There’s nothing better as a gamer than finding a new title that appeals to one of our other interests. If you’re a feline lover, there’s something really special about games that feature our little furry friends.
Cats and gamers often go hand-in-hand. Sitting down to a long gaming session is only all the better if you’ve got a cat curled up at your side or on your lap. If you want to take your love for cats and inject some of the feline into your gaming experience, here are 10 cozy games that center around cats.
Stray
Can’t write up a list of cat games without including the pinnacle that is Stray. Exploring the world as a cat, completing quests, and meeting new people is somehow so much more palatable with four legs and whiskers. Stray won multiple awards, and there is an animated movie version of the game in development right now.
There’s something really satisfying about solving puzzles to progress the story and interacting with the world around you to open up new paths. But perhaps the best thing about stray is that you can just lay down and rest, and it ends up being an almost live screensaver of a kitty taking a break.
An Arcade Full of Cats
I make no secret about it; I have a certain soft spot for hidden cat games. I love completing a scene by finding all the cats, even if it gets frustrating and you begin going cross-eyed when you’ve been staring at the screen for a long time. An Arcade Full of Cats is the best of the best, and it’s part of a collection from Devcats.
Devcats is an incredible developer because any money they make from their inexpensive titles is donated directly to cat shelters. Each of their games features real-life cats that have been rescued or helped thanks to their donations, and that instantly makes every single one worth buying.
Little Kitty, Big City
A cat jumps out of a window and finds itself lost in the big city, helped by a Raccoon who can create teleport points, and a raven who just wants anything shiny. Little Kitty, Big City is packed with fun and cuteness and a seemingly endless collection of puzzles to solve.
You can steal food from the humans, pounce on birds, increase your stamina to boost the heights to which you can climb, make friends with a dog, and even unlock and wear a long list of adorable hats. There’s never a shortage of things to do in Little Kitty, Big City, and the particularly cute art style helps boost the enjoyment factor.
Cat Quest III
Cat Quest III is a 2.5D swashbuckling adventure that sees you playing as an adorable pixel pirate cat in the Purribean, kitted out with your very own ship as you explore the open seas. There’s a risk of ‘meow-tiny’ (sorry), and you need to be on the lookout for the Pirate King, but other than that, I’d still consider Cat Quest III pretty darn cozy.
If you thought ‘meow-tiny’ was a bad pun, then you will have an issue with the puns in Cat Quest III because they are absolutely everywhere. Whether it’s the item names or the litany of puns sprinkled into regular conversation. Frankly, I love cat puns, but I realize this might not be for everybody.
CATO: Buttered Cat
Whether CATO can be considered cozy or not depends on your enjoyment of old-school platformers and how frustrated you can get when playing them. CATO: Buttered Cat is inspired by the buttered cat meme, in which cats always land on their feet, but buttered toast always lands buttered-side down. So, what way does a buttered cat land?
Well, it infinitely spins, is the quick answer, and also the basic premise of CATO: Buttered Cat. The two characters (Cat and Toast) must be controlled individually and together to solve 140 main platform-based puzzle levels and 60 side levels, offering up a huge amount of platforming fun to get stuck into. Plus, there are several skins to unlock for both Cat and Toast, so you can lose hours just trying to get them all.
Cats and Soup
If you’re looking for something infinitely more chilled than the previous entries, I highly recommend the mobile game Cats and Soup. It’s an idle game, running in the background while you go about daily life, and the adorable cats in their equally adorable costumes are always there to welcome you whenever you get a minute to check in.
There are new recipes to unlock as you progress, hundreds of cats who will eventually fill your screen with their feline cuteness, and a never-ending list of things to do and upgrade to get the most out of your kitty friends. Plus, what better than a game you can get through in only a few minutes each day?
Cattails: Wildwood Story
If you’ve ever played Stardew Valley and thought to yourself, “Well, this is great, but I really wish that everyone was a cat”, then Cattails: Wildwood Story is just the game you’ve been waiting for. There’s even a friendship and marriage system with the various other cats in the Wildwood, so all the familiar cozy game mechanics are present.
The game requires you to set up a new colony for cats in a world set to rights in the predecessor Cattails. You can choose where this settlement will go, customize it to your tastes, and then lure cats to come and make their home there. The settlement is expanded when you attract more residents, and your cat can even do the gardening, clearly not limited by their lack of thumbs.
Cats Organized Neatly
I’m willing to admit that cleaning up a space and making things fit neatly into boxes is not the height of excitement for many people, but there are those (me, I’m one of them) who find a lot of enjoyment out of organizing items into their respective places and seeing them fall into place. It’s why I enjoy Tetris and also why I love Cats Organized Neatly.
It’s essentially a feline take on a Tangram-esque premise. You’re given a selection of bizarrely shaped cats and a fixed amount of space to fit them all in. Sometimes there are unmovable obstacles as part of the board, and sometimes you have more free reign over the space. More often than not, there’s only one acceptable solution for you to find. It can get a little frustrating, but the art style is adorable, which helps.
Cat Goes Fishing
A large chunk of the cozy gaming community seems to think that fishing is the height of fun. For the most part, I can’t bring myself to agree (although I have had my moments). However, Cat Goes Fishing takes that element of gozy gaming and dedicates an entire game to the task, and it’s weirdly enjoyable.
You start with a basic rod, and your only task is to catch fish. As you catch and sell valuable fish, you can upgrade your rod to catch even more valuable fish or buy a boat and sail out to sea. You can customize your rod and unlock hats, all while filling out the fish collection one catch at a time.
Cat Café Manager
It’s remarkable how many games these days begin with a grandparent dying and leaving you something decrepit to fix up, and Cat Café Manager starts similarly. However, Cat Café Manager pulls ahead of the rest by tasking you to make friends with the local cat population and invite them into your café, thereby turning it into the area’s first and most impressive cat café.
You can customize the café itself, hire a full team of staff, help them polish up on their skills, and even come up with special recipes to offer to the paying public. You’ll need to build relationships with both cats and humans to make the café successful, and there’s always something that needs doing to make things run smoothly.
