Like clockwork, it’s another month and another ‘cats’ game is upon us from publisher, Silesia Games. After last month’s Hidden Cats in Istanbul, 2025 ended on a high for one of my gaming guilty pleasures, hidden object cats games.

Cats Around us is part of the smaller Cats and Seek titles, with a smaller-scale design than Hidden Cats. Previous entries on console have included Cats & Seek: Kyoto, as well as Cats & Seek: Dino Park, with both being okay entries to the popular cat hunting genre. Is Cats Around Us: Giant Cat worth your time? Or are these games starting to show real fatigue? Here’s our review.

Gameplay

At this point, having reviewed so many ‘cats’ games it’s becoming nigh on impossible to explain what they are without repeating myself. Cats Around Us and its sister titles are short and sweet cosy hidden object games, where players are looking for on-screen cats to click on, which in turn light up your screen with bright colours.

For those who play games in this genre – and there are many with questionable addictions like myself – this is simply more of the same. Cats Around Us: Giant Cat is certainly one of the smallest cats games I’ve played, entirely completable within 30-40 minutes and with only four very small hidden object stages. More of your time with the game will actually be spent completing four 16-piece jigsaw puzzles. Whilst they’re an okay element of the game, speaking on behalf of the fanbase for the genre, puzzles are not why people buy these titles. Especially when they’re a bigger proportion of the gameplay than actually finding the adorable hidden objects.

Audio and visuals

Unfortunately, all of the four levels are amongst the smallest in the genre’s growing history. With limited canvases for the cats and puzzle pieces to be found on, one of the genre’s most important features, the visuals, really fall short here. Cats remain as adorable as ever, sadly the backdrops are drab and far less interesting than the cities, or thematic locations of Cats & Seek or Hidden Cats.

For the brief runtime, the audio is pleasant and matches the cosy style of the Cats Among Us. Though, the soundtrack sounds remarkably familiar, if not identical, to others in the franchise. Whilst I appreciate this is a very budget title, reusing assets is less forgivable and reiterates that this is a lazier ‘cats’ game.

Conclusion

As a seasoned connoisseur of cat hunting games, it is the smaller titles like Cats Around Us: Giant that are starting to wilt my interest the genre. It would be too far to say this is a cash-grab for fans who lap up any and all of these games, particularly for easy trophies / achievements, though this game adds nothing. I would rather the developers of the games spend more time releasing more polished titles with interesting settings such as anime inspired Hidden Cats in Tokyo or the colour-rich Rio de Janeiro, perhaps on a less frequent cadence.

Cats Around Us: Giant Cat releases on Xbox Series X|S & Xbox One on January 14 2026. The game launches on PlayStation 4 & 5 on January 15 2025 and Nintendo Switch (including Switch 2 via backwards compatibility) on January 22 2026. The game is also already available via Steam.

GSC would like to thank publisher Silesia Games for a code provided for review. The review was played on Xbox One X.