Find Matt's Cats

Here's a game we first found on itch.io when I was searching for cat games and finding whole Game Jams full of cat games.  Find Matt's Cats.

Then we found it on Steam, right here.

Then we had way too much fun with the 10-level demo on Steam.  We were in the mood for a "find the objects" game, and this was one of the most enjoyable games of that sort we have seen, period.  The art is delightful, a world packed with objects and cats, and objects for more objects to hide in.  You can click to open up entire houses or buildings.  You can click the sea serpent to open a hidden pocket world under the sea.  You can roll logs or carts or boats out of the way to find more objects.

Like usual, there is a fixed set of objects to find in each level.  Then there are 10-20 gems to find in each level, and finally, one piece of art -- these go into an album.  It's fun to click on everything, because you never know which items have sounds or animations.  Sometimes, clicking one item will animate a few objects nearby, especially when the cats and dogs have things to say about each other.

And when you think that's all there is, you will see some achievements ... go to the achievements page and wow, there are dozens of new goals for you.  Eat all the foodz.  Knock birds out of trees.  You name it, there's an achievement that will have you looking for even more things to play with.  For the "Poltergeist" achievement, knock 100 paintings off of walls.  It's hilarious at times.  Smash all the pots (some of them have gems inside anyway), poke something so much that it explodes (oops), annoy a cow, turn on all the games in the world, turn off all the TVs.  There's one called "What Level?" where you need to click 100 things on the level select menu -- not even the actual levels, the level menu has its own surprises.

This was a delight all around.  Of course there were some characters who pop up on the screen to tell you about things, and we had just started skipping them, when the artist herself (Anna Greenwood) showed up and explained how she did all the art, and some of the tools she used.  Later on (after the 10 demo levels), the characters come up with some pretty funny gags, like two levels where the cats faces are all upside down and they blame the coder, but ... you'll see.

We ran the whole demo in Normal Mode, after which you can start levels again in Hard Mode, where you might need a key or box cutter or hammer to get into some of the containers to find the items.

What really took us by surprise was that level 2-2 or 2-3 was actually a "find the difference" game.  The same great graphics, but now you need to spot differences between the left side and right side AND you can still open containers somehow.  We have never seen that much flexibility on a "find the difference" game.

Top-notch game from a top-notch team.

Sep 5 Update: We went ahead and got the full version today, and after Steam choked a few times and forgot we bought it, then forgot to install it, it finally loaded but reset all our progress from the demo, which the creator posted an apology for.  So we did our best to zoom through those ten levels again and finally got to some new ones.  Still so quirky, still on our list of top games at the moment.

Some tips: click on open umbrellas, as they close and there is usually something you need hidden behind one of them.  Click the cute sea monsters to open a searchable underwater space.  If you see a tree gnawed around the bottom, knock it down for more hidden things, thanks to the local beaver problem.  Open the chests and coolers, break all the clay pots, knock paintings off the walls ... heck, just poke everything.  Sometimes those big idols have things fly out of their eyeballs, sure why not.  Move every log and boat. Trash the place.

Angering the cows takes about 12 to 20 clicks and the world starts to shake.  Probably stop after you get that achievement.  Some of the animal sound f/x are adorably dumb, and they have a character gag talking about they weren't about to track down real giraffes, so the giraffe just says "giraffe" in three different pitches.  It's just the right kind of silly and relaxing.

Anne's last tip: to find all those gems, just stare ... they will glimmer, or if they're in a container, the container will jitter a bit.  Of course, there might be 20 or 30 other things on the screen with wagging tails or tiny animations.  But if there's a little glint behind a tree, it's a gem.  Get it.

One last tip.  The mouse was acting very sluggish for us on our main gaming machine (the one that can run modded Minecraft worlds with no problem).  There's a setting where you can switch to the right mouse button for moving the screen, and it fixes the sluggish mouse.  It takes a few minutes to get used to playing that way, but I guess the mouse was getting conflicted between moving itself and dragging the map.