Cat Quest is a very simple, extremely repetitive and easy hack and slash and hack and slash, and a hack and slash, hack and slash action ‘RPG’ game.

The 2017 project by The Gentlebros paints a wonderfully colourful and fictional world of Felingard in an artstyle reminiscent of children’s artbooks. Ruled by anthropomorphic feline characters, the protagonist washes up on the shores of the kingdom — where his hopes of finding his abducted feline-sister begin in this “open-world” adventure.

Admittedly, it is surprising how boldly the store page and reviewers express grand marketing key words in hopes of attracting an audience — ambitious terms such as ‘RPG’ and ‘open-world’ seem far-outreaching and outstretch what is actually on offer by the title. Although on a technical and structural level these terms are valid, it can be argued that the content and systems in Cat Quest are too shallow to be making such comfortable claims.

Firstly, exciting and colourful premise of a feline warrior in a magical world quickly fades into tedious routine that defeats even the strongest enthusiasm and motivation. Role-playing is strictly confined to a single attack, magic or roll button whilst the quest system is restricted to two equally uninspiring, banal repetitive tasks — kill all monsters or go fetch.

This formula is repeated over and over again throughout. It is excruciating how many times you will be performing the same actions. Understandably, gaming as interactive entertainment has always boiled down to repetitive tasks — however, game designers work extremely hard on breaking up the tedious routine into something that feels fun for the player. In Cat Quest, it is disheartening to see a game with interesting and cute ideas succumb to uninspiring boredom-inducing gameplay that far overstays it’s welcome. As ridiculous as it sounds, it is amusing to see an option to replay the whole game again under the synonym ‘Mew Game’ (New Game) as if the first playthrough did not give you RSI.

Secondly, the large, painted ‘open world’ of Cat Quest is beautiful although similarly to the gameplay, quite shallow and riddled with unamusing cat puns. Upon launching Cat Quest the player may be impressed by the scale and promise of a grand adventure. However, this falls flat rather quickly when the landscape is consistent over and over with a lack of any discerning landmarks that break up the largely repetitive scenery. The premise of interesting dungeons is hopeful, yet short lived, as even underground, the world of Cat Quest falls to the same fate as the rest of the game — it is all just very ‘samey’ from top to bottom. This poses an interesting question: does having a large open world even matter when it is all the same?

In a conclusive argument, Cat Quest ultimately fails to deliver and falls below expectation rather quickly. Whilst very charming and cute on the surface which may captivate an audience, the shallow mechanics, monotonous gameplay and uninspiring, lazy world design makes it difficult to stay invested for long. The game is nothing more than a simplistic, overly repetitive hack and slash experience that seeks to take up more of your time than necessary. Ultimately, if you are a gamer looking for an easygoing and undemanding distraction that is rather short-lived then Cat Quest may be worth taking a look at. However, for most, this 2017 game by The Gentlebros is a certain skip.

Ameowzing game! Simple and addictive

I swear, if i see one more cat pun i'm gonna pet all the cats in my city! Oh, the game is good by the way.