Travel back to the late 90s when keychain virtual pets were the big thing with Catgotchi on Switch.  Take care of different breeds of cats by feeding and cleaning up after them, and playing games to make them happy.  It even features black and white pixel graphics and sounds!

The first thing you’ll do is choose a breed of cat, its gender, and then you can name it.  I’m glad to see that the Russian Blue was one of the starter breeds, because I had a Russian Blue cat as a kid named Chekov who was one of the coolest pets I’ve ever had.  Of course all the cats look pretty much the same, the different breeds just make them have different pixel patterns on their fur.  You can raise multiple kitties at the same time, and when you raise a certain number to adulthood, you’ll unlock even more breeds!

Similar to other key chain virtual pet games, you’ll select what you can do with icons on the bottom screen.  You can feed your cat milk, fish, or chicken, but they all fill up the meter the same.  If you see a poop icon next to your cat (don’t they use a litterbox?), press the water drop icon to clean it up.  If your cat has a skull beside it, it’s sick so you must give it a shot.  Turn off the light to let it sleep to refill energy.  You can even decorate the areas to the left and right of your cats with buildings and plants and other things.

You can also play mini-games with your cat to increase the ‘fun’ meter.  There are three games in all, and you’ll unlock each one at the different ages: kitten, teen, and adult.  The first game is similar to Simon, except not near as good because the pattern changes each time.  The next one has you moving your cat left and right to destroy falling objects, similar to the Atari classic game Kaboom!  Except here it’s very easy and I only stopped when I was bored of it.  And last is a treasure hunting game where you must remember increasingly larger squares of hidden fish.

And that’s pretty much it.  I guess the game does what it sets out to do.  There’s not much to it and this kind of game works better on a keychain you can pull out at any time.  Even though the Switch is portable, it’s a bit harder to do that with it.  The game could’ve used more standing animations to give it more character, too.

Kid Factor:

Nothing violent or objectionable here.  I don’t even think your cats can die in this one.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, but not necessary just to play.  Catgotchi is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews