Copycat

Copycat is an amazing and deeply touching experience. Dawn’s journey being adopted from the shelter and then abandoned again was incredibly sad and difficult to watch. It highlights a harsh truth: animals feel loss, fear, and loneliness just as much as we do. But the game also shows something powerful: animals are capable of surviving and finding their own path without humans. They are not accessories or temporary entertainment. If someone cannot commit to caring for an animal, they should never take that responsibility in the first place. Every animal deserves safety, respect, and the right to live just as humans do. Copycat delivers that message beautifully.

Do you want to know what it feels to be a cat ? Walk on all four through a pointless and awkwardly told story, with the occasional bare-bones minigames and dream sequences out of nowhere ? Welcome to Copycat ! Copycat is what you'd call a walking simulator, even if you have twice as many legs as most other games in the genre. Follow the obvious path, click on this and that, watch as the story unfolds. There are a few minigames but they're barely worth mentioning, as it's just about pressing the right button in time, and they bring nothing to the game. The same goes for the dream sequences : they come out of nowhere and make very little sense. They have you chasing rabbits and memories, which is somehow supposed to represent how the kitten grows into an adult cat. I think... As a game, it's technically poor. You don't need crazy graphics for this kind of games, but Copycat isn't visually charming. It looks generic, the animations are incredibly stiff and there's even some lag as you roam around. It's also a little buggy and the game doesn't always make it obvious what you need to do or where you need to go... But none of this matters if the experience is worth it ! Unfortunately, Copycat is neither fun nor interesting. The story, that of an aging woman struggling to take care of her cat, could have been touching if it weren't so poorly told. She and her daughter don't come off as particularly amiable or friendly, and for a story that's supposedly about abandonment and mistreatment of house pets... It's actually more of a series of unfortunate events that lead to the situation our cat is in, rather than actual abuse or negligence. So... life, basically. Since no one is to blame, then what really is the point of the game ? I don't think it works ! And as a big fan of cats, I don't know who this game is for. There are better (and more fun) ways to teach children about animals, and adults won't learn much from the game (there are but a handful of cat facts given by the "nature expert", who is at least pleasant to listen to, thanks to his fancy accent). And for those who will point out that this was made by a team of 2 people, I'll just pick one example among many : "Dust : An Elysian Tail". A fantastic game, made by a single guy. Released in 2013. You don't necessarily need a big team to make great things. I won't recommend Copycat, I thought it was really bad. And pointless, which might be worse. It's a [b] 3[/b]. If you want to be a cat, there are other games out there. Actual "games".

I love cats and I especially love cat games. I WANTED to love this game so much because it's honestly a great idea and concept in theory but just terribly executed. If you're someone who's just "meh" about animals, cats, relationships, abuse and trauma and you don't care too deeply about anything then you can probably enjoy this game. But if you're someone that likes animals/cats or has a cat or has had a cat that has passed OR has abandonment trauma, the game's storyline and characters make it hard to like. Without any spoilers, it kind of pushes that abuse is okay and forgivable. I thought the negative reviews were being too picky and I was really itching to play a cute cozy cat game but I should have just listened. Don't be like me and play this as the cat that looks exactly like your late cat or if you have abandonment trauma. Also (this part isn't too big of a deal because it can be patched), the game seems not very optimized. There's many times where the game would start sputtering for no reasons. Like walking in the park. Even inside the house, sometimes FPS drop like crazy, which makes no sense since everything past the walls should be occluded. Speaking of occlusion, just warning the devs in the last level where you look in the house windows there seem to be an occlusion bug that literally occludes everything inside the house so instead of looking into the empty house you're just looking into the empty skybox abyss through the house windows (but panning back to the view outside everything inside the house appears again). But that's neither here or there, as I said, these things can be easily fixed. I just expected more of a safe and mature teaching of morality from a game exploring such topics. Please consider the fact that the main character isn't just a cat in the storyline but a living breathing person, perhaps even a kid with such traumas, behind the screen showing a cat. Of course it's okay and encouraged to show and discuss sensitive and emotional topics like the ones explored in this game. In fact, it's one of the things I was excited about--to see how the game handled such sensitive topics. But unfortunately the narrative falls short of teaching the value of self worth. If the character dialogue and storyline are absolutely concrete and devs are unwilling to change them for the sake of improving the game for whatever reason, perhaps consider a different set of endings.

A deeply emotional and heartbreaking story about cats. If you love cats, this game will leave a lasting emotional impact on you Be warned: if you're a very emotional person, you might want to think twice before buying this game

that was NOT a good ending by any means gang we deserved WAYY better Spoilers for the plot [spoiler] After getting adopted by an old lady "Olive" as a REPLACEMENT for her old cat that ran away she tells us that we're safe and we'll always be taken care of... That is until we're kicked out by Olive's daughter because she can't take care of a cat. Olive goes outside to look for us, but instead finds her ORIGINAL cat and takes her in. We're left to survive outside by ourselves, not understanding why our owner isn't letting us in... We starve, get chased by dogs and almost get hit by a car. Eventually Olive realizes who we are and realizes she's made a mistake... And what does she do? You would assume she's taking us back to the shelter. That's what I thought at least... but no... she takes us to a forest... and leaves us there. What. The. ♥♥♥♥. What are our options after that you ask? Obviously to go back to her right? Because she totally didn't leave us to die in a random forest...... Literally why is that even the way the narrative does. I didn't wanna ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ go back. We didn't deserve to be treated like that. But narrative continues so we had to go back to Olive against my will... We go back and find out she's selling the house. We see the original cat and follow her to where Olive is right now, which is a retirement home. And the "good" ending is us and the original cat living together with Olive. AFTER SHE ABANDONED US? REALLY?? IS THAT WHAT WE DESERVE? NO THE ♥♥♥♥ IT'S NOT. I was very disappointed that's how it ended. [/spoiler] This could've been so good if there was even an ounce of self worth..

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43083373/]Clever games curator review: 5/10[/url]. This is a narrative-heavy, very linear game where you experience the perspective of an adopted kitty living with an elderly lady in declining health. The game is clearly more interested in telling its story than in giving the player freedom, and much of the experience consists of following tightly scripted sequences through levels designed to present the narrative in a specific way. At times this even takes the form of side-scrolling through a three-dimensional world. I was hoping the game would give me at least a little bit of the feeling of actually being a cat. To its credit, there are definitely sequences where you have full control and get to run around, explore, and do cat-like things. Unfortunately, these sections make up maybe a third of the game. Even then, the controls are not great, the movement lacks fluidity, and the feeling of being a feline romping through a house or urban landscape just isn't there. And that's the best part. The rest of the game largely devolves into two things: a somewhat interesting storyline and some amazingly inane minigames that feel like the worst version of DDR. On the whole, there's just nothing that stands out about any aspect of the game, and quite a few sections are real drudgery. Because of that, I suspect some of the positive reviews are freebies coming from the fact that the game is both cat-themed and focused on emotional issues, two things that tend to attract goodwill from reviewers. That said, it is fairly unique. It does some things differently from most games, and that's not a bad thing. The overall experience just feels too mediocre in the end, even if some of its ideas are fresh. I made it about two-thirds of the way through before I simply couldn't stay invested enough in the storyline to continue suffering through the mediocre gameplay. In the end, I had high hopes for this one, but all I came away with was feeling underwhelmed. Some people may enjoy it if linear, narrative-focused gameplay is more important to them than having a sense of agency or really roleplaying as a cat.

The gameplay for this is very simple and mostly serves the story, if people looking for deep mechanics or a challenge, this game probably isn't for them but if you enjoyed a narrative focused games that can make you laugh a little and a little sad at the same time, it's definitely worth checking this out. Not a very long gameplay, but I felt like the experience stayed with me after the credits rolled. Also as a massive cat lover, this one hit harder than what I was expecting

Look, I know its a new developers first game and they had an important message to share, but after playing through- I can honestly say I have never seen a game sabotage their own message harder than this. Infuriating ending. I feel this game is an IQ / EQ test and I am absolutely flabbergasted at a lot of the positive reviews. I get that it had emotional moments that tug at the heart, but this game may as well be titled "The Passion of the Cats" with the emotional drama, forced human perspective and weirdly redundant micro messages, and then to just... throw it all away at the end the way they did (outside of the under stimulating gameplay/ this is one of those "could have been more of an interactive story/ less gameplay sort of things) and it would have been better. Every interaction felt slow. Narration is written at a 7th grade level and felt repetitive and just. again. Ending is painful. Emotional parts are interrupted by jarring music changes, weird voice acting and reading and the own writers sabotage. [spoiler] And can we also talk about how at one point the daughter is straight up like "Imma smother my mother". Ma'am. She wasnt on her death bed, that part had no freaking point outside of throwing more drama into the story. Olive abandoned the cat multiple times. Mae attempted to essentially kill every other character even her own mother. [/spoiler] The story is a mess. The game isn't worth the full price, and I had the assumption that more of the sales were going to actual charity. If you do the math at even the reviews posted assuming people didn't even pay full price, they sure made a lot of cash off a disparaging message showing that " actually, yeah. These pets were expendable and all is forgiven somehow" feels like a spit in the face a bit. Anyway, interpret it as you want. Some may find this game heartwarming but myself and a friend played it together and after we beat it, we were both pretty upset and felt like this game literally cannibalized its own message for profit, and for the sake of needless suffering and drama, but did it pretty poorly where those important emotional messages never got to land on their feet. Enjoy the complete lack of choices too. May as well not even add them. I hope the developers really reconsider the feedback from some of the reviews and put a bit more thoughtful work into writing, and less into gimmicks. I really, really wanted to like this game. I had a hard time ignoring the massive red flags.

honestly the ending ruined it for me, your only choice is to let the cat die or go live with the stupid old lady who left you to die in the first place. The message should have been irresponsible owners should not have pets, not whatever that confusing "home is where you are needed" thing. A good ending would have been, old lady gets both cats taken away from her and they find a loving forever home with someone who can actually care for them properly. The old lady acted like she never had a cat before too, which made no sense since she was using you to replace her cat. No toys, no posts, nothing? Was very odd to me. I just hated all the humans in this game and felt sorry for the poor kitty. The story was kinda ass.