Catie in Meowmeowland Review

Game: Catie in Meowmeowland
Genre: Point-and-Click, Adventure, Puzzle
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam, Windows, & macOS)
Developer|Publisher: ARTillery | Blowfish Studios
Age Rating: US E10+ | EU 7+
Price: US $14.99 |  UK £9.99 | EU € 11,99
Release Date: March 30th, 2022

Review code used, with many thanks to Stride PR.

Like Alice, little girl Catie falls into a rabbit hole that takes her to Wonderland. Except this is Meowmeowland and, yes, there are cats.

The cats look a little odd. Which means they fit right at home in Meowmeowland, a beautiful but bizarre place. As in Alice’s dream, things don’t have to make sense here. But unfortunately, that makes the player’s job difficult when they’re solving puzzles which seem to lack logical connections at times.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Catie in Meowmeowland is a point-and-click that’s light on story and heavy on puzzles. Which is all fine and, in fact, the game takes a refreshing approach. When there’s a speech bubble, which is rare, it uses pictures instead of written words. Characters communicate their feelings with a few vigorous gestures and growls, rather than lines of dialogue.

Story-wise, the premise is clear and simple: Help Catie get home. Rather than experiencing a story, Catie has you focus on experiencing a colorful, surreal, delightfully unpredictable world. Visually, the game is on par with the best of children’s picture books. It feels very much like an interactive picture book, and I’d love to see more games in this style. The animations and sound effects are very well-done.

What’s missing is a sense of narrative connection, between levels and within levels. Narratively, some levels are much better than others. One level I liked has puzzles revolving around a snail who wants to be fast. Another level, involving musical cat statues, has less of a story but a clear goal: tune an instrument. Overall, though, the game feels like a string of random events, which is partly what makes the puzzles difficult.

Untangling the Yarn

Here’s a tip: Don’t forget that you can click on Catie herself. You can also use objects on Catie. Once in a while, you’ll need to click multiple times on the same character to advance the puzzle.

Out of 24 levels, I was stuck for a long time on about 3 levels. That’s not unusual for a point-and-click game. But even for easier levels, I often found myself randomly trying objects on everything, hoping to stumble on the solution. I resorted to trial-and-error a lot more in Catie than in other games in this genre.

To be fair, the developer took on quite a challenge: to design puzzles in a surreal, dream-like world that’s surprising and bizarre. I do love the unpredictable results that unfold when I solve part of a puzzle in Catie.  People say that when you write fiction that’s not set in “real life,” the unfamiliar is intriguing and engaging; and yet, there must be enough familiarity for the audience to enjoy the story. I think this game is a case where was not quite enough of the familiar, or rather, the logical. As a result, solutions to puzzles were often obscure and therefore not as satisfying.

Compounding the problem was Switch controls. You can adjust cursor speed in the Options menu, but I never found a comfortable speed. Either the cursor was too fast, making it hard to detect interactive objects (which are pretty small in size), or the cursor was too slow. But perhaps the bigger issue is that I often fell back on that trial-and-error approach mentioned earlier. I was experimenting everywhere on screen and it took a long time.

Conclusion

Catie in Meowmeowland has many merits: beautiful art and animation, cute characters, and cool bizarre-ness. It’s lighthearted and slapstick funny, even if occasionally crude or downright mean. (I felt sorry for the giraffe candlestick I had to set on fire.) There’s not much of a story, though the overall plot is clear and it wraps up very well.

I completed the game in 3.5 hours. Most levels didn’t take long to solve. But too many solutions felt obscure, and I didn’t enjoy resorting to a trial-and-error approach so often.

I kept looking for reasons to give the game a positive rating, yet I hesitate to recommend it unless you are (1) patient and persistent in solving puzzles, (2) open to a cute, colorful art style and (3) not expecting a story or puzzle design on par with well-known point-and-clicks.

Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure