Summary

• Little Kitty, Big City is a charming cat simulator with an adorable protagonist and smooth controls.
• The game offers a stress-free experience with fun tasks like collecting hats and finding fish.
• Despite its short length, Little Kitty, Big City provides a lovely, detailed, and unique gameplay experience.

Little Kitty, Big City is the best cat simulator on the market, bar none. Double Dagger Studio’s debut adventure game wears its feline iration proudly, condensing this love into a bite-sized but nonetheless rich experience. Taking the nudging chaos of Untitled Goose Game and tying it into some familiar platforming and collectathon fundamentals, Little Kitty, Big City elicits a broad grin at nearly every turn. It’s therefore hard not to leave it wanting much more, but we’re grateful for the time spent in its welcoming little world.

A timed demo for Little Kitty, Big City first appeared during the last Steam Next Fest and offered a quick taste of the game, letting players inhabit the viewpoint of a rascally black cat navigating a quaint small town, tripping ersby with a casual stride and pouncing on small birds unaware. The complete version fulfills the demo’s promise in spades, with a colorful and stress-free playpen of charming street critters to meet and casual goals to pursue at leisure.

A Star Is Born On The Lovely City Streets

Little Kitty, Big City's Main Protagonist Is A Charmer

The central kitty here is as adorable as they come, a standout star at the outset who steals the show on cue. From their expressive green eyes to each delicately animated wriggle, it’s impossible to get distracted away from this avatar at the center of the screen. And that's even with other cute animals vying for attention, including ducks, shiba inus, a tanuki, and a few other cats scattered around the map. The protagonist stands out as a wondrous and lively creation, full of bespoke reactions to the world and smooth and responsive controls.

Even when mistakenly stumbling off a thin perch back onto the street – unharmed and on all fours, of course – it’s hard to ever get frustrated or mad. The kitty slides and skids when turning sharply during a run, realistically curls when turning around on a dime, and menacingly pounces on birds (who are, of course, quickly set free). There’s very little if any jank or ragdolling to be found, with every physical flourish appearing handmade, deliberate, and oozing with personality.

Don't worry about finishing off the game too early, as Little Kitty, Big City offers a free-roaming mode after credits roll to mop up any loose quests.

Speaking of pouncing, there’s nary a whiff of violence to be found anywhere. With all their familiar felineness intact, the Little Kitty, Big City cat remains a pacifist angel, and the game is utterly absent of drama or danger of any stripe. The central quest sees them returning to their top-floor apartment home after plunking down to the street, with the greatest threats amounting to little more than a puddle of icky water or an irate shopkeeper shooing them away.

Hats For Cats, And Other Pursuits Of A Feline Variety

Fish For Climbing, Shinies for Style

Little Kitty, Big City may be low on drama, but there are still a bunch of tasks to complete. Over a small range of a few short city blocks, the cat will meet an industrious tanuki installing portals under manhole covers, a duck searching for their distracted ducklings, and a shrewd crow hawking hats out of a capsule machine for “shinies.” Said hats represent the majority of collectibles, all of which are adorable, swappable, and often inspired by Japanese culture, with bao bun, daikon radish, and taiyaki designs, with dozens more to unlock.

The protagonist stands out as a wondrous and lively creation, full of bespoke reactions to the world and smooth and responsive controls.

Rarer are the four edible fish to find nestled throughout, each of which affords the cat another stamina bar and the ability to climb the ivy found growing in various nooks of the neighborhood, Breath of the Wild-style. The introduction of this feature adds a slight metroidvania element, opening up several sections of the map to exploration and making revisits to previously gated areas worth the return.

There’s never anything like combat to engage with, but meeting each of the city’s denizens is a joy, and running light errands for them comprise the bulk of the game’s responsibilities. Human personalities take an appropriate backseat, with randos on the street represented as blank-faced automatons who either ignore the cat or excitedly hustle up to them for a nuzzle and skritch.

Stress-Free Shenanigans Color A Relaxing Game World

Little Kitty, Big City is a Brisk, Light and Lovely Game to Play

Little Kitty, Big City might be described as a 3D-platformer, with much more detailed gameplay in this regard than that found in PlayStation 4’s best-selling Stray. In the latter, players would simply press a button to leap wherever a prompt appeared, but this game offers much more agency and precision for truer-feeling cat navigation.

Still, it can be a bit stilted and strange. Holding down the A button manifests a pair of pawprints which can be moved around surfaces and edges before confirming a jump. The mechanic is a little clumsy until it hits its groove, but players will soon find themselves able to complete several jumps in quick succession, or instantly recognize when an edge is just high enough to clamber over. There are no invisible guardrails to prevent against a tumble, but these are never lethal, and it’s easy enough to reset after a whiff.

The game flirts with immersive sim elements and, to its credit, is probably the most interesting when these myriad gears are turning, when fallen planters are spooking NPCs or the cat prompts them to drop their smartphone.

In fact, Little Kitty, Big City never once presents a game over screen. Fall off a high fence or mistakenly leap into a puddle and the cat will just shake itself off before getting back to business. There’s rarely an animation which takes too long to complete or any sort of artificial intrusion to grind things to a halt, making for a busy experience with peppy momentum.

Final Thoughts & Scored Review

4/5 - "Excellent" on Screen Rant's Review Scale

The easiest criticism of Little Kitty, Big City points towards the game’s length, as it can be sprinted through in under two hours, even though there’s probably another hour or two of careful exploration to rinse off unfinished business besides. The city environment is hardly “big,” but its verticality, personality, and interactive density make it feel much larger than it is, even while being small enough to render the inclusion of warp portals wholly unnecessary.

The game flirts with immersive sim elements and, to its credit, is probably the most interesting when these myriad gears are turning, when fallen planters are spooking NPCs or the cat prompts them to drop their smartphone. Sadly, most of this stuff is surface-level, and there are fewer surprise interactions between NPCs and the environment than one might expect at the start.

When Stray released, its occasional critics decried its general absence of idiosyncratic feline-ness in spite of its box art. It was simply a linear story largely about robots and packed with lore, only the player could occasionally press X to take a nap on a carpet. Little Kitty, Big City fulfills its feline obligations and then some, offering a beautifully animated adventure packed with appropriate cat-ivities and whimsical, gentle humor. It’s all-ages, elegant, and over much too quickly, but it’s the best of its breed.

Screen Rant was provided with a PC code for the purpose of this review.