I’m way more of a cat person than a dog person, but if there’s one thing that I can agree with on both sides, it’s that cats can be pieces of shit. Whether it’s jumping in front of your face right when you are about to relax or sleep, to ripping toilet paper, and the worst of all being when they’ll knock things over, causing them to likely break. Catlateral Damage captures the latter on laundry list of these aggravations, leading to an ingenuous idea in the process. But does it quickly become boring? Let’s see if it lives to it’s purrfection. (I had to add at least one cat pun, OK?)

Gameplay:

Here’s just an example of the damage you can cause

Catlateral Damage is not a complex game by any means, but it’s one of the few I’ve played this year that manages to be extremely self-aware about this. This is one of it’s shining factors. There isn’t much concerning gameplay pacing or plot, but there doesn’t need to be. Spending seconds (or even minutes!) pushing a picture frame off a table in the most convoluted way leads to some great smiles and laughs.

Design:

While there are timed stages, the free-roam feature is a nice addition to the mayhem

Catlateral Damage also has events that occur over the course of a level, adding variety to a game that could have quickly become stale without it. Players can get boosts of speed, or my personal favorite, a boogie dance-off. This doesn’t do wonders when mixed with the game’s floaty sense of speed and direction, but it’s these types of things that alleviate any problems from that, which is heavily warranted.

Presentation/ Visuals & Audio:

Even if you are a dog-lover, the game’s colorful graphics squeeze positivity

Catlateral Damage has an unlockable tree of more cats than you can think of, which showcases the game’s great artistic style. This isn’t present much in the gameplay (seeing the same old book for the hundredth time won’t blow your mind, for example) but it is over-joyously portrayed in the menu. While the game may not live up to this feeling of cat-like carelessness once you boot in, it’s good to see it exists somewhere.

Conclusion:

Catlateral Damage is a flawed, yet fun game. It’s self-aware chops add some points to the mix, as well as it’s level and objective variety, but both of these are brought down by it’s clunky controls and handling that take some time to get used to. When it feels like you are controlling a car more than a cat, Catlateral Damage doesn’t do wonders. But once you tune this out, it turns out to be great fun.

Catlateral Damage gets a 7/10 (Average)

We’d like to thank Catlateral Damage Support for sending us a code!

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