Cats and Seek: Dino Park – PS4 Review

From dev noobzilla and publisher Silesia Games comes the latest in a genre we’d never previously been particularly aware of, let alone interested in. Cats and Seek: Dino Park follows on from the previous in the series, that being Cats and Seek: Osaka. Silesia have published a lot of hidden cat games. When we say a lot, we’re not exaggerating at all.

There’s Hidden Cats in London. Or if you fancy it, A Building Full of Cats. Or a castle full of them. Or Hidden Cats in Spooky Town. Or any number of other locations like New York or Paris. Someone must be buying them though, as they proliferate on the PSN store, and not just from Silesia. However, unlike the egregious paid for platinum trophies like Stroke The Cat, there’s something to Cats and Seek: Dino Park.

It’s dead cute you see. Just the thing for either childless cat ladies, or in our case, cat ladies who happen to also be our adoring girlfriend. She asserts that we should give Cats and Seek: Dino Park a ten by default, simply because it’s got lots of cats. Heck, if it stops us adopting another real-life cat, that’s a good thing. Do you know how much cat litter four bloody cats get through? It’s a lot.

Not to mention cleaning up after them on the regular. Or the occasional horking up of furballs. Or the idiot tortoiseshell who gorges herself on her roommate’s food as well, leaving regurgitated cat food for you to inadvertently tread in when you go to bed. Delightful.

Anyway, you have a cute line drawing of a scene in a; go on, have a guess; dinosaur themed park. A bit like Crystal Palace Park in south London without the bizarre Victorian era dinosaurs or a decaying athletics stadium. Dotted around an illustration are a hundred unique cats. You find them all, you get a trophy. Included in the hundred, there’s also three special cats with their own distinct trophy. Quite why, we don’t know, but perhaps to give players that sweet dopamine rush when a trophy unlocks. Rinse and repeat over the subsequent four levels and you’ll have a fairly quick platinum trophy.

We fell foul of a continual challenge to our gaming while at our girlfriends place, her tiny  by modern standards Toshiba telly. You see, some of the cats are so tiny as to be virtually invisible on the screen, so one of us sometimes had to act as a spotter for the other. Co-op  by necessity, though instead of eggs bread cigs milk, its to mitigate the chances of getting eyestrain.

Before you know it, you’ll have seen most of what Cats and Seek: Dino Park has to offer, though for only £2.50 on PSN, it seems a bit churlish to complain too much. In effect, less than a cup of coffee and a sausage roll in Greggs, so not that bad given the pleasure and relaxation aspect.

We also picked up Cats and Seek: Osaka as we still had a bit of residual PSN credit left, which while fundamentally the same game as the Dino Park incarnation, has time trial modes for trophies that the later game doesn’t.

Though there are a couple of things Dino Park has that Osaka doesn’t. Firstly, the handy little audio cue when you’re down to the last ten cats. If your current view has a cat on it, you get a plaintive meow. You get a meow when you find a cat anyway, but having the additional cue without having to tap and have a cat highlighted for you is welcome. Secondly, each cat is named individually with a daft little bio for each. It’s throwaway, but also fun.

We do wish that there was more to Cats and Seek: Dino Park than just five levels. Perhaps incorporate the time trial aspect to give an additional challenge, though we were glad that we didn’t have to face the finish a level in four minutes trophies like in the Osaka edition.

Maybe have a compendium of all the levels from prior cat games in one package for a slightly higher price using the quality-of-life improvements that Dino Park has. We suspect that the older games aren’t exactly doing huge sales anymore, so it’d be a fun way to engage a new audience, plus we suspect that the hardcore platinum chasers would hit the games up again too.

In conclusion, Cats and Seek: Dino Park is a cute confection of a game that could do with just a bit more content or replay value just to flesh it out a bit. Mechanics improve on the prior Osaka installment, but also it lacks the time trial aspects of that. Yes, it’s cheap, but it could command a slightly higher price if there were more than a mere five levels. Come on Silesia, do us a solid and do a compilation, or better yet, a bigger version of this.