Fort Meow Review

The internet goes nuts for anything cat-related, animated, or with a skewed, “random” sense of humour: they seem like the true cornerstones of the virtual world. With their omnipresence online, you'd think a lot more games would capitalise on those aspects. Well, finally, such an idea has come to light: coming to us from developers Upper Class Walrus is Fort Meow, a cartoon game about cats being launched towards you at speed.

Fort Meow has easily one of the most interesting videogame introductions of 2015. Its cutscenes are presented in cartoon form, which lends the game a wonderful, cuddly aesthetic. You play as a little girl named Nia who has been dropped off at her grandparents' house to spend some time with them, but she's stunned to realise that the door is open and nobody is there. After spending some time wandering about, she finds her grandfather's journal in the attic, which she believes will be able to shed some light on the situation. Sounds pretty serious so far, right? It's at that point that she gets attacked by a fleet of flying felines.

The essential premise of Fort Meow is simple: it's a “reverse Angry Birds” where you play as the pigs, if the pigs had any sense of what it meant to make a strong structure. Cats of different abilities (for instance, some fly in at high speed, some are very heavy, some home in from the side) will fly at you from left to right, so it's up to you to build a fort out of household objects and furniture to protect yourself from the oncoming waves. One hit to you, and it's game over. You start by placing two armchairs on either side of you as a foundation, then you fortify your stronghold with objects like mattresses, pillows, and brooms, before slowly branching off into the more ridiculous, such as gold trophies, grandfather clocks, and a yarn launcher, which stops a cat dead in their tracks if hit. This is perhaps the killer appeal of Fort Meow, as building up your fort and getting ready for a close encounter of the furred kind is hugely fun, as it allows for a lot of experimentation in the pursuit of finding the most solid fort to protect yourself from cat-astrophe.

However, this game is not without strategy. For instance, you can't just stonewall yourself with large objects and wait for the storm to die down – on each level, you have a limited amount of both objects and points (each object costs points to place) meaning you have to constantly be crafty when building. This creates a greater challenge in the start of the game than the end, as by that time, you actually do have enough points to just stonewall yourself with every object in the game. Yet, the carnage on screen is too great, gleeful, and hilarious that you'll be smiling too hard to care.

The story of Fort Meow is perhaps the most engaging and endearing to have appeared in an indie title for quite some time. As we know, we play as Nia, and the house, called Hazelwood, lies empty; but through our grandfather's diary, we can unravel the mysteries of the house. All the chapters are released to us gradually through the game, giving us real motivation to continue – a nice touch by the developers, as it can be hard to get players to care about written materials within games. Gradually, we learn that the cats being launched at us at speed aren't feline – they're robots created by our scientist granddad, created to give his wife some company. Due to a freak accident they've been multiplying at freakish speeds. Progressing through the diary reveals the secrets of Hazelwood, giving us access to other rooms, and new and greater types of furniture to construct a bigger and better fort from. As a framing device, the diary is pure brilliance – this leads to a brilliantly structured game that works up to its grand finale at a fantastic pace, always leaving the player wanting more. This also helps to make the game a bit more of a grander product, as the core fort defence mechanic wouldn't look out of place in a mobile game (indeed, Upper Class Walrus have also added an iOS release) – this all adds depth, making it feel like a proper, more accomplished game.

However, while building your fort makes for a satisfying core gameplay experience, and the story wrapped around it equally pleasurable, the game is somewhat flat on content, especially for its price. The core game will take about 3 hours to wrap up, and while those are three deliriously happy hours, players will be left wanting more. Considering the style of gameplay, some may have been expecting a challenge mode, or missions given without any other context other than for the fun of it, but the game honestly doesn’t have much else to offer. Granted, you're tasked with collecting 24 stamps, but you'll unlock these painlessly through the course of the game with no real effort, which will come as a bit of a let-down to many players.

Yet, what doesn't disappoint is the cartoon-style graphics of the game, which makes Fort Meow look as cute as a button. The cutscenes are well animated, and narrated with a booming, portentous voice, bringing the game's world to life with a rare creative spark that leaves you feeling all warm inside, like watching Saturday morning cartoons at their absolute best. These, of course, only improve the top-notch storytelling at play in the game.

The music is equally appealing; a low key, jazzy affair, it makes use of xylophones to create a smoky and bedazzling soundtrack to produce a perfect air of mystery about the house. It's so strange how the core gameplay of Fort Meow is relatively simple, yet it gets ambience so much better than any other game of its field. The presentation of this game just tantalises in ways that other games can't match.

The price may initially be a turn off, but Fort Meow just possesses an incredible spirit to it, a rare star-alignment, an unusual x-factor, a one in a million lightning-in-a-bottle effect that other games even twice, four, or eight times as expensive just don't have. Fort Meow is short. It could be mistaken for a mobile title. But, in honesty? It's beautiful, it's tons of fun, and it has such a warm and inviting tone to it that you'll fall in love at first sight, and be enamoured with it, warts and all.