Fly Cat

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in also in 10 in 1 Games Bundle, along with .cat, .cat Milk, Bruxa, Cats Puzzle, Chubby Cat, Him & Her 3, Rafa’s World, Rô, and Scrap Bolts. It is also in Bundle Cats + Dog, along with .cat, .cat Milk and .Dog. It is also included in Cats Bundle, along with .cat, .cat Milk, Cats Puzzle, Chubby Cat, and Chubby Cat 2. It is also included in Mega Bundle Cats, along with .cat and Chubby Cat.)

Fly Cat, released on Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a single-button mobile-style Arcade game where players must tap the “A” button to bounce in mid-air a cat with wings to get them through a course of obstacles consisting of pillars with angry dogs both on the ground and hanging above. You don’t control movement or do anything other than tap “A”. And if this sounds familiar, that’s because this is clearly just Flappy Bird but with a “flying cats and angry dogs” theme slapped onto it.

Here’s where I would normally say, “copycats aren’t inherently bad so long as it’s a good copycat”, but in this case, Fly Cat has to do better than that, because Flappy Bird is a notoriously bad game. That’s why it became a popular meme in the first place – it was an extremely simple, repetitive, dull, and yet also absurdly difficult game that was punishingly un-fun to play. So the question isn’t whether Fly Cat measures up to its inspiration, the question is whether it manages to exceed its inspiration.

I’ll just cut to the chase – no. No, it does not. In fact, I would argue that this game is worse than Flappy Bird, because it gives players less room to move, making the game even harder than Flappy Bird was. There’s no added variety or nuance here either, it’s the same basic experience, but worse.

Well, okay, I suppose there is one added feature here – there is now a level-based mode in addition to the endless mode. The thing is, all the level-based mode does is give players a limited number of obstacles to pass before clearing the level, making it not significantly different than the endless mode, just cut up into smaller pieces.

I suppose I could talk about this game’s presentation, using a faux pixel art 2D visual style that doesn’t stop it from being repetitive and visually-dull. And then on top of this, there’s no music, and the sounds are not at all inspiring.

I’m willing to give any game a chance, but it’s games like Fly Cat that really make me regret doing so. For a game to shamelessly copy another game, choose a terrible game to copy, and do a poor job of it… that’s a failure multiple times over. If you enjoy cats, you have plenty of other games on the Nintendo Switch to choose from, don’t inflict this terrible game on yourself.

tl;dr – Fly Cat is a single button mobile-style Arcade game that’s clearly trying to copy Flappy Bird. And as terrible as Flappy Bird was, somehow Fly Cat manages to be worse, with more claustrophobic, stupidly difficult levels, yet without any significant amount of added variety. Don’t buy this game.

Grade: F

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