Some video games really feel like they’ve been pulled from a hat. In as we speak’s recreation you’ll play a – drum roll – therapist! They occur to be a – picks from hat – cat! And the remedy will take the type of – closes eyes – jigsaw puzzle!
Squint and you’ll see the faintest define of a connection. As a therapist, your sufferers are considerably damaged – jumbled, you would say. It’s your job to choose them up and put them again collectively once more, making them higher than new. Which is the place the jigsaw puzzle is available in. Why cats, although? Our assumption is that individuals simply love cats.
It’s simply mad sufficient to intrigue. We’ve performed sufficient jigsaw puzzle video games on the Xbox to stifle a yawn, however the remedy half of Physician Cat had us curious. So, we got here in with some hope that Physician Cat would attempt one thing new.
Sadly, if there’s something that Physician Cat fumbles, it’s the encompassing remedy. Earlier than every jigsaw, you get to take heed to the woes of a affected person. Somewhat than go for one thing wacky or cat-related, it leans into real-world dilemmas. One cat struggles to get motivated at work, whereas one other seems like a relationship is in its final dying breaths. Their tales are handled lethal critically and with a touch of unhappiness, which isn’t inherently a foul factor, however sidesteps the expectations of a cutesy puzzle recreation.
What dissatisfied us most is that the instances are handled so glibly. Physician Cat has some pithy feedback about ‘it’s essential to open up if you would like me to assist’, he chucks out some knowledge that will make a fortune cookie sound just like the Dalai Lama, after which shuffles the affected person out. We hoped the ‘Physician’ little bit of Physician Cat would add some color, however largely it’s simply waffle. If we have been Physician Cat’s affected person, we’d have requested for a refund.
The jigsaw puzzling is healthier, no less than. As talked about, the cat’s woes are translated right into a jigsaw puzzle format. The scale of the jigsaw puzzle is as much as you: Straightforward and Regular can be found from the off, and a Arduous mode acts as a form of New Recreation+. The difficulties decide the dimensions of the jigsaw, as you’d anticipate.
We’ve known as them jigsaw puzzles, however there aren’t any nobbles on the items that make them historically jigsaw-looking. As an alternative, these are grids of squares. The squares are all the time upright – there isn’t any rotating in Physician Cat – and your job is to swap items in order that they find yourself in the suitable orientation. They don’t lock into place once they’re positioned appropriately, so it’s all the way down to you to position them effectively and maintain them there.
It really works moderately effectively. We like how every edge piece has a useful body scribbled on, giving us someplace to start out. Except you’re a puzzle savant, you’ll be forming the body first after which utilizing that to immediate the next items. Tapping one piece after which tapping one other to swap can also be a easy however efficient technique of transferring them round. Different jigsaw puzzle video video games have hassle figuring out a viable management scheme, so we don’t take it with no consideration.
However it nonetheless has its points. Let’s rattle a couple of off. For one, it’s arduous to know which piece you’ve chosen. The glow on the chosen piece is simply too delicate, and when the background has a touch of yellow in it – being yellow, gold or inexperienced for instance – then it might probably successfully be camouflaged. Swap a chunk, too, and the selector snaps again to the place the unique piece was. In nearly each occasion, we needed to be the place the piece ended up, reasonably than attempting to recollect the place it began from.
The largest gear-grinding, although, got here from once we performed a Arduous puzzle. Arduous means extra items, which implies that the photographs want to assist. You don’t have nobbly bits as extra hints: you possibly can’t snap them collectively and go ‘ah, they join!’. As an alternative, you’re left hoping. You must hope that six fully black squares, in a 2×3, are within the orientation that Physician Cat desires them to be. And you’ll solely know when you’re proper on the finish.
Which isn’t nice, clearly. When you think about that the photographs are additionally tremendous – not overly detailed, not wholly engaging – and that there are solely twelve of them, you then may need the identical response we did: it’s all a bit underwhelming.
Physician Cat begins with a smidgeon of curiosity due to the psychiatry backdrop, however that quickly molts away. Then you definitely become familiar with the jigsaw puzzling, and whereas it’s purposeful, it’s acquired some core navigation points and solely lasts for an hour or two anyway. A scarcity of content material is an odd criticism for a jigsaw recreation: certainly it doesn’t take a lot effort to make a couple of extra footage?
We lay down on Physician Cat’s sofa and located ourselves dozing off. We didn’t plan to: we have been rubbing our paws collectively on the prospect of a cat/remedy/jigsaw puzzle hybrid. However that is presumably the least fascinating model of that combo that anybody may presumably think about. We’re not dissatisfied, we’re simply bored.
