Have you ever wondered why cats like to punt any breakable object off any available surface and watch it smash? I’ve always imagined it was something to do with the demonic presence writhing around just behind their eyes, an almost out-of-body experience that allowed the devil to raise their paw for them and cast precious vases asunder. According to Catsperience, however, it’s very much driven by a mixture of necessity, indifference, and the urge to grab a Steam achievement.

So what is it?

Catsperience is a first-person (or… cat) puzzle game, set within the confines of an unusual house. The player controls the cat, informed by a meowing internal monologue that they must find their owner and get fed. Seems standard(ish) so far, nothing farfetched about this scenario. You can jump around the room and start knocking over precious breakables straight away. No, I wasn’t joking – there’s an achievement for breaking all 442 vases. This is where the game takes an… interesting turn.

Upon finding a key and opening the corresponding cabinet, the player is rewarded with a bag of catnip. Simply pressing R activates “cat vision” which, in gameplay terms, reveals hidden platforms that the player must jump on to find items and progress.

This isn’t the end of the weirdness, though. The screen takes on a semi-zoomed, hazy fishbowl appearance that personally caused a lot of motion sickness. I managed to battle through this to finish the game, although I did have to take quite a few breaks. A quick patch to allow the user to switch off cat vision on command would be a welcome change to many players, I feel.

The puzzles throughout Catsperience are varied, detailed, and can be surprisingly educational. Around the house are plaques that describe various scientific definitions of gases, electrical currents, and so on. Are they a clue? You’ll have to play to find out.

To speak more to the puzzles – none of them gave an incredible amount of difficulty. It felt like a decent time to spend on the more difficult puzzles, which are interspersed with smaller and more straightforward puzzles. This gives the game a somewhat forgiving feel – possibly designed purposefully so that the player doesn’t give up in frustration after a series of annoying and obscure challenges.

The mechanics of Catsperience seemed somewhat lacking. The jumping, probably the most centric mechanic to the game, seemed unfinished and jarring. I am unsure if the cat’s hitbox is just a little large for what you perceive the cat’s size to be, but I found myself bouncing off the underside of a desk instead of jumping up onto it half the time. The camera bob with each step also felt rather unsettling – especially coupled with the nausea of the “cat vision”.

The stamina bar, too, seemed like a needless restriction. It felt like a small way to slow the player down a little, so as to not blast right through the game. Whatever the reason, the cat can’t jump more than twice before having to pause for a moment to allow the stamina bar to refill. Probably the most major issue that I found during my playtime was the UI – if I tabbed out of the game at any point, the UI would be stuck on the screen. I played for about 20 minutes with the jumping tutorial tooltip covering my screen before giving in and restarting.

Overall, Catsperience has a little something for most players. If you’re a puzzle nerd, you’ll certainly appreciate some of the depth that the creator went to in the later puzzles. I’m not sure I’d revisit the game, mostly because of the motion sickness issues I found, but I certainly implore others to give it a decent shot.

Written by: Unknown Trepidation