Catizens, by developer badopticsgames and publisher HeroCraft PC, is a colony management simulator inspired by games like RimWorld and The Sims. Your job in this world is to manage the lives of your cats as you move through different levels and terrains in order to save the Cat Kingdom from a deadly volcano. In each area, you will have to build a town for your villagers to live and train. Each area also has its own goals you need to complete before you can move on and every cat has its own unique skills and traits as well as items they can unlock. Will you be able to lead these cats to victory and save their kingdom or will your party perish along the way.
When you start the game, you are told the tale of the Cat Kingdom and its dangerous predicament involving a volcano that threatens to destroy everything as well as dangerous monsters that plague the lands. The Queen of said kingdom enlists a few brave cats to venture out to save the kingdom at all costs. In campaign mode, you start out with two cats that you get to customize before starting the game, once you are done with that the tutorial brings you through all the basics of starting your little town. The cats you start out with have professions, you start with an architect that can build buildings for your town and a knight that can defend your town and fight off enemies. Building houses allows you to accept more villagers into your town, each villager has different traits that you’ll want to keep an eye on because they aren’t always good. On top of that some traits will allow you to unlock different decorations and other items when you are building.
Once you finish the tutorial, you are moved onto the next level, each level has you start out with a camp and a few cats that you can bring along from your previous area. In each level you will want to build up a new town area and complete the goals in order to move to the next level. It can be a little difficult having to start a new town each time so make sure you use your resources wisely and only bring along the cat that will be the most useful to your town. I’ve found that it’s best to be a little patient in building your town, make sure you are strong and train new knights when you can so that you’ll have enough protection to explore and progress. I had to restart a level because I was trying to find the exit of the level, but was nowhere near prepared for all the monsters along the way. Overall, Catizens has a lot of potential and has a lot you can do.
Right now, Catizens is in Early Access and has a few things to improve, but nothing I am too worried about, overall. The movements and controlling of the cats is a little touchy as they don’t always move the way you want to and there is a little bit of a scaling issue with the difficulty. The difference between the difficulty of level one and level two is rather large, the amount of new and stronger enemies makes it hard to progress with the fact that you are only given one professional knight. I was stuck for a while just trying to get stronger and be more strategic, all in all it’s not really a bad thing but can be frustrating when you have to restart the level even though you were there for so long. The only other thing that I had issues with were villager requests as sometimes they were either unclear or you couldn’t actually complete them. After looking into solutions to some of the problems, I saw that the Devs of the game are pretty good at responding and updating the game to fix bugs. So overall, while the game has its little issues and bugs, it still is in Early Access and has time for improvements and polish.
Catizens is a cute management sim where it is your job to save the day and the kingdom. There is a lot to do in this game and you have to be patient and keep track of your citizens and make sure they don’t die. As a new early access game, it is bound to have its bugs but has time and potential to be a really good game once it is polished and fixed up. Overall, even in its current state, the game is fun and interesting even if it has a few issues along the way.
Catizens is available for PC via Steam Early Access for $17.77.
Related: Reviews by Brianna Keller
I enjoy a wide variety of games from intricate survival/adventure games to simple platformers. I am also a sucker for a good story game.
More Stories
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review for PlayStation 5
Cutting-Edge VR Interactive Experience HUMAN WITHIN Heading to Meta Quest and SteamVR January 9
No More Room in Hell 2 Review for Steam Early Access