Cloud Cats’ Land Review

Game: Cloud Cats’ Land
Genre: Adventure, Casual, Indie
System: Steam (Windows)
Developers | Publishers: PurrMeowMeow Games
Controller Support: Yes
Price: US $12.34 | UK £9.99 | EU €12,12
Release Date: August 25, 2025

Review code used, with thanks to Press Engine. 

The point and click video game genre is a stately lad that can be either wholesome and relaxing, or leave you wondering what the heck the designer was thinking with these puzzles. Sometimes they’re even both, and the result, like Myst or King’s Quest, becomes a classic staple, showing other games how it’s done. It’s a genre that goes through lulls, but independent game makers may find it a gentle place to start working on their skills, keeping it alive.

Cloud Cats’ Land is a beautiful-looking game that’s heavy on cats and that old-school puzzler sense. Does it all come together in a way worthy of those old, sometimes confusing classics? Schroedinger’s cat may say yes — and no. So do I. Let’s visit this pastoral land and figure out what’s up with that.

The Beauty of the Cloud Cats’ Land

There’s certainly nothing to complain about when it comes to the aesthetic of Cloud Cats’ Land! Heavy on the pastels yet with a rich enough palette to keep the graphics bright and lively, the various scenes you’ll navigate are well drawn and detailed, with plenty of fun things to look at. The cats themselves may be the fluffy little cloud-like critters of the title, or the occasional spooky statue hidden in castaway caves.

Each screen you traverse will have a variety of things to interact with or collect. Playing on the Steam Deck, I found a hint update allowed me to hit the left shoulder button to help spot any items I might have missed. That makes sure you get your mushrooms, coins, etc., all while making sure you also know where your exits are. Hovering over the screen with your mouse pointer — which, again, all works lovely on the Deck — will do you fine if you’re detail-oriented.

If there’s a minor visual knock, it’s that the text is in a small and generic font, which doesn’t vibe with the environment much. The menu, too, is in a simple Arial style text. Efficient, gets the job done, isn’t fancy. That’s not worth docking the game, but it is a minor point of discussion when the rest of the package is pretty enough.

Puzzling Your Way Through the Cat Lands

Point and click puzzlers live or die on how engaging or fun its puzzles are. Cloud Cats’ Lands offers a variety of brief mini games along with the puzzles themselves; simple things like trying to navigate your way up an old tree by following the right branches, or bouncing up a wall by pressing a key in time to the bounces. Each of these mini games will probably be whiffed at least once, as the explanations are often brief and maybe even a little arcane. But they’re not hard to figure out after a try or two, and in the worst case, easy mode should let you skip any mini game you’re stuck on.

The point and click puzzle solving is much more subjective, however, and this is where some deep uncertainties I have regarding the game come in. Early adventure game classics had some strange puzzles that required wild leaps of logic. As the genre aged and new creators came in, absurdism became pretty normal. Tim Schaefer and Ron Gilbert are masters of making the absurd sort of fit, with Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle offering bonkers puzzles that, in the bonkers world they were set in, made a weird kind of sense.

More aptly for this review, however, there was a series of dead-serious Gabriel Knight games. Hiding in the third game is an infamous puzzle about building a fake mustache from cat hair collected through ridiculous means. Unfortunately, some of the puzzles in Cloud Cats’ Land follow this sort of moon logic, meaning you’ll be relying on the hint options — if enabled — to guide you through. One may even feel soft locked at several points. The developer is quick to fix bugs, but there’s another big issue.

Behind the Scenes of These Cute Cats

When looking for some information on a few puzzles and looking into the latest updates the game received, I visited the Steam discussion forum. While typically one should judge a game solely on the game’s own merits, when the developer’s behavior colors the game directly, it must be addressed. There were two problem discussions of major note. The first was a user questioning the admittedly out-there logic of some of the game’s puzzles. Rather than point to the history of absurdism in adventure games, the developer defended it as a point of pride in her own female logic.

Not only is this self-deprecatingly sexist, it’s inaccurate. The worst and nuttiest puzzles in history trace their lineage to designers like Ron Gilbert, who used obscurity to excellent effect in the Monkey Island games, and more recently The Cave. Classic Infocom text puzzles, too, are mostly male affairs, with the Babel Fish one of the most infamous in history.

The situation gets worse. The latest update allows players to pick an even easier mode if the game is still a bit much for them. I hadn’t tried it, and I read a conversation where someone did. They ask the developer, was it meant to simply take them to a congratulations screen without any gameplay? And the developer told them yes. You win! In the easiest mode, she simply hands you the end screen.

It doesn’t come off friendly. It doesn’t come off like a joke. It comes off like a developer who is content to insult her own audience, and that user flatly stated so. I’m afraid I agree. It’s a shame, because the game could be a good one in the hands of a less defensive, cheerfully abrasive individual, with an eye towards more clarity in the puzzles themselves.

Conclusion

Point and click adventure games are a great place to loosen your imagination and travel to new worlds. But it’s easy to be led astray by obscure puzzles, especially when the hints may sometimes be less than helpful. Combined with a developer whose attitude on a public game forum is scaring off potential players, it’s hard for me to give Cloud Cats’ Land a fair shake. Pretty to look at, but frustrating and guided by bad taste, I have to suggest giving this one a miss.

Final Verdict: I Don’t Like It

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