I feel like I've been waiting for Little Kitty, Big City forever. I remember first hearing about it at least as far back as 2021, and as the years have dragged on--and my need to play a game where I put little hats on a cat grew ever more urgent--I wondered often, sometimes even aloud, when was that cat game actually coming out?
That time is now! Little Kitty, Big City is finally out, and it rules. It's a roaming platformer where you, a cat, wander the streets of a Japanese city getting into trouble, making new friends, stealing phones (and donuts), catching birds, travelling through space and time and, most importantly, knocking loads of fragile and delicate objects off shelves, benches and fences.
As a game where you play as a cat, it does everything it needed to do. You truly do feel like you're playing as a cat, in that you are cute, you are impressively mobile, you're lovely and soft to pet, but you are also a huge asshole. Your walking feels slinky, like it should, your jumping feels both precarious but also precise, as it should, and at all times you're able to ruin a human's day for no reason other than your personal enjoyment. Again, as you should.
To tick all those boxes would make for a good novelty game, then--imagine the YouTube thumbnails with nothing else to say but IM A CAT IN THE CAT GAME--but Little Kitty, Big City is also just a very good video game. Its streetscapes are gorgeous and built like playgrounds, full of platforming tricks and hidden delights that encourage exploration--you're a cat, why not poke around--while your adventures are nudged along by a cast of genuinely funny characters.
It's a solid little platformer with (mostly, precise long-distance jumping is sometimes a bit iffy) precise controls, and it's also a game that's an enticing place to just...hang out in. I keep finding myself ignoring my "quests" in favour of just zooming around, exploring all the cute little corners of the city (something the other cat game also did well, and which I wrote about in more detail here), seeing what kind of trouble I can get myself into, or what neat little diversions--like playing football or walking through wet cement--I can find along the way.
So, yeah, good game! Go play it if you like cats, sure, but also go play it if you just like good video games.
Little Kitty, Big City is out now on Steam, Xbox (and Game Pass) and Switch.
