HomeFeaturesLittle Kitty, Big City
I am dissatisfied with the hat selection in Little Kitty, Big CityNot everyone can wear every hat
Not everyone can wear every hat
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Double Dagger Studio
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Double Dagger Studio
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Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Double Dagger Studio
I do have complaints beyond the hats. Little Kitty, Big City is a kind of janky game. The first time I played it I got a few minutes in before everything suddenly became stuck in super slow-motion. I tried carrying on, because it was quite funny, but it was hard to get anything done. One quest, where one must find some lost tennis balls, saw a tennis ball roll into an inaccessible corner of a balcony, and I had to forcefully clip the kitty into a tiny gap to try and warp it back to where it was supposed to be. The jumping is hard to control with precision, which a) does not scream elegant cat and b) is annoying when that is the main way you traverse the world. I think Little Kitty, Big City would have been given less leeway in this regard if it was about a giant centipede, or something.
I realise this is a bit, “Oh yeah? But what if things were entirely different? Then they wouldn’t be the same!” People like the game because it is about a cat: it is about a cat so people like it. That doesn’t really matter. It’s a nice cat. You get cat emotes like Big Stretch. Can’t massively complain about that, can you? Ah, well. Nevertheless. The hats.
These are examples of good hats. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Double Dagger Studio
You find some hats hidden around the map, but largely you buy them from an entrepreneurial Crow, who operates a number of gacha machines. The main currency in the game are shiny bits like lost keys, bottle tops, buttons, and so on, but the only thing you can spend them on are the hats, and they’re only a fiver - sometimes more, for some of the more exclusive ones like the axolotl, so you collect a lot. But it is my considered opinion that most of them reduce the charisma of the titular diminutive feline, who is otherwise very charismatic. See those luminous green eyes, the large and well-shaped ears. What a good cat.
I like the smaller hats like the sushi, gingko leaf, or butterfly, which are perched rakishly on the cat’s head as if t’were ladies day at Ascot and the cat had chosen a restrained fascinator rather than a huge net hat. A+ for those. But so many of the other hats are foam monstrosities that turn the cat into a large pear or a melon or similar, but they make the cat lookwrongand less charming becausethey always cover the cat’s ears. This renders the cat an un-cat, an unheimlich creature that my brain cannot easily parse as a cat. I saw a Tweet that showed the cat wearing an apple hat, captioned with, like, “What else do you need to convince you?” but the apple hat is a very uncharming hat on the cat! I would need more!
This is a bad cat hat. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Double Dagger Studio
There are several hats that have holes cut out for the ears, and I approve of these - particularly the witch hat. I also like the animal ones that include ears, because then the cat has ears and it’s sort of okay. But the others? They don’t flatter our protagonist. And I worry that they would be uncomfortable and pin their ears to their head.
The fact that I have written nearly a thousand words explaining this game and why I think the cat deserves cuterer hats is evidence, I think, of how charming the game is, despite some jank and frustration. Like, there’s a bit where you go and rescue a bunch of ducklings who have got into adorable scrapes, and until you get them all home they follow you round and sometimes fall on their faces because they’re not so good at fast waddling. The internet animal has successfully melted me, and I will forgive the fact that in Little Kitty, Big City you don’t run, you have zoomies.
Disclosure: the writer on Little Kitty Big City is Philippa Warr, who used to work here.
