My feelings on Cattails were initially a bit mixed, though leaning towards positive. There were many good qualities to enjoy from the game, but I also felt like some key aspects were lacking. Still, I couldn’t help but keep coming back to its fun, colorful world; and I eventually realized that the joy Cattails brings me trumps its flaws tenfold.
I do need to mention right off the bat that I’m a huge cat lover, as anyone who knows me personally can attest. I named myself Leo for a reason, after all. I’m absolutely the kind of person who would play a game solely because it has cats; in fact, my Steam Year In Review lists ‘cats’ as one of my most-played genres. Needless to say, I was very excited to find a game like Cattails - a survival experience centered around free-roaming felines!
Even though I actually spent much of my time reading as a kid, I never got into the Warriors series; still, even I picked up on the immediate similarities between those books and Cattails. There are clans fighting over wild territory, but they all gather seasonally for peaceful festivals. There are medicine cats, shopkeepers, guards, and appointed leaders. You specifically play as a cat recently abandoned by their owners, who’s shepherded into a clan of your choosing and begins a quest to restore balance to the forest.
Those similarities aren’t a coincidence, or even just taking inspiration. See, before Cattails became a standalone game, it was actually a free Warriors fangame called Warrior Cats Untold Tales! The team behind these games, Falcon Development, is a husband-and-wife duo, which I just wanted to mention because I think it’s really cute. They eventually decided to make their fan project into a full fledged independent title, and thus, Cattails was born.
The game opens with its one and only ‘cutscene’, a series of drawings that depict our cat’s past. A young girl and her mother visit a pet shop, passing by the kittens; the girl picks our cat out of the litter. She enjoys the kitten’s company at home and cares for them attentively. Unfortunately, her mother randomly bursts into their room while angry one day, as they’re about to play with a ball in the house (at least, this is the only reason I could think of for her to be upset with the context given.) She drives them to a patch of countryside, leaving the cat alone and forcing the daughter to witness the cruel abandonment. So, to recap, this mother bought a cat unethically then left it by the side of the road for no reason, all while giving her daughter childhood trauma over the event. Wow.
As you can tell, this isn’t the most inventive or well-written backstory for a nonhuman character - hell, Toy Story did the same thing but better. It’s also not a backstory that holds much weight past the opening moments, as it’s rarely brought up again after. Cattails generally opts for this vague, light storytelling throughout the runtime; something that was surely rooted in its beginnings as a fangame. I wasn’t expecting to be dazzled by complex characters or a nuanced plot, but I was still disappointed by exactly how unimportant the narrative felt… I’ll get into that more in a bit.
For now, we skip to our feline sleeping alone in the rain. They are approached by Coco, a cat who is uniquely unaffiliated with the clans. This new friend decides to teach the player the basics of survival through a tutorial, during which you’ll learn how to hunt, forage, fight, and use active skills - all important mechanics you’ll be engaging with regularly. Coco then herds you to your chosen clan.
What immediately impressed me during the tutorial was the variety of things to do, even in regards to these basic, core mechanics. The hunting is delightfully challenging, requiring you to successfully stalk and kill prey without alerting them. Each prey has their own invisible range of vision, too, adding another level of nuance to one of your most frequent activities. Additionally, there are bugs flying around that you can swipe at and pick up for selling, gifting, or even decorating. A rare prey animal or bug may show up occasionally, so keep your eyes peeled!
Foraging acts as your source for healing items, as well as a secondary way of finding food. This action merely requires clicking on the plants you pass by; still, the visuals of a world populated with all sorts of berries and herbs is more than enough to make up for the simplicity of the mechanic. Plus, it gives you one more helpful thing to look out for on your adventures.
The combat is also surprisingly fun, even though it mostly relies on basic timing. You simply swipe at an enemy while they’re approaching, then run away before they can swipe back. The nuance comes in the form of active skills, which largely focus on attacking - some examples include an AOE attack, a bleed, and even a heal for nearby allies. There are a select few non-combat skills as well, such as temporarily making prey’s range of vision visible or summoning a large amount of bugs. You can improve these skills - as well as your stats of hunting, fishing, fighting, and swimming - with experience that you’ll earn from all sorts of activities.
There are the basics of Cattails that you’re taught during the tutorial, but I quickly discovered that there were still lots of activities to uncover! In fact, one of my favorite things about the game is its relationship system. Although your protagonist never speaks directly, there are many cats populating each colony who are more than happy to talk to you. You may gift them any item, and your relationship will increase or decrease based on their personal preferences (for a maximum of five hearts.) You’ll gradually unlock new dialogue from your friend that reveals more about their personality and backstory; and once you reach four hearts, your friend will give you gifts back.
If you particularly like a cat, you may give them a rose to ask for a romantic relationship. This allows you to max out your relationship a second time, upon which you may ask for their paw in marriage. After a while, you can even have a litter of kittens together!
You form relationships with your children just like all of the others - by giving them their favorite things. Once they reach a certain age, one kitten at a time may accompany you on your adventures, helping to hunt, forage, and fight. There are a few different personalities each kitten could be born with; this affects not only what gifts they prefer, but it may also make them better at certain tasks.
Want to befriend or date cats from other clans? No worries! Although you’re not allowed in the other villages at first, you can easily increase your reputation with the outside clans by giving each one daily gifts. After proving your kindness, you’ll be allowed past the guard to hang out with the other cats; and, eventually, you’ll even be able to use their shop and doctor.
Speaking of shops, no sim game is complete without an economy, and Cattails is no exception. In fact, it has four different currencies to earn! The most common of these are ‘mews’, which are spent at the standard clan shops to buy food, healing items, and more. You’ll primarily earn mews by selling things to those shops or completing the two daily battles for territory.
Secondly, there’s a task board in your village that will provide a new quest daily. These can challenge you to hunt, forage, explore, visit other clans, and more! You’ll have until midnight to turn it in; once you do, you’ll earn a random item, as well as 1-3 ‘task tokens’ to spend at the board’s shop.
Next is the mining mechanic - or Cattails’ version of dungeon crawling. There are a few different mines to explore across the map, all of them offering 100 levels to descend. These caves are filled to the brim with rocks that may reward ores or gemstones when swiped at. Be careful, though, as there’s many hazards to look out for too; your hunger drains faster from destroying boulders, and there are bats waiting to attack you. Fortunately, you may return to the surface at any time with the treasures you’ve collected so far. You then trade them to the mole running each mine in exchange for their ‘mole cash’, used to - yep, you guessed it! - buy from the moles’ shops.
And last, but certainly not least, are the ‘festival tokens’. As previously mentioned, the three clans will gather occasionally to hold a festival and play games together. Each season has its own unique minigame (and shop), and you’re awarded tokens based on how well you do. This is something I always looked forward to while playing; it’s a great way to transition into a new season. I only wish you were able to gift the cats while they’re all gathered in one place.
Aside from all of these shops offering the obvious items (such as food and healing herbs), there are also many accessories and coats available for purchase as well! There are so many cool choices that I found myself switching up my appearance at least once every time I played. You have the obvious inclusions, of course, such as tabbies, calicos, and bell collars; but there are also a number of delightfully unexpected options, such as a coat that changes color, a winter sweater, and a plague doctor mask.
There’s a surprising amount of freedom when it comes decorating, too - and not just inside your den, but nearly any part of the world you can imagine. This is because you can actually drop any item you want, anywhere you want! Healing herbs surrounding the doctor, roses around your bed, walls lined with brightly-colored ladybugs, or fireflies lighting dim rooms - it may not be the traditional kind of decorating system, but the creativity it prods from the player makes it so uniquely fun.
There are only a handful of furniture-like decorations to purchase, such as a cat tower or a rug, and you cannot decide the location of these; instead, you simply toggle them on/off. You may also eventually pay to expand your den, as well, obtaining a few storage rooms, a garden, and a kitten nursery.
As you can see, there’s a surprisingly large amount of content in Cattails to keep players occupied - and the list still isn’t quite finished, because more content unlocks once you complete the main story! Before I get ahead of myself, though, let’s discuss all of the mechanics I’ve already mentioned.
The amazing variety in gameplay is undoubtedly one of the reasons I found it so easy to sink hours into Cattails at a time. Each in-game morning, I’d make a plan for the day, and each night I felt a sense of accomplishment for working on my own to-do list. I might spend that time preparing for and executing a mining trip, visiting the other colonies and their cats, focusing on the task board and daily battles, or simply gathering as many resources as I can. There’s a tremendous amount of player freedom.
That’s not to say it’s all sunshine and rainbows, though. Many of the mechanics are undeniably simple - even shallow - and there are a lot of improvements that could be made. The mining is particularly repetitive, and it can take quite a while to do if you want to maximize your profit. And as I’ve already pointed out, the combat is exceedingly uncomplicated; once you understand the timing trick, there’s nothing else to really learn or master. Plus, the active skills make things feel a bit unbalanced, since none of your enemies have anything comparable. Even just running around the map can get annoying, especially in the early game when you don’t have access to any of the skills that teleport you to specific spots.
Still, even if you end up annoyed by one gameplay element, there’s bound to be something else you can find to do to take your mind off of it. For example, let’s say you just don’t feel like walking across the map at all that day. You could instead spend your time around the village, just talking to neighbors and decorating; you may even visit the adjacent areas to hunt and forage. Eventually, the annoyance will start to dissipate and you can resume your previous activities.
Actually, the mechanics are such a huge part of Cattails that they even play a direct role in the story. Your new friend Coco brings you to the temple where they live, and explains that The Forest Guardian, their friend and mentor, has gone missing. To restore balance to the forest, you must bring a number of pre-selected prey and berries to each of the temple’s six pillars. Then, once a pillar has been completed, it will unlock a puzzle somewhere on the map that must be completed as well.
This is… essentially, the bulk of Cattails’ plot. Once you’ve gathered all of the items and beaten all of the puzzles, you’ll finish your quest and bring The Forest Guardian back. And then, it’s over. There’s no explanation for where The Guardian went or what happened to them in the first place. There are never even any outward signs of the forest being ‘unbalanced’ - no other cats aside from Coco acknowledge anything being different or wrong. It’s a completely stakeless narrative.
I can only assume that this lackluster story is what suffered most from Cattails’ roots as a fangame. You’d eventually have to completely rewrite the history of your world and its characters, while still keeping many of the same ideas intact. Unfortunately, I think that what’s been done here is completely insufficient. The only good that comes from finishing it is what you unlock after speaking to The Forest Guardian - the choice to create and maintain your own custom colony.
This is easily one of the most exciting features in Cattails. Coco (and your family, if you’ve already started one) will move with you, and you’ll get to decide the new clan’s name, village location, and even its emblem from a pre-made list. You also gain the ability to purchase buildings and walls from Coco, which can be placed in the area however you like; and with each new building purchased, a brand new feline friend (and, in many cases, a potential marriage partner as well) will move in and join your clan!
I only wish that this custom colony mechanic was introduced earlier in the story; unfortunately, it’s instead hidden behind many hours of mandatory gameplay, and there’s little-to-no hint toward its existence until the moment it’s unlocked. I feel like Cattails has stumbles such as this too often when it comes to interconnecting its lore and worldbuilding. In this case, it would’ve made perfect sense that the forest’s supposed lack of balance played into the disappearance or breakdown of a fourth clan - especially when Warriors originally has four clans, and that’s what many players would likely be expecting to see carried over here.
Yet, nothing like this is ever suggested. You’re simply given the choice by The Forest Guardian to become a clan leader after successfully finishing Coco’s quest. There’s so few ways to have an impact on the Cattails world that isn’t a simple, surface-level change; the best the game can do are your eventual custom colony, and the (fortunately pretty great) relationship elements. Still… strangely enough, I felt like Cattails succeeded in building an interesting and animated world. It just did so through alternative means! Mainly, its plethora of mechanics and the wonderful cast of characters.
Another major part of Cattails’ success here are the four rotating seasons, which play a major role in the game. Your environment will physically change based on the time of year - cherry blossoms blooming in Spring, or leaves drifting around in Autumn. Not only that, but each season has its own selection of prey, bugs, and plants to bring that environment to life. There are so many details like these sewn in, like the rivers and ponds freezing over during winter, and that you can gain so much momentum on this ice that you’ll start spinning; or the downtick in prey beginning in Autumn.
Actually, wintertime itself is an integral part of the gameplay, too, because it feels like a real threat! There’s almost no prey or foliage to be found during this period, so you must prepare beforehand with proper planning and stocking. This part of the game was a great way to make the world feel that much more alive and real, as the cold months obviously are something that greatly affect wild animals and nature.
Without a doubt, though, the greatest part of Cattails are the cats themselves. There’s an endless supply of adorable felines to meet, all with their own unique appearance and personality. My personal favorite - the one I ended up marrying! - is Arthur, an orange tom who perceives himself as a knight and speaks as such. He became my trusted companion, and many others became treasured favorites of mine as I grew closer to them! Take, for example, the Mystic Colony’s mischievous doctor Krampy, who wears a plague mask and likes to scare kittens; or Lyrus of the Forest Colony, who lives by himself outside the village walls and writes poetry.
These are the reasons why exploring this world is so fun and relaxing, despite its flaws; it has an amazing attention to detail when it comes to functionality and character design. Another major reason for Cattails’ charm that I haven’t discussed yet is the colorful pixel art - a perfect compliment to the game’s lively world! It may not be my favorite version of the style, as it can be a bit simple at some points, but I largely thought that Cattails had a very enjoyable aesthetic. I particularly appreciated the attention paid to the cats themselves, and the forest’s physical changes during each season.
However, there was one part of the visual presentation that I did find notably disappointing, and that was the complete lack of creativity when it came to the puzzle areas’ interiors. My biggest example is the abandoned house standing in the woods, something I passed by constantly, wondering if I’d ever get to explore it; but when I finally did get inside, it was dishearteningly empty except for its barren puzzle.
Compare this to a game such as Chicory: A Colorful Tale, which also has interiors designed specifically around puzzle mechanics. However, unlike Cattails, these Chicory locations have interesting visuals that are on par with the rest of its world. There's also some scattered worldbuilding, and even the occasional joke.
There is an area where Cattails doesn’t make any mistakes, though - and that is its wonderful soundtrack. The music is very reminiscent of Animal Crossing, both employing a laid-back and lighthearted ‘coffee table jazz’ style. It’s the perfect selection when you want music that will stay in the background and boost the atmosphere without taking it over; but every single track in Cattails is just as great when actively listened to!
The main theme, which greets you on the title screen, is a soothing piano and clarinet-heavy introduction to the game; the clarinet is employed often to lead pieces in Cattails, which I think is a lovely choice. Other instruments they use often are - to my best guess - conga drums, acoustic guitar, mandolin, saxophone, and tuba.
All of the seasons have two unique themes (except for Autumn, which actually has three!), most of which maintain a relaxing, slower pace. There are a select few upbeat tracks during Summer and Spring to reflect the active energy of these seasons; meanwhile, Autumn and Winter stayed completely slowed down. Winter’s pieces channel classic Christmas music to set the mood, a detail I really loved.
They even went so far as to give each four festivals their own theme, which is a great inclusion. The mines, daily battles, and festival minigames also have a unique track, as well as a handful of key moments (such as getting married!)
So, in the end, there really are a lot of reasons to love Cattails. It may not be a perfect game, but I can tell that so much heart and hard work went into its creation. I really enjoyed my time with it - from befriending charming felines, to decorating the world around me, to checking self-made tasks off my mental to-do list. If you love cats like I do, there’s no doubt that you’ll enjoy Cattails. Even if you’re just looking for a survival game that doesn’t get too tense, this is a great one to try out. I can’t wait to play Wildwood Story!

Visuals: 4/5
Sound: 4.5/5
Story: 2/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Worldbuilding: 4/5
Overall Game Score: 3.5/5 [3.7/5]

Do you wanna become a cat? Did you perhaps read Warriors growing up and said "Wow, I wonder what the cat life is like?" Or maybe you played Stardew Valley and played until you sucked up every piece of content there is. Yes? Well, this will be the perfect game for you!!

I got this on the switch while it was on sale with some coins. I thought it looked cute and decided to try it out. I was pleasantly satisfied with the gameplay. The cats are honestly adorable, and the game can be addicting to play. To those of you that played Stardew Valley, I suggest you try this one out too!