Little Kitty, Big City Review (PS5) – A Tall Tail

If you’re a cat owner, then you know all too well about the late-night zoomies, the subsequent early morning wake-up calls for breakfast, and the copious amount of hours of sleep in between. Unlike cats though, we have jobs to fuel our pets’ unhealthy habit of treats and catnip toys, as well as our own living expenses, so do we ever really know what they get up to when we’re gone? I like to think Little Kitty, Big City is a slice of that luxurious furry life, as I tootle down the streets of a fictitious city in Japan, meowing, catching birds and finding a place where if I fit, I sit – as a cat, of course.

This is the debut title from Double Dagger Studios, who has already released Little Kitty, Big City on PC and Switch last year, but now it’s making biscuits on PlayStation and Xbox. Not only has the little kitty found new homes, but with a year between its launch and porting over to new consoles, the game has seen a handful of bug fixes and quality of life improvements, so it’s easy to say that this is the best time to adopt the new wider release.

But what does this third-person cat simulator entail? Is it akin to a playable version of Oliver & Company? Or is it a mess in the litter like the movie adaptation of Cats (2019)? Well, at least this one doesn’t have James Corden in it.

Big Adventure Ahead

The game opens to the titular kitty having a nap in their favourite spot, outside the window of their owner’s apartment on a high rise. Typically inconvenient and unsurprising spot for the cat to sleep, it stirs and falls off, hitching a ride on a crow on the way down. A cat always lands on their feet, but this time it’s in unfamiliar territory.

With guidance from the crow, you learn the value of shinies (in-game currency) and fish. The fish help your cat to climb some of the greenery growing on the walls, and collecting them all means the ability to make it back home. Think of the climbing mechanic popularised in Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where a stamina bar depletes the more you climb, but instead of a bar, it’s paws.

It’s an intentionally simple premise, so it can meander in the background of your mental to-do list, whilst you’re distracted with all that Little Kitty, Big City has to offer. It’s an open sandbox with a bunch of things that beckons your curiosity to discover; whether that’s something basic like knocking down plant pots with desginated buttons for each paw (L2, R2) or something more puzzle-based like how to stop the dogs on leashes from barking at you, meaning you can get past them.

Like Catnip

There are a couple of ways to skin a… Rat? In moments like these. Some more obvious than others, but always satisfying nonetheless. There’s an attention to feline physics in Little Kity, Big City that I wasn’t expecting. Turning feels like a slinky toy, as the back of the cat follows the trajectory of the front, the ability to leap can be held down for a more precise jump, with a line showing you where you’ll land, and even magnetises towards higher areas if you’re trying to scale something.

Double Dagger has successfully pulled off how nimble and effortless a cat looks when it’s scaling environments. It lends itself to some tight-rope-style platforming that feels like a breeze to enact, much like how it looks from the outside when we see our furballs walk along fences we couldn’t even climb over. There are some instances where maybe there’s some overambition on my part, where the traversal isn’t too perfect.

The game doesn’t do what you feel like you’re trying to input when jumping and scaling buildings. Like, instead of jumping to the next logical platform, my cat’s hoofing it into a wall and sliding all the way down, or sprinting with L1 to some steps, makes me headbutt the first step, as opposed to climbing them with speed. Some of it is down to how defined the cat’s physicality is, so it’s not to break immersion. However, if you couple some of those moments with a camera you’re trying to navigate around the environment with a little difficulty, and there are some misfires.

The Cat’s Pyjamas

Those are minor issues in what is otherwise a great simulative idea of how a cat feels when running around. Sprinting and doing sharp turns gives you this butt to the floor style drift, pouncing on an unsuspecting bird goes in slo-mo, so you can course correct your jump mid air to catch them (and let them go), and you can nuzzle up to human NPCs or take their legs out and pick up what they drop.

There’s an inherent cheeky charm to Little Kitty, Big City, which will speak to any cat owner or someone who loves cats. Double Dagger has added small but personality-driven characteristics to the playable cat, so you can’t help but raise hell in the city. Adding some personal flair is the inclusion of hats for your cat. Some of them are merely cosmetic and are all very cute, but some even have hidden mechanics to help you in some situations.

The game never explicitly tells you that, but there’s a very early moment where you get a hard hat near a construction site. Previously, without the hat, you’d enter the site and get pursued by a worker and chucked out. With a hard hat, however, you can walk in the wet cement till your heart’s content. There are over 40 hats to collect, some are hidden in the open city, some are rewards for completing things on your to-do list, but all are very satisfying to find.

Feline Good

Little Kitty, Big City also looks great. Running at a smooth 60fps with its cartoon-meets-realism style and bright colour palette, I could argue that the PlayStation might be the best place to play. The DualSense controller also helps sell the cat simulation factor, as you can feel every footstep, every purr and every crash when you’re shaking yourself out of a bin, all because of the haptic feedback feature.

The music, on the other hand, doesn’t quite work with me. It’s a very standard, laid-back piano-led jazz song that doesn’t evoke the personality that the gameplay displays. I could be running through the city holding a pair of scissors and making NPCs run in fear, and there’s just this chilled jazz ballad whispering in the background. Something more dynamic would have gone a long way here, but if the music is my biggest issue here, then everything surrounding it must be pretty great.

Which it is, for the most part. The game is on the shorter side, with 6 hours being my final time before obtaining the platinum. There are a couple of challenges that are RNG-based and got a little boring, as well as some of the objectives lacking variety in the latter part of the game, and you can’t change the colour of your furball, which to me is a bit of an oversight. However, I overall had a really fun time with it. As a cat owner and cat lover, the game delivers on what I’d hope an open sandbox cat simulator game would be. Charming, whimsical and mischievous, all wrapped in an almost purr-fect package. I know, I was wondering when that one was going to slip out, too.

Little Kitty, Big City is out now for PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam.

Developers: Double Dagger Studio

Publisher: Double Dagger Studio

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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