Is it possible for something to simultaneously be a love letter and a parody? Indeed, is a certain degree of affection more or less required for a parody in the first place? This is what I was thinking about as I played through Cat Quest, and the thought is still lingering as I sit down to write about the game further.

Oh, the puns. So many puns.

Cat Quest is both a traditional RPG and a parody of one. You play as a cat in a fantasy world whose sister has been mysteriously stolen by a malevolent sorcerer. The cat must embark on a quest, slaying dragons, learning spells, and clearing monster dens to find a way to save her.

Mechanically, the game lacks many of the complex stat systems that might dissuade a casual player from picking up the genre. The cat has three (potentially four) stats - health, mana, and sword power (and potentially armour) - which are augmented or reduced through different bits of gear. A large variety of gear provides a wide range of ways to build a character. Because there are no skill trees or any permanent changes to the character, this gear also makes it possible to switch playstyles mid-run, or even from fight to fight, depending on the enemy. Making specialisations gear-dependent rather than skills-dependent provides a dynamic, albeit shallower, experience to a playthrough.

So…many…puns…

Indeed, this “dynamic but shallow” principle applies to much of the game and how it plays. Cat Quest’s world is full of quests, enemies, and dungeons, but they follow largely the same process. A villager will give a quest to follow a red arrow to a cave. The cat clears the cave and receives gold and XP as a reward. There’s a follow-up quest to follow another red arrow to another cave for more gold and XP. While the enemies and their mechanics might change, or the particular story of the quest might change, the gameplay loop itself does not. There isn’t room within the game’s simplicity for it to vary too much.

It’s here that the power of parody comes into play. While it might initially seem that a repeated gameplay loop would get tedious, the game does a surprisingly good job keeping the player hooked, both through varying the quests and the sheer amount of self-aware humour.

“Furbidden Fields” is great, if I’m honest

Every element of Cat Quest is acutely aware of what it is, and is clearly aware of the genre in which it’s set. Cat Quest drips with elements of Skyrim and action RPGs, and uses that familiarity to its full advantage. It is, in some ways, a parody of the genre, taking settings and elements that are taken seriously in those games, and instead using them to create a twisted mirror of them. The game is aware of the ridiculousness of peasants asking a heavily-armed passer-by for help with their mundane problems, and pokes fun at it. It’s aware of the repetitive nature of dungeon crawling, and makes light of that too. In poking fun at the essential elements of RPGs, it gains a bit of forgiveness for repeating them, and for asking the player to both understand the joke and participate in the object of the joke.

I’ve found that cats’ paws tend to actually make wounds appear, personally.

There’s an absolute sincerity in Cat Quest that I loved. The puns - and there are so, so many of them - build a world that is both self-aware and asking to be taken straight, and somehow, it works. The premise and the problem are ridiculous enough that I wanted to keep playing just to see where they were going, but then sincere enough that I just wanted to keep playing. Despite the repetitive fights, the game never ground to a halt or felt like it struggled for momentum. It kept propelling me forward, letting me explore, and giving me something to have fun with along the way. While it is a parody, Cat Quest is also a deeply sincere RPG, and I love it for it.

Developer: The Gentlebros

Genre: Rpg, Action

Year: 2017

Country: Singapore

Language: English

Play Time: 6 - 8 Hours

Youtube: https://youtu.be/5xF6QRgaioM