Everyone should love cats. Cats are awesome. Furry little creatures that sleep in the sun’s rays most of the day, brush their head against you to show you they care, and blink slowly at you with love. Just make sure you love them and give them what they want because they’re spoilt little brats.

Catlateral Damage is a fantastic idea for a game that was inspired by a real cat named Nippy. Chris Chung – whom was Nippy’s childhood owner – has created a cell shaded, cartoon styled game, of which you play through the eyes of a cat. Your goal isn’t to prance around looking cute, meowing at your owner, and munching on your wet food; your goal is in fact to cause havoc and create the purrfect mess. you’re a cat. You’ve finally found a game where you can play as a cat.

It was created back in 2013 for the 7DFPS Game Jam, and after having success at the event the game started to gain attention. It was in 2014 where AlphaBetaGamer wrote up a post about the game that sparked a viral sensation for the game. It was put on Steam Greenlight rather promptly, then it was actually Greenlit, and then it travelled to Kickstarter. In just 10 days Catlateral Damage raised $61,000 with 2,500 backers, far surpassing their $40,000 goal they had originally set. The full game was released in 2015.

It’s now 2016, and Playstation 4 users are the latest people to be blessed with this destructive cat game.

But enough about the history. You’re here for cats. In fact, I’m going to bold that word. Cats. That still doesn’t seem like enough.

CATS.

That will do.

So, the aim of the game is to create as much mess as you can. That’s it. You’ve got to get all of those items that are neatly placed atop furniture, onto the carpet. Actually onto the carpet though, just simply pushing books off a shelf and them falling onto a table below doesn’t count. Those books need to hit the damn carpet! There’s a whole plethora of things you can knock over. TV’s, joysticks, milk, mugs, plates, cutlery, bowls, footballs, books, DVD’s, soap, foundation, socks, towels, remotes, cereal, bags, and way, way more.

The time limit you have per level gets longer per level, however it doesn’t really cause a great sense of panic, at least not if you’re a fast player. In fact, I assume that the idea was, as the levels progress, the timer gets longer because there’s more items to push to the floor; but what I found is that the time became almost non-existent and it just felt like there were more items bundled closer together for a quicker push over rate.

Catlateral Damage puts you in the paw pads of a cat, and makes destroying things a billion times more fun.

That was Objective mode. Let’s move onto Litterbox mode, which is basically a sandbox mode. This mode involves no time limits and unlimited carnage. There not really much to say about this mode except it’s a just great for pushing things off. You can choose whatever cat you’ve unlocked, and you can choose whatever map you like. There is an option to type in a seed, which is basically a world generator as you’d imagine. Put in seed 5222 and it’ll be a specific room, quit that room and leave the seed blank, you’ll be given a random seed. It’s pretty cool, and you’ll probably find a unique room you’ll want to share with your friends.

You’ve got a stats area too, which is increased whenever you get upgrades, and upgrades can come randomly during events, or are trapped inside sparkling items that you need to claw at to make a box pop out. Attack the box, the power up will appear. They can increase things like your speed, jump, and scatting power. As for the events, these happen and can give you a short moment of weirdness or an objective. Disco mode, catch the mouse, or rather pointlessly, power cut…which…turns the lights and music off.

This is just proof that we shouldn’t be cats, because you know being so cute means you can get away with so much.

The soundtrack is awesome and really increases the pacing of the game, but sometimes it can feel a bit boring running around huge rooms with hardly any things to knock over whilst the music’s pumping you up. Annoyingly I could see this being a multiplayer game as well, trying to knock over as much as you both can, hitting a set target, competing with each other in the same room. Snarling at how your friend got to the plates first.

Catlateral Damage is a great game that when you play it will leave you thinking, “Why did I not have this before?” and has left me ending this review with saying, “Why have you not gone and got it yet!?”