Little Kitty, Big City is one of the most charming titles you can find on either the Steam, Xbox or Nintendo Switch platforms. It’s not a particularly lengthy game, and if you concentrate just on the main quest you can finish in just a couple hours. But what gameplay is packed into the adventure is really cute and compelling, and it’s perfect for a lighthearted journey where nothing much is ever at risk.
Players take on the role of a cute little black cat that would certainly be at home in any Disney movie or children’s cartoon. At the start of the adventure, our hero cat is sleeping on the ledge of a window at their owner’s apartment building high up above the city when they roll over just a bit too far and take a tumble out into nothingness. However, being a cat who is blessed with agility, they are able to grab a few things on their way down to break their fall, including the tail of a very surprised crow who happens to be flapping by at the time. So, the cat lands safely down on the street below but has no idea how to get back up to their home.
This begins a cute adventure where players are tasked with exploring the city and figuring out how to eventually make it back up to the cat’s skyward apartment. The playfield you will be exploring is set up like a typical Japanese town, filled with people going about their daily lives, working jobs, heading from place to place or just being on their phones. For the most part, the humans ignore you, although you can interact with them, tripping them and stealing their smartphones if you want to be especially mischievous. But while you can’t talk to the people, there are plenty of animals that you can meet and converse with. Most of them will offer to help out but will normally require something in return for their generosity.
The really funny thing is that Little Kitty, Big City is played from the cat’s point of view, but even the NPC animals act like they probably would in real life if you could talk with them. The animals all seem kind of neurotic in different ways, proudly introducing themselves by whatever title their humans bestowed on them, like the “Fuzziest Happiest Little Pooper” or even the self-appointed town mayor. The animals think like animals too, so the help that they offer is sometimes not exactly life-changing, but interacting with them is some of the most entertaining parts of the entire adventure.
In a lot of ways, the fact that there are other animals as peripheral characters really adds to the charm of Little Kitty, Big City. That was kind of a missing element from the amazing Stray adventure, which also featured a cat’s eye view of its world. But Stray’s post-apocalyptic world was filled with dour robots while Little Kitty, Big City’s landscape is populated by lots of creatures who you can talk with and help out, even as they offer to help you in return.
The peripheral characters are also the key to finding the majority of the quests in the adventure. For example, one of the first characters you will meet is that hapless crow who you grabbed onto in the opening credits. He has no hard feelings, although he is unimpressed with your flying skills. But he sees you as a great opportunity to help him collect the “shiny objects” he desires so much, and asks you to find 100 of them, which are scattered all around the city. Once you do, he will trade you them for a fish, which your cat can use to build up more energy and overcome one of the biggest challenges in the game – climbing back up the ivy-covered walls to your home.
When you climb, you slowly run out of energy, which generally prevents you from going too far up on your home building. However, each time you eat a fish, your energy meter gets a bit larger, which essentially unlocks higher levels as you slowly make your way back home. As such, you will probably need to do at least a few of those quests, although skilled climbers probably won’t need to do all of them. I watched a speedrun where someone solved the title in just a few minutes, although they used a couple exploits. Most people will probably take several hours to play, especially if they do all the quests, which being a fun if repetitive part of the gameplay, is something you probably will want to tackle.
In addition to the fetch and other quests, there are also some light puzzles to solve. This can be as easy as bringing the right object to the right creature, clearing out a passageway or finding a way around some cat-unfriendly obstacle, like a tiny puzzle that is blocking your path. Like the rest of the game, solving those puzzles are not difficult and also are pretty easy if you think like a cat using all of your amazing skills.
As a bonus for cat lovers, Little Kitty, Big City is filled with lots of inside humor that people who live with cats probably know all about, like their propensity to knock things off of shelves just for the heck of it. Thankfully, the people who live in the town don’t seem to mind when your main character cat acts up. The most they will do is chase you down and give you a stern finger wagging, and that is only if you steal their smartphones. For the most part, it’s a cat kingdom as far as the humans are concerned.
Finally, you can also collect a bunch of different hats to make your kitty quite spiffy. Most of the hats are merely cosmetic, although a couple may serve as part of a puzzle or quest. It’s just one more element that makes Little Kitty, Big City such a joy to play, and a nice break from the more serious world-changing or even world-ending titles that most of us normally play. In fact, your cat is never in any real danger, so parents don’t have to worry about that if they want to let their children play Little Kitty, Big City.
Little Kitty, Big City is a fun, Rated-E for Everyone game that’s not too difficult to play, and it’s entertaining for all ages. If you are looking for a very lighthearted adventure featuring one of the most charming cat main characters, then this one will scratch all the right boxes – and the corners and sides of your couch.