Hidden Cats in Berlin continues the surprising fun of finding felines.
Those cheeky cats get everywhere don’t they? When they’re not hiding in London, they’re sneaking around apartment blocks. We’ve even spotted them in castles and the odd sudoku too! Hidden Cats in Berlin is the latest hidden object game in which you search for those troublesome tabbies, this time, surprisingly, in the city of Berlin. It doesn’t do much to deviate from the formula, but that’s fine as the previous pusscat perceiver games were pleasant enough cosy games to pass the time.
You’ll be presented with a monochrome cartoon of Berlin, where there are a number of cats sneakily ensconced around the area. Your job is to simply click on all of them. Once you find all the cats on a certain street or building, it gets colourised, slowly bringing colour to Berlin. Cats can be in many places, in trees, hanging from buildings, or even lying atop the moving vehicles in the street. It’s not taxing, as you’ll be able to hear a quiet meow when there’s a cat still on screen, and you get a number of hints to help you out too, but it’s a nice relaxing game to play.
Initially, it doesn’t look like there’s much game here though. My daughter and I found all the cats in Normal mode in around fifteen minutes, and if that’s all you go for then you might feel a little hard done by. Luckily there’s also an Advanced mode with far more cats, all randomly placed, as well as special named cats and specific people to spot in a “Where’s Wally?” style. Even once you’ve done that, there will be a bunch of extra stages unlocked for you to play around with, set inside the various buildings you’ll have already seen. It feels like there’s a lot of content here compared to some of the previous games.
Now, I’ve never been to Berlin, but I’m pretty sure Brandenburg Gate, The Berlin Wall, and Pergamon Museum aren’t all within a hundred yards of each other, but I’m not here for a geography or history lesson. With that said, you do get a tiny bit of information about certain Berlin landmarks, which is quite nice.
Also nice is the art style. People on the streets have little personalities, even though they’re stationary. The lady looking lovingly at the man carrying a huge dog around, the forlorn gentleman who dropped his pretzel, and the newlyweds on the back of a motorbike are all well designed, even though they’re really more set dressing than anything else. The detail is maintained as you zoom in to find tiny cats, which is nice, and the colourful buildings and vehicles are well drawn too. It’s a shame that some of the bonus stages don’t have that colourful look to them as you find cats, although they do once completed, but you can’t have everything I suppose. The sound is solid as well with a pleasant soundtrack and some nice ambient chatter when you zoom in closer to certain areas. I quite liked the little tune that plays alongside the fireworks when you complete a stage too.
Hidden Cats in Berlin is a lovely addition to the series of cat corralling games. It won’t change anyone’s mind if they didn’t like them before, but it’ll certainly keep scratching the itch for fans of these sorts of games. Don’t expect a reinvention of the wheel and you’ll find this is catnip for your habit.
Hidden Cats in Berlin is available now on PC.
