A Perfect Game For A Distracted Dad

As a thirty-four year old father of two with a full time job, I fall squarely under the category of people who enjoy video games but rarely play them. For whatever reason, video games are the last medium I turn to with my limited spare time. First priority goes to books, then movies and television, then finally video games. Needless to say, I rarely get to video games.

However, my oldest son is getting to the point where he can handle a controller and seems at least mildly interested in video games. He likes to watch my wife and I play Zelda, he’s played some Mario with us, we even had a routine going for a little while where we would play a round of Rush 2049 stunt mode on my Nintendo 64. So I’ve had my little video game antenna up for the last year or so, looking for good candidates to share with the family. Recently, one stepped forward.

Little Kitty, Big City.

I came across it while setting up our new TV. Samsung has a gaming hub thing where you can pair controllers to the TV and then cloud stream games. Little Kitty, Big City was advertised on there and I was hooked. I ended up buying it for the Switch, because I knew my wife would enjoy it and want to play it in bed some nights after the baby falls asleep.

Turns out, Little Kitty, Big City has been a hit with the whole family. I love it, my wife loves it, my oldest boy loves it (even if he’s still struggling a little with the controls), and my not-quite two-year-old loves it. The little guy will point at the TV and in his adorable voice say “Kitty game?”. He’ll point at things on the TV and ask me to jump on stuff or pick things up. It’s amazing.

Anyway, about the game. You play as a black house cat who loves to bask in the sun on his owner’s balcony. One day, he slips off and, through a few funny pinball-esque moves, lands on the street below. The goal of the game is to get back up to your cozy windowsill. To do so, you’ll explore the neighborhood, meeting a colorful cast of characters including cats, dogs, ducks, lizards, and birds. Many of these introduce side quests involving collecting items or getting to specific places on the map. All in all, it’s an excuse to climb around the city being a cute kitty.

The controls are pretty simple and intuitive, although sometimes the precision jumps lacks a little, uh, precision. But that only caused me problems one or two times. The character animations are fantastic, the kitty moves in such a recognizable fashion it really makes the game. I think the shining star is the writing in the game. I genuinely laughed multiple times throughout this game at the character interactions.

It’s a pretty short game, you could probably get through the main objective in an afternoon and collecting all the stuff would only add another couple of hours play time. To me, that’s a big selling point. I don’t have time for sixty hour games. I’ll play for a few days, maybe a week, and then not be able to pick it up for months. At which point I’ll have no idea what I’m doing and either start over or abandon the game. Knowing that I would be able to finish them game in a few days of play time encouraged me to pick it up. It also has the benefit of lots of little objectives sprinkled in. It’s a game you can pick up and play for five to ten minutes at a time and actually complete something before you put it down. Again, something I desperately need as a busy dad.

All that said, I do hope the developers release some DLC for it eventually. I had so much fun prowling around the neighborhood, I would love to get to explore a bigger environment.

I’m glad this game randomly showed up as an ad on my TV, otherwise I never would have heard of it. Now, I’m eager to explore the wide world of indie games. I have a feeling that’s where I’m going to find the stuff that works with the kind of gamer I am now. I love the idea of AAA games, but the notion of sticking it out through something like Elden Ring or Dragon Age is laughable.

So who knows what my next game will be. All I know is I’m excited because for the first time in a while I actually believe there will be one.