Cats and Seek: Tokyo review – One of the best hidden cat games available

Another day, another hidden cats game. You’d think I, along with everyone else in the world, would be sick of these now. But apparently not. While ever hidden cat games continue to be charming, I’ll continue to play them – and Noobzilla’s Cats and Seek: Tokyo is charming and then some.

Cats and Seek: Tokyo is made up of five levels, all hiding 105 cats and a number of random objects. Some cats are easy to spot; others are blended in perfectly with the environment, so you’ll need your best detective eyes on to see them. You can zoom in and out at will, and pan around a scene for as long as it takes. If you’re really stuck, you have unlimited hints to use, with only a cooldown timer to stop you getting too hint-happy.

The environments you’ll be scouring in Cats and Seek: Tokyo are simply beautiful. The hand-drawn line drawings are a pleasure to admire, and they’re all steeped with personality. You’ll find people going about their daily lives, with funny little scenarios and plenty of visual storytelling if you choose to pay attention. Of course, you might simply ignore it all and focus on finding the cats – and that’s fine too.

Outside of hunting for cats, Cats and Seek: Tokyo packs in some neat additional features to allow you to get more joy out of the game. You can take a photo of any part of the scene, then you can colour in your photo using a comprehensive set of colouring tools. Those random objects I mentioned that you’ll be hunting down alongside cats? They’re stamps, and by finding them all, you’ll unlock different stamps you can play around with in a separate art mode, allowing you to create your own masterpiece.

If you’re not very arty, it doesn’t matter – you can completely ignore those, and given the game’s ridiculously cheap asking price of £2.49, you’re still getting excellent value for money. Outside of simply finding all the cats – which will take around two hours to get through all levels – you can replay each level in a timed/speedrun mode, challenging you to get the best time possible.

There are some neat quality of life features here that set the Cats and Seek series apart from other prominent hidden cat games. You have complete control over the colours in every scene you play through: while by default, a level is presented in black and white, you can change the colours to suit your eyesight – opt for blues, yellows, greens, or a mix of both. You can also change the colour of cats once you’ve found them.

If you’ve played a hidden cats game before, then you know exactly what to expect: finding cats hidden in a scene. It’s a tried-and-tested formula, and while Cats and Seek: Tokyo doesn’t exactly do anything different, its extra features at least make it a comprehensive package. And given its super-budget asking price, there really is nothing to dislike here.