Little Kitty, Big City Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Like a lot of people, I played the incredible cat-driven adventure game Stray back in 2022, and also like a lot of people, I came away wishing that the whole game was just a simply, atmospheric cat simulator like the opening hours had been. I loved scratching trees and hopping across balconies, but as soon as the game introduced coloured keys and nuanced NPCs I lost interest. Little Kitty, Big City is a game that’s laser focused on delivering that wandering cat power fantasy I had been dreaming of.

There’s the tiniest bit of narrative framing for why you’re playing as a lost little kitty in a big city – an afternoon cat nap on the balcony of your high-rise apartment goes wrong when a barking dog startles you so badly that you take a tumble all the way down to the streets. You’ve never been outside before, so figuring out how to get back home is a big task, but it’s not one that I or the game was in a rush to complete.

The town you’re wandering through is an adorable pastiche of a busy Japanese neighbourhood – you’ve got salarymen and businesswomen rushing down the streets, birds fluttering around to sneak by and pounce at, plus plenty of endearing landmarks to wander into from a conbini to an arcade and even some unattended kitchens.

Little Kitty, Big City doesn’t quite have the open-world explorative vibes that I was hoping for, though – and it’s not quite as lived in or uniquely populated as something like Kamurocho from Yakuza. The vibes here are more akin to Untitled Goose Game in the sense that you’ve got a well realised small town you can navigate as you please, but there are so many blocked pathways or minor progression checks that it’s clear you’re more inclined to spend your time doing specific activities in certain locations. A bunch of the streets in town are covered in water puddles, and since cats hate water, you can’t bring yourself to get past them. At first they act as cute ways to naturally block off certain sections of town or prevent you from