I love cats. I will play ANY game if there is a cat in it. Developers, Caddy Computing, have brought us an interesting little indie game now on PlayStation 5, that takes a cute and sassy little furball on an adventure out on the open seas in ‘Ship’s Cat’.

You are employed as the new exterminator. Funny thing is, though, you are just a common tabby cat. Your simple mission is to eliminate the mice infestation on a luxury cruise liner as they terrorise the guests and crew. What seems like a very simple premise soon goes off the rails very quickly as the mice start doing some unhinged shit around the ship.

The complete 180-degree turn in the story is so unexpected, but a really welcome change in traditional story premises. The whole game doesn’t take itself seriously, definitely has pacing issues, and definitely dives into the absurdity quickly, so you need to strap in from the whiplash you are about to get.

Gameplay itself is going from area to area of the ship, completing missions for the staff. There might be an infestation of the food court, and you must destroy all the rats there, or there might be a fan malfunction because its wires have been chewed through to investigate.

Side exploration, though, can go from hoping enthusiastically from pool toy to pool toy to even playing some holes of Putt Putt. It is pretty mundane stuff, even when the story begins to turn oddball. It’s still pretty repetitive; bite the rats, clear the room, sort of gameplay. The story is supposed to be the star, I would guess.

The controls are simple enough; all it really involves is running around, jumping ledges, biting mice and flinging them across the room. You do obtain an electrical super charge eventually, but it feels like you really have no way to control it.

While everything is basic, the cat does feel like it runs with a feline agility, and when our little furry exterminator jumps onto ledges, it has the ability to nonchalantly knock things off, as any real cat would. There is a self-aware sense of how a cat acts in this game.

The real overarching problem with the controls and the game itself is the gameplay fluidity. While I have seen no issues on PC reported, the PlayStation 5 version is a buggy mess. I counted that I fell through the play map 11 times, each time having to reload a save. Luckily, though, this game auto-saves OFTEN, so I didn’t lose much progress, or I would have just given up.

I even, at one stage, fell and glitched into an endgame room and triggered the ending boss fight way before I should have, thus finishing the game in half an hour, having to start again to see what I missed. It was a little comical, I knew the ending before the rest had played out, though.

The graphics and audio are pretty sound. The developers actually list the assets they used at the end of the game, which is actually an interesting touch because it shows how they have been integrated more conventionally. It is all a little charmingly rough around the edges, such as the choppy ocean and questionable but entertaining dialogue, but it doesn’t necessarily take away from the experience.

Overall, my experience with ‘Ship’s Cat’ was very split down the middle. While the game was absurdly amusing, the constant worry about whether I had to reload a save soon ruined the mood as I had to walk on eggshells in certain areas, afraid I would clip through the surface. I would probably recommend picking the 2024 PC version if you are aiming for a ‘mice’ day!

Written by: Stacey