Tackling on mental health issues is a move most videogames aren’t touching with a ten foot pole. Unless you have first-hand experience dealing with this stuff (Games like Hellblade do it well because psychologists and neuroscientists were involved, for example), it’s easy to mess up and unintentionally stereotype and disrespect those that have to live with it. That’s why it’s so common to make the subtext do the heavy lifting when these themes come to light. It’s a move some might find cowardly, but it’s comprehensible.

Now The Cat Lady isn’t the least bit afraid to wear its themes of depression and suicide. Right off the bat it starts with its protagonist, Susan Ashworth, reading her own suicide letter before overdosing in sleeping pills, surrounded by the stray cats that keep her company.

It might feel heavy-handed at first, but it treats it how it should: without euphemisms, cutting out the bullshit; this woman is fed up with the world and is trying to kill herself to stop the pain she has been drowning in for so long. This is empathetic; it shows how she is feeling without beating around the bush.

Empathy IS what makes this game so good. This is an adventure game that’s bloody and gritty, there’s instances of fetishist serial killers, cannibalism, healthcare violence, dead babies; hardcore edgy death metal shit, but it doesn’t feel unwarranted. It channels the darkness of Susan’s past and present, mirroring how she feels on the inside.

That aspect is very interesting, because the line between what’s fact and what’s fiction here is very blurred. There are both supernatural elements and navigable dreams, and it often jumps between them and the actual world, making you question whether or not what’s happening is true, false, or something in between.

This surrealism works quite well here, for the abstract allows for abstractions; raw emotions flow out of the characters and are made form. This also is an interesting way of subverting expectations; the jumps between “this is just a dream” to “OH SHIT THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING” make this an engaging and thrilling psychological horror experience.

This is all communicated through a Lucasarts-like aventure game, that works like a point-and-click but it actually presented like a 2D side-scroller. This is because it’s important to show the protagonist and her interactions, since it’s such a character-driven game. The camera is also used against the player, as it allows for the game to hide things that are in her field of vision, which works as a tool for creating suspense and horror.

The puzzles are standard Lucasarts and King’s Quest stuff, requiring lateral thinking in a mixture of common sense and thinking outside of the box to be solved. Unlike these games, however, they involve stuff like giving drugs to a heroin addict and killing a kidnapper with poison gas. Fun stuff.

Visually, it’s very singular. It mashes these semi-realistic pre-rendered backgrounds with black and white hand-drawn characters that look weird but still very much human; and they do come to life through the excellent voice acting (that does suffer from poor audio quality… it’s a budget game). As a vehicle for showing what it needs to show, it’s perfect. I actually finished the game in love with its style.


The soundtrack is amazing. The horrifying footstep sounds and music brings the scary moments to a whole new level, whilst most of the game is this alternative rock album that helps paint the picture and intensify the feelings it’s trying to convey so well. There’s sad, hopeful, and even badass moments that are dictated by how good the accompanying score is.

Susan is like that. She’s sad and lonely and charming and badass. A tough old lady. Through the trials she overcomes and the bond she creates with this lovely young woman that was also dealt a bad hand in life (but nonetheless teaches her so much) makes her grow a lot, and is a big symbol of hope for me.

Through this deep dive into her past, present and future (all at the same time) I was able to learn about myself and about people, and is something I can’t recommend enough for those struggling with themselves. It’s heavy, but beautiful. Isn’t that how life is?