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About the StoryYou are the new cat, but you do not have a name. Today, He has left the door to your place open. If you explore the new world, can you get a name?Game Details
Language: English (en)
First Publication Date: April 9, 2011 Current Version: 3.0 License: Freeware Development System: Inform 7 Forgiveness Rating: Merciful IFID: Unknown TUID: w9s82w5o59a43tzt |
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| Average Rating: ![]() Number of Reviews: 3 Write a review |

Implementation also is spotty, with many reasonable synonyms missing. And by reasonable synonyms, I mean in many cases what the game itself calls a particular noun. For example there is an object that the game calls a (Spoiler - click to show)metal box, but the player cannot refer to it as the (Spoiler - click to show)the metal, or the box, and calling it the metal box causes a disambiguation prompt: which do you mean, the Ftop or the fridge?. But of course the whole shtick of this game is that the PC isn't supposed to know what such things as a (Spoiler - click to show)"fridge" are, so why does the game even call it the (Spoiler - click to show)fridge, let alone require the player to call it that, refusing to accept the terminology the game's output itself uses? This isn't the fault of Inform of course, since Inform will handle much of the synonyming automatically if you give objects natural, fully written-out names (including all modifiers) instead of weird programmer-ish abbreviations like (Spoiler - click to show)"ftop".
These issues kind of kill the atmosphere of the game, but atmosphere is what a piece like this is all about: looking at the world that is familiar to the player, but alien to the PC. Instead it ends up dangerously close to being a glorified "My Apartment" game, except with neologisms where (Spoiler - click to show)"walls" and "doors" would be, and otherwise described almost exactly as one would describe a house or apartment to a human. So overall, it's a decent effort with an interesting idea, but the actual execution results in a pretty mediocre experience.
(Note that this relates to version 3, the newest release of this game at this time. Hopefully the author can fix a few of these issues.)

One big problem is that ‘look’ doesn’t produce a description of the room you’re in. In an exploration game, this is a very strange omission. Also, for an exploration game, a lot of things aren’t really implemented. (Spoiler - click to show)I don’t understand how examining a object lets you know its name.
The limits of your understanding also seem arbitrary: you don’t know what walls and doors are, calling them ‘ows’ and ‘mows’, yet you know what (Spoiler - click to show)‘metal’ is, even ‘bathroom’, even though a moment ago you were calling it a dark room smelling of water.
The inconsistencies make immersion into the game difficult. Even if the premise is very cute, I found it hard to get into the flow of the thing, because a lot of objects were described in rather generic, sterile ways... unlike a kitten.

A very short game, that you'll probably want to play through a few times and explore. Fun, and playful. The adaptive hints are useful, though I think I may have been better off switching them off and exploring more. The snippits of a bigger backstory are interesting, and the game world is well thought out and implemented.
New Cat on IFDB
Recommended Lists
New Cat appears in the following Recommended Lists:Cat simulators by verityvirtue
Games in which the PC is a cat, or which revolve closely around a particular cat. Generally pleasant games. I have thought about whether I should include Taghairm, but... well.
Polls
The following polls include votes for New Cat:Non-human Perspectives by Rhetta_Lynnea
I'm looking for IF narrated by aliens, animals, anything.
Oh, You BEAST: Games where you're an animal! by Ghalev
I know of a small handful of games where you play a beast, and I want to know of more. (By beast I mean a cat, a dog, a chicken, an orangutan, that kind of thing ... not looking for mythical monsters and not looking for part-timers, so...
games about cats by beetlesack99
are there any
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