Doctor Cat is a jigsaw puzzle game. You act as a therapist to a collection of 12 cats that has recently been ported over to the Nintendo Switch.

The game itself is pretty simple. Each patient has a jigsaw associated with the problem they are dealing with and you need to solve it to help them out. The gameplay takes the form of solving these jigsaw puzzles. Unlike traditional jigsaws there are no shapes to decipher here, each picture is divided into squares and you swap the tiles around by swapping one with another. As the picture reveals itself each patient will open up a little bit more about their issue.

Style

The style is very much what you might expect from a cosy game. It has a very cartoony art style and what I assume is supposed to be relaxing music. There is only one song though, with maybe 2 bars at most and I had to turn the volume off as it got pretty grating. The subject matter however was a little less cosy. As the titular Doctor Cat, you give advice to each patient on their very serious life issues. One cat had depression, another suffered from binge eating disorder and another had a gambling addiction. I think this could maybe fit into the cosy game genre if the responses to each problem wasn’t exactly the same. I (Doctor Cat), can help you overcome this problem. And then you ask them to leave, presumably.

The tone was a little bit emotionally jarring, and even though I’m sure the devs meant well perhaps some less heavy issues would have jived well with everything else.

Gameplay

The puzzles have 2 difficulties in the story mode, easy and normal. Changing this changes the number of squares the puzzle is split into and there’s an additional hard mode in the gallery for completed puzzles. Even on the hard difficulty the puzzles aren’t too difficult. There’s a light blue line around each image so you can easily find the edges and the colours and shapes are distinct enough to see. There’s not a huge amount more than that. You can solve each puzzle however much you like and try and get the best time.

I played on the Nintendo Switch (as it has just been ported). There were no performance issues on the Switch, so it could be a little time waster if you find the mechanics relaxing.

Conclusion

All in all Doctor Cat is a simple little puzzle game that maybe goes a bit too deep with it’s subject matter. I think changing it to be more light hearted would have been a benefit. There’s no real difficulty here, so if you enjoy virtual tile swapping puzzles you may get some enjoyment from it. But I found the overall package to be a little lacking. There’s nothing really wrong here, but it also isn’t particularly interesting. The music is extremely repetitive and the amount of puzzles is very small. If you’re looking for a compelling narrative it’s hard to recommend. If you’re looking for a short jigsaw game, you might have a good time.

Doctor Cat was reviewed on Nintendo Switch. Also available on PS4/PS5, Xbox OneXbox Series X/S and PC.