Game Review: Kitty City

After 31 levels, I’m ready to bring you my Kitty City review. Created by Jam City, formerly SGN Games, Kitty City is a cat-centered farming simulator and town-building game rolled into one. I’ve played several town-building games, and to sum it up, this one is my favorite so far. It offers the same familiarity as others in the genre but with some quality of life upgrades and a memorable cast of citi… err.. kittizens.

Often in town games, new buildings are locked by level, and other than building your very own town from scratch as the mayor, there’s no real story. Kitty City’s story is a town in need of saving after being flooded by rushing waters. Every quest is a rescue effort for each individual kittizen, and once they have been rescued, they open their shop’s doors. No building feels arbitrary.

Lots of simulation games (Like Castleville) with quests often have multiple quest lines going at once and you have to pull up a tab to view them. Kitty City has a straight forward, single quest at a time. Each quest has smaller lines within it to make it feel like you’re progressing at a faster rate. To top it off, the quests are right on the screen for easy access.

Aside from quests, the main components of Kitty City are similar to other town-building games. Fill trains to collect supplies and gold used to keep expanding your town. Unlike Township and similar games, train refills happen immediately. Kitty City also has a timed event, like cruise ships and airplanes in other games. However, in Kitty City, this event (the Hot Air Balloon) only occurs when you start the event yourself. You aren’t held to the mercy of whenever it decides to start the timer. These two quality of life attributes puts Kitty City heads and tails above the others. Pun intended.

Speaking of puns, this game is full of them. They make pop-culture references and cat puns everywhere you turn. For instance, two of the kittizens are named “Klerk Kent” and “Fryer Tuck.” There’s even a quest to rescue the ice cream shop owner from “the cone of shame.”

The paw-sonality of this game is unique in the town and farming simulator genre. The art style is clean and each shop has their own set of idle and in-progress animations. This much animation can have a negative drawback, no matter how cute it is.

One of the downsides to this game is the long load time and occasional bugs. It takes at least a minute or so to get past the load screen, which feels like an eternity in our touch-and-go world. Unless you’re zoomed in close, collecting tree harvest can take awhile as you’re trying to scrub over the one apple you missed. Collecting shop goods can result in picking up the shop altogether.

Let’s close on a high-note. Like other free app games, this one has two currencies – the in-game gold and the special gem currency. Unlike most app games, the special currency, gems, is very easy to obtain. You can receive 6 every day for completing the very easy fountain daily. Gems are also given as rewards when finishing some quests.

Overall, Kitty City has been one of my favorite games of 2017, and it’s my favorite farming sim/ town-building game of all time. Sure, I may be biased with an inherent love for all felines, but pretty art and a fun story can’t cover up poor game design. Kitty City checks all the boxes and improves upon the genre in much-needed and highly welcomed updates.