Copycat

Picture this: You’re a comfortable indoor house cat who accidentally finds herself on the scary streets as a stray. What do you do? That’s the scenario at the heart of Copycat, a compelling new game told entirely from the cat’s perspective. Will you be able to survive the dangers outside and make it back home safely? Or will you be left forever stranded by clunky writing and terrible tech problems? Those are the questions we’ll be answering when I review Copycat by first-time developer Spoonful of Wonder.

This is the story of what happens when an elderly woman named Olive adopts a new cat. As a widow whose daughter has moved out of town and health is on decline, Olive is lonely and just looking for a furry friend. Her last cat ended up running away the last time she was rushed to the hospital with bad breathing problems, so the Australian woman purposely sought out a very similar looking kitty to fill that void. She even used the same name – Dawn.

And, for a while, everything was good. It took a little while for Dawn to get used to her new surroundings, but before long she was knocking things off tables, scratching up furniture and unraveling rolls of toilet paper. You know, typical cat activities. But when the mean daughter throws the new cat outside and the previous pet returns home after running away, Dawn’s entire existence gets flipped upside down. She goes from being comfortable and pampered as an indoor cat to becoming an outdoor stray that nobody can love. Has she been replaced by an imposter? Or was she the copycat all along?

What Dawn quickly realizes is that things are different on the streets. She’ll need to hunt down food and fight for her survival through dangerous neighborhoods, all while going on an epic journey of self-discovery. The events in this game change who Dawn is as a cat and how she views the world. She may dream of wanting to be a wild cat on the prowl, but this former housecat is in for a rude awakening.

This is one of those games where the entire story is told from the perspective of the cat. We have a few basic moves (like running and jumping), but this is more a narrative piece than a true cat simulator. We get to see Dawn’s inner monologue through on-screen text. This means that we always know what’s on her mind and what each “meow” means. There’s also voice over narration that is often describing what the cat is doing as if our hero is part of some wild animal documentary. The host narrates in a hushed tone that is both informative and slightly insulting, perfectly representing Dawn’s anxieties and fears.

Although this is primarily a story-driven game, there are quite a few different activities and missions to complete along the way. There are a few simple puzzles to solve early on, as well as a whole mini-game built around you hunting for small critters Dawn can pounce on. Sometimes she’ll need to sneak by a bunch of guard dogs, while later she will need to run away from a bunch of violent street cats. There are also platforming sections, believe it or not. The game does a good job of not only keeping the plot moving at a nice clip, but also giving us a lot to do along the way.

Between the trading places-theme and elderly woman with a nasty cough, I went into Copycat expecting it to be emotional. I was ready to shed a few tears and really connect with Dawn and Olive’s relationship. But that’s not what happened. In a twist I didn’t see coming, I found that none of the emotional story beats worked for me. In fact, the second-half of the game actually left me angry. And there’s a reason for that, but first we’re going to need to talk about a minor spoiler.

You see, for a long time, Olive doesn’t realize that New Dawn and Old Dawn have switched places. She just thinks that there’s a stray cat that looks a lot like the new cat she adopted. However, eventually, she puts it all together and realizes that Old Dawn is back, leaving New Dawn homeless. So, now that she’s figured this out, she decides to take New Dawn back to the cat shelter, right?

No. That’s not what she does. Her solution to this two-cat problem is ... to drive all the way out to the middle of nowhere and leave Dawn on the side of the road. She doesn’t try to find the cat a new home or anything, she just leaves it there in the middle of nowhere to fend for itself. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sympathetic that she’s an old woman who can barely take care of herself, let along two cats. But what about the wild animals? What about food? What about the elements? Seriously, why not just take the cat back to the shelter like a normal human being?

See, the problem with this plot point is that it colors the complete second-half of the game. I went from being incredibly sympathetic to her plight to wanting Dawn to claw her eyes out. I was livid, and I’m not the only one. Dawn is angry, too. But also scared and fighting for her survival. This one story beat completely undermines the message of the game, and I found myself only getting angrier as the game tried to absolve the elderly woman of her bad deeds. The way the story wraps up left a bad taste in my mouth. It sends a really bad message.

Story problems aside, Copycat also has a number of technical problems it needs to work out. For one thing, it’s never clear when the game is saving, or even if it’s saving. There’s no way to manually save the game, so I figured I was safe to exit after the first act concluded. Nope. When I logged back in, I was shocked to see that I couldn’t continue. I mean, the game told me I was going to overwrite my saved data if I started a new game, but there was no way to continue from the last checkpoint. I ended up having to play the first hour of the game all over again.

Sadly, that was not the only time this happened. On my second attempt at the game, the action froze as Dawn tried to get the cat food out of the cupboard. Then, quite a bit later, I got stuck in one of the dream sequences. I could move the camera around, but I couldn’t move the cat. I couldn’t even pause the game to exit. I was stuck in that dream. Thankfully, in both of those situations, I was able to continue from the last checkpoint.

There are things I really like about Copycat, like the entire first act, the variety of activities, the narration and, of course, the journey of self-discovery. It looks good, controls reasonably well and I love that we’re given a “meow” button. Unfortunately, the whole thing is undone by a single plot point that will turn you against a character you’re supposed to have sympathy for. Perhaps cat lovers will be able to overlook the dubious writing, but it left me angry and annoyed. You’re better off sticking with Stray.