to this lovely game.
Game Information
Genre: Adventure, Story-Driven, Narrative, RPG, Cats
Developer: Spoonful of Wonder Publisher: Neverland Entertainment, Nuuvem
Consoles Available: PC
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