Spooky Cats

My instinct with any micro-budget solo-dev platformer is to give it the full five minutes before I form an opinion, and Spooky Cats absolutely earns those five minutes before pulling the rug out. What looks like a breezy, low-stakes cat romp in a haunted house turns into a surprisingly demanding little action-platformer the moment the first undead cat swoops at you from the dark. The tone is genuinely odd in the best way: creepy pixel environments that feel more hand-considered than their resolution suggests, a soundtrack that leans into the spooky rather than winking at it, and a central loop built around penny collection, monster combat, and keeping your cat alive in tight, hazard-dense rooms. Mechanically, this is a 2D platformer with a double-jump and wall-jump that give the cat real mobility when you learn to use them. Your main attack is a roll-dash, and that distinction matters more than it sounds: rolling into enemies when you should stomp, or stomping when you should roll, will get you killed consistently. The enemy roster includes flying undead cats, spiders, rats, and skeleton cats, and the encounters are paced tightly enough that the die-every-three-minutes rhythm some players report early on eventually gives way to something more satisfying once movement clicks. The bosses add a small puzzle layer on top of the action. The Witch, in particular, is legitimately trickier than you would expect from something this visually cheerful. She fires star bullets that spawn skeleton cats on the ground, which you have to destroy in sequence before a key appears. It is the kind of boss that sends players to the forums, and it does so earnestly, not meanly. The game was built in Construct 2 by a single developer, and that shows in a handful of rough edges: the combat feedback is thin, the overall runtime sits around an hour to two hours depending on how many times the Witch floors you, and there is no in-game guidance whatsoever. The silence is almost a design choice in itself. You are dropped into the dark and expected to figure it out, which will either feel pleasantly cryptic or quietly frustrating depending on your patience. The story, such as it is, involves rescuing a little girl named Penny by reuniting her soul with her body, and it lands with exactly the sort of low-key creepiness that the best tiny horror games manage without a single line of dialogue. The lack of explanation is the atmosphere. Who is this for? Honestly, cat people and retro-platformer completionists who want something they can finish in a single sitting without a tutorial holding their hand. It also has legitimate charm for anyone who gravitates toward the weirder, smaller end of itch.io-adjacent Steam releases, the ones that feel handmade in a way bigger productions cannot fake. The Xbox gamepad support works, which is a small but appreciated touch for a game at this price tier. Approach it as a short, strange artifact rather than a polished product, and it delivers something quietly memorable.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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