Australian indie game devs tug on your heartstrings with CopyCat, a game about a...

Sunday, 28 January 2024 15:49

Australian indie game devs tug on your heartstrings with CopyCat, a game about a cat and acceptance Featured

Copycat is a wholesome, narrative-driven game about rejection, belonging, and the true meaning of home. It's a truly heart-warming game where you play as Dawn, a mischievous, aloof cat, who slowly comes to love and care for your adopted owner, Olive.

iTWire has been playing CopyCat, which is available now on Steam. The game is by Australian couple Samantha Cable and Kostia Liakhov with New Zealand and Ukranian heritage and is their first game under their studio Spoonful of Wonder. Although this is their first title, they come with an impressive creativity heritage. Sam was named Young Creative of the Year at ADC Europe, holds a Masters in Screenwriting from the Australian Film Television and Radio School, where she now guest lectures, and is a 2023 award jury member for the gaming category of the Art Directors Club in New York. Kostia has won over a hundred international art direction awards including Cannes Lions, D&AD, and New York Festivals.

Immediately, on the first launch, it's clear CopyCat is like no other game. It's not a traditional game in the sense you have levels or missions or goals, and nor is it a free-play open-world game. Instead, it's a moving story-driven game that is largely on rails. You find yourself in scenarios where you make decisions or have actions to perform, and while you can run around the backyard or the house and jump on tables and knock things over, you are ultimately driven by the story itself.

If you're after an open-world cat simulator then CopyCat may not be for you, but as a piece of art, a story, and an engaging, capturing title, it performs magnificently. It's also a real bonus, in iTWire's eyes, that from the very first scene, you are engulfed by friendly Australian voices. It's wonderful to see an Australian studio succeeding.

So - as to the game, or story, itself - you initially play as Olive, an elderly lady who enters the cat shelter seeking an adult cat for companionship. Yet, there's more to the story than this; the shelter worker asks if he saw her before, looking for a lost cat, which Olive plays off as all "us old ducks" looking the same to the young. You help Dawn select the perfect cat companion out of a range of colourful, beautifully designed feline companions. After selection, you now switch to Dawn, the cat herself.

At first, I was dismayed my only options to play Dawn were things like bite or scratch. I didn't want to be a mean cat, but, well, it's part of the story. Just as Olive is an elderly lady - who you soon come to learn is unwell, and was only recently released from hospital - Dawn has her own backstory too. She's mistrustful of humans, she wants to be free and to escape.

Yet, with play, and with story, Olive and Dawn begin to appreciate each other.

You do have moments of sheer joy - you can scratch the couch, you can run around and find all Olive's hidden snacks and devour them, and you can play with toilet paper - yippee, ripping and clawing at it, spreading it willy-nilly. And, of course, you can jump on the furniture and knock things over. Someone once joked it's clear the world is not flat because if it was, the cats would have knocked everything off the edge by now, and in CopyCat you can sure do some damage if you want.

Dawn's story with Olive is punctuated by moments of narration where, curiously, Olive always seems to have a TV on with big cat documentaries. Dawn is inspired by the narrator's instruction about tigers and lions in hunting and clawing and other survival skills. You get to chase a butterfly (which your cat personality imagines as a wild rabbit in the jungle), wander around the backyard, and look for a way out.

My demo edition ended here before I could venture into the big, wide world, and I was left with a sense of sadness and loss that my time with Dawn and Olive was cut shot. Happily, the full game has now soft-launched so I'm keen to answer all my lingering questions: Will Olive keel over due to her illness? Will Dawn sound the alarm? Or will Dawn go out into the world and get lost, much like Olive's last cat ... also named Dawn. In fact, will Dawn and Dawn meet?

It's a thought-provoking title, and quite fun - but more than this, it's moving. It is an endearing tale and iTWire is keen to know what happens next.

Check out CopyCat on Steam. It's available for both Windows and macOS.

Here's iTWire's playthrough of the first 25 minutes to whet your appetite:

Check the game out for yourself; let's support an indie Australian studio in this excellent story, which is far from being a copycat itself; it's a unique, engrossing, imaginative tale, and sure to be a hit.

It still feels bizarre, but our official trailer got an @IGN exclusive premiere! Check this out and share some love! ? https://t.co/xhglEAtybO
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#gaming #gamedev #indiegames
— Copycat // Wishlist on Steam ???? (@GameCopycat) September 26, 2023

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