Catlateral Damage Review

Have you ever wanted to cat? What do you mean “what does that even mean?”? If you don’t know what it is to cat, or want to cat, then you’ve never wanted to cat! Well thanks to Catlateral Damage you can cat all you want! Oh, you want an explanation?

To cat, is to act like a cat and destroy things. It’s that simple.

I’ve followed Catlateral Damage since it hit Kickstarter, though not being a cat person I never backed it. The concept just seemed so fun, that I decided to put my pet-disliking ways behind me and see what was going to happen. You play the part of a cat who decides to just destroy the house before its human comes back, and much like Goat Simulator, it sounded like fun. Now that it’s finally here, it’s not what I expected and yet is almost exactly what I wanted.

I cat'd the hell out of this room

The main mode is Objective Mode, which I was expecting to be a kind of Story Mode. It’s actually just that — it tells you how many things to destroy and you have a set time limit to do it. The levels are procedurally generated — which can result in some funny household configurations — meaning some are harder than others. As a cat, viewed in first-person, you have to knock 100-300 things onto the floor. From shelves, walls, inside wardrobes and fridges and off of every surface you can find. Some are harder to topple than others, until you get upgrades which power up your jump, swipe or speed. Once you hit the objective amount, hop in a cardboard box to nap and go to the next level.

As well as the objectives and upgrades, there are Events which trigger randomly. The house may be filled with disco lights, perhaps the gravity changes to that of the moon or even a power cut (which humorously cuts the music, too). You may also have to fight off the cat’s two greatest nemeses: a mouse and a red laser dot. And by ‘fight’ I mean chase and swipe.

That's right — DISCO MODE!

I played with a controller, which seems like the easiest way to play for me. The controls are quite simple, with swiping and poking, jumping and biting (and meowing). The controls are very simple, but the gameplay is quite challenging. Do you spend time clearing off the beds, or run into another room hoping to find a shelf full of books? There’s a lot of stuff under that table, but should you jump up to knock the TV down first? With time limits between three and eight minutes, it might seem like an eternity, but it won’t once you’re ten levels in, and find there is only just over the required amount of objects in a level...

As well as houses you can unlock a museum and a supermarket level — this one is different because you have to get the things on the shopping list. I say get, I mean knock them onto the floor. Nothing else counts, but you can do it anyway because cat.

You can't trust a human to buy the right food.

The other mode you can play in is a sandbox, or rather, Litterbox Mode. No time nor item limit, you can just keep hopping in the box to skip through the houses and take a look. However, it is useful for those who like collectables.

Hidden (I use the term loosely) amongst the levels are pictures of cats. These are all Kickstarter backers’ cats, who pledged over a certain amount. They unlock in a photo gallery once you knock them onto the floor, and there are over 230 of them to find, giving those who live to hunt collectibles a reason to play for hours. Not that the collecting stops there. There is a list of items found in the levels that you’ve knocked onto the floor, such as a dozen videogames or tens of different socks, for you to fill up.

Toilet paper to unravel!

The graphics are simple, but really drive home the similarities to Katamari Damacy. I tried to deny it at first as I was already fond of the game, but there are undeniable comparisons to be drawn. Catchy music, simple cartoony graphics, time-limited / object-oriented gameplay, and even the list of household items that pops up along the right side of the screen telling you what you just destroyed. Those aren’t bad things, as I loved that series.

The one hairball about Catlateral Damage is that, after you’ve collected everything, there isn’t much reason to keep playing. There are no leaderboards put in place, so scores given at game over are purely for your reference. You can always delete your user data, as the option is there in the settings, but personally I could never do that to my save data. Not since the original PlayStation, anyway…

It’s not often I find a game that I know won’t last forever, but makes me want to keep playing. These are videogames, fun should be the main reason we play them. And sometimes you don’t want to play a huge, challenging, tens-of-hours RPG; sometimes you just want to cat.