I’m not much of a cat person, definitely more a dog fella. However, we do have a cat and she’s really, really old now. From developer Spoonful of Wonder and publishers Neverland Entertainment and Nuuvem comes Copycat. A short, story driven title all about adopting an older cat.

“A poignant narrative-driven game about rejection, belonging and the meaning of home. It follows the story of a newly adopted shelter cat whose space in the home is taken by a copycat. Bring the tissues.”

You start out by playing as Olive, an older lady looking to adopt a cat. After you pick out your favourite feline and take it home, you then switch to playing as the new cat called Dawn. As Dawn, you get to explore your new home and try to fit in, even though you feel very out of place and are planning on escaping sooner rather than later. Dawn is a little house cat with aspirations to be an apex predator. Only, things don’t quite work out.

Copycat is light on gameplay, but heavy on story. It is kind of fun playing as Dawn, as she nervously explore her new home, while not being very nice to her new owner. As a cat, you can do very cat-like things. Jump on surfaces and knock things on the floor, scratch your claws against the furniture, even have a little explore in the garden and practise your hunting. The game does open up a little more as the story progresses, and you’ll get to explore more than just your house and garden. However, everything is closely tied to the story and I would have the delve into massive spoilers, which I really do not want to do here.

What you have here is basically a QTE driven title, with some endless runner-like gameplay thrown in. The gameplay mechanics are very light and they do get quite repetitive, fast. There’s only about two, maybe two and a half hours of game here. I’m not sure of that’s a good or bad thing yet. As there’s not a great deal of gameplay, the shorter time means that Copycat never really outstays its welcome. On the other hand… two hours is a very short length for a game these days. While Copycat certainly lacks any depth of gameplay, its story is really quite compelling and honestly, without it, I wouldn’t have bothered trying to reach the end credits.

The narrative is really well done, as Dawn’s adventures are narrated by a wildlife documentary maker, and the parallels between your average house cat and a wild cat hunting on the savanna are brilliantly realised. You get to explore the cat’s dreams and they can get quite surreal, these dreams were one of the highlights of the game. The overall story is great and that is what kept me playing until I saw the credits roll. But, the gameplay is severely lacking. This is the kind of title that you can watch a playthrough of on YouTube and get the same experience.

Copycat is a two person dev team and I just wish that I could heap more praise on their game… but I can’t. There’s just not enough game here to enjoy, from a gameplay perspective. The story? Brilliant. But as an overall package, Copycat feels like one of those tappy-tap games that you’d download on your phone and play for a couple of hours before deleting it. Maybe check the demo out first, or wait for a price drop if you’re more a of a cat person than I am.