Where is cat?

Review by eFreeware

Where is cat? is a puzzle game from Bart Bonte. It is a paid title at $2.49, with no ads and no in-app purchases, and it collects three separate cat-themed adventures under one roof. The pitch is simple: a black cat hides somewhere in each scene, and your job is to find it.

What makes it worth a second look is the tone. The developer describes the whole thing as playing like an interactive children's storybook, and a good deal of the artwork comes from children's drawings. That gives the game a handmade feel that is hard to fake, and it explains why the appeal stretches well beyond the usual puzzle audience.

It has been on Google Play for a long time, arriving in December 2015, and the numbers are modest but healthy: over 5,000 installs and a 4.8 average from 280 ratings. A recent technical update suggests the developer still tends to it.

Finding a cat, one room at a time

The core loop is hide-and-seek. In the first adventure you search each room of a house, tapping the black cat once you spot it. After that, the cat starts asking for specific items, and collecting them all leads to a small surprise at the end. It is a chain of small discoveries rather than a single puzzle to solve.

The later adventures add tools to the mix. In the Christmas chapter, the cat leaps onto the tree and scatters twenty red balls around the house; you recover them by working through little puzzles. In the Japan chapter, the cat is chasing a sushi dream and you hunt down the sushi the same way. When a tool turns up, you tap it to highlight it, then tap whatever you want to use it on.

That two-step interaction is the whole mechanical vocabulary, and I think that is deliberate. Nothing here demands fast reflexes or careful timing. The challenge is observation and patience, which is why the game can credibly claim to suit a five-year-old and a hundred-year-old in the same sitting.

Three adventures, three moods

The three chapters are not variations on one theme so much as three short stories. The house adventure is the gentlest and the most straightforward, mostly about spotting the cat and then gathering what it wants. The Christmas chapter has a bit more structure, since the scattered balls are tied to puzzles rather than pure searching. The Japan chapter pushes the tool use furthest.

That progression is sensible. The developer suggests starting ages for the adventures, which gives a family a natural order to work through. Each chapter also ends with a reveal, a small narrative payoff for finishing the hunt.

The artwork is the thread that ties the three together. Much of it is drawn by kids, so the scenes have an uneven, personal quality rather than the polished look of a big studio production. I would treat that as the point rather than a shortcoming.

What the $2.49 buys

This is a straightforward paid game. There is no advertising, so the price is the whole cost. You pay once and the three adventures are yours.

For a puzzle collection of this size, that is an easy arrangement to understand. Nothing prompts you to spend again partway through a search. Parents in particular tend to appreciate that.

The trade-off is simply that you pay before you know whether the style suits you. At this price, with three chapters included, the risk is small.

A game for slow searchers and shared screens

The clearest audience here is families. The developer pitches it at children from five upward, and the pace is calm enough that a younger player can take the lead while an adult helps with the trickier tool puzzles. Because the game is about looking rather than reacting, it works well as something two people do together on one device.

It also suits adults who want a quiet, low-pressure puzzle. If your idea of a good evening involves scanning a hand-drawn room for a cat that is hiding in plain sight, this is exactly that, and the three chapters give it more substance than a single-scene search.

What it is not built for is speed or competition. There is no pressure to move quickly. Anyone looking for a puzzle game that pushes back hard will find this one gentle, and that gentleness is the design.

The verdict on Where is cat?

Where is cat? is a small, warm puzzle collection that knows exactly what it is. Three cat adventures, a two-tap tool system, kid-drawn art and a one-time price of $2.49. The 4.8 average across 280 ratings suggests it has found its people.

I would recommend it to families with young children, to anyone who enjoys hidden-object games at a relaxed pace, and to players who like the idea of a puzzle that reads like a storybook. The three chapters give it enough variety to justify the price, and the progression from house to Japan to Christmas means there is somewhere to go once the first hunt is done.

It will not satisfy someone hunting for a stiff challenge or a long campaign, and the gentle difficulty is the whole character of the thing. As a paid, ad-free package aimed at shared, unhurried play, it is easy to see why it has lasted.

What's new in version 4.1

Technical update: performance optimizations