I may not be GSC’s hidden-cat game aficionado, but I am a fan of both hidden-object games and cats. With their amazing ability to slink off and wind up in the most bizarre locations and predicaments, there isn’t a more suitable creature to look for in a hidden-object game than a cat (sorry Wally/Waldo), and I haven’t seen this captured so well as in Cat Me If You Can. After enjoying the demo at and after Gamescom 2025, I waited patiently for roughly a year to get my paws on the full release. After playing for around 7 hours and finding over 700 cats, my curiosity is in no way killed, and I only wish that there were more.
Developed by indie studio Cosmic Stag Games, Cat Me If You Can is a first-person hidden-object game where you find and photograph felines in monochromatic levels set across different historical periods and locations. From its mechanics to its visuals and music, the game has a very easy-going, meditative quality, with various settings and options to improve accessibility and adjust difficulty.
The game starts with a short tutorial made up of the remnants of different places you visit in the game, floating in the vast emptiness of space. It’s a rather surreal opening to such a laidback experience, and while it felt like it could be alluding to a wider narrative, no such thing exists in CMIYC. You’re taken through the game’s controls and pick up three colourful pieces of gear: your camera, your tablet, and a radar. Your camera is for capturing snaps of the cats and objects you need to find, while the tablet tracks your progress in each level. The radar highlights something you haven’t found yet, with an adjustable cooldown that lets players use it more frequently and dramatically lowers the challenge if wanted/needed.
At the end of the tutorial, you’ll reach your bright orange time machine and unlock the first full level set in a modern city in Japan. Subsequent levels are unlocked by finding the required number of cats, and after fully completing the first level, I unlocked all of the rest. Alongside looking for the many kitties hidden across each level, you’ll also have several quests requiring you to either photograph or collect a selection of items, with a special cat revealed upon completing each quest. There is a lot to find in each level, so each level is split into several regions, each with its own floating orange noticeboard that tracks what you have left to find in that area, as well as the option to fast travel between the boards you have found.
A great deal of work has gone into making CMIYC easy to get into and enjoy, which in turn lets the game’s gameplay, level design, and art direction shine. Everything isn’t tucked away, with some cats and items hidden out in the open, but the way they blend into the monochromatic environments adds to the difficulty. A quick scan would often reveal a conspicuous cat or two, but I’d easily miss the stone tablet on the table or the third cat hidden in the rafters, leading to revisiting areas via fast travel and using the radar on the few strays remaining. There is a simple pleasure when finding something, with each cat or object gaining colour with a flourish of hearts, stars, or confetti: little celebrations to keep you going.
In fact, it’s the use of colour that I feel is the game’s greatest strength. The way it is used to show what you have already found, highlight important elements in the environment like the message boards, and your overall progress through the level select screen is purrfectly (sorry) implemented.
Each level, while limited in colour, is packed with detail. From flourishing temple gardens to vast castle ramparts, they all have their own personality and atmosphere, with lots of places to hide things, of course. My favourite levels were the ones that had some verticality, like The Purritorium, which has you explore a magical tower using an elevator to access different floors. Being able to look at the same space from a different perspective not only led to finding more felines, but also gave me an appreciation for the attention paid in CMIYC’s level design.
However, another highlight from CMIYC also works against it for me, which is the inclusion of puzzle elements in certain levels. Across the game’s nine levels, there are a few environmental puzzles you have to solve to reach other areas. I thoroughly enjoyed their addition, whether I was looking for buttons camouflaged against tomb walls to open a secret chamber or breaking a magical seal by using the right order of sigils; they added another level of depth and challenge that I greatly welcomed. Sadly, there are not many of these, and their absence from most levels is apparent. I really feel this is another element that helps CMIYC break free from the standardised design of hidden object games, but not enough.
What the game has in spades is charm, from some of the goofy poses and places you’ll find some of your kitty quarry to the special cats you uncover when completing quests. It’s great to see the devs have some silly fun, and there was more than one occasion where I had a good chuckle at finding a feline doing a yoga pose or walking like an Egyptian! The special cats are some of the best, and get pretty crazy in design and scale, but my personal favourite is the historically accurate and very creepy beekeeper cat found in the medieval village. Strangely unsettling in such a chilled-out game. It’s also how the game captures the more traditional and historical notes about cats that make it all so endearing, like seeing a cat curled up in the lap of a giant statue of Anubis, or hanging from a medieval tapestry 20 feet above the floor.
Another feature that I have to mention is how the only other actions you can perform are petting the cats you find and knocking miscellaneous items off of surfaces. Both are a delight, but the second one had me wondering if you are actually playing as a cat yourself (not the only piece of evidence implying this), which I even asked the CEO of Cosmic Stag Games earlier this year. I still don’t have an answer. Bolstering both those good vibes and humour is the soundtrack and sound design, with the former adding to CMIYC’s relaxing ambience and the latter providing all of the meows and purrs a cat-finding connoisseur could ask for.
Final Thoughts
Cat Me If You Can is an excellent take on the hidden object genre. Its gameplay and atmosphere are informed and improved by brilliant use of its 3D space and monochromatic visuals, and a generous suite of options, settings, and progression tracking makes it a game that can be enjoyed by enthusiasts and newcomers alike. While more puzzle elements would have been nice and helped further distinguish the game from its contemporaries, there is more than enough for every hidden object game enjoyer and/or cat lover to lap up. A charming, gentle, and enjoyable celebration of all things cats, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better hidden cat game in 2026 than Cat Me If You Can.
Cat Me If You Can is available now on PC.
Cat Me If You Can was reviewed on PC with a controller.
We would like to thank Cosmic Stage Studios for the review key.
Are you interested in picking up Cat Me If You Can? Where is the strangest place you’ve found your cat before? Let us know in the comments below, and join the Gamer Social Club Discord to chat about your favourite games, play in community game nights, take part in giveaways, and more!
