Hooray – a point and click adventure! Not familiar with the first adventure, we can still jump into Scott Whiskers: The Search for the Golden Cat without having too much in the way of exposition, as that Hollywood mechanic features in the opening sequence. What do we need to know? Apparently, Scott’s best friend is Jimmy the cat; he’s moved into a decent apartment and just won a trip to Guatemala. However, ‘vacation’ isn’t on the cards, as there’s a mystery to solve.
Featuring rituals, surfing and dog detectives, this is a typical point and click adventure full of in-jokes, absurd puzzles and a healthy number of red herrings to fill your inventory slots. Upon arrival at the hotel, Scott gets roped into retrieving a lost idol to bring back faith and prosperity to the local inhabitants. It makes sense: the idol is a cat, Scott likes cats, and he’s just arrived in this foreign land, so who else is better equipped? What ensues is a relatively short adventure, once you know the solutions, though it certainly has its fair share of tricky situations.
For anyone familiar with the olden days of calling Sierra hotlines for solutions, this will evoke a reference, as Scott Whiskers: The Search for the Golden Cat likes to test your grey matter and patience with its quirky problem-solving. Point and click veterans will be able to surmise an inventory combination, or have the foresight to squirrel away an item for a future puzzle based on the hints buried in some of the dialogue.
As a talkie, there’s a good amount of interactions with the locals and a variety of voice talent, though it’s often hit an miss. First impressions of Scott led to me think this was AI-generated, though after a few conversations and tinkering with objects, it became apparent that Scott was a real person, it’s just that his levels of enthusiasm seem unnatural at times. I mean, he’s a geek and passionate about the most inane things, such as cats and Star Trek (there goes the internet), so it makes sense for the energy, I’m more used to the klutzes, or hard-boiled cynics. He did grow on me, though I soon tired of NPC dialogue almost always concluding with “Anything else?” or “Take care”. It felt like talking was a chore unnecessarily.
However, Scott Whiskers: The Search for the Golden Cat shifts the focus not solely to witty dialogue, but to a vast amount of ongoing objectives. With some of the classics, you may have one or two tasks on the go, and they’re often linear. While we’re not talking about an abstract approach that Tarantino would be proud of, it’s possible to tackle some of these objectives based on your preference/capacity for solving. A notebook will pop list of current objectives, so when you inevitably get stuck, try facing another challenge.
Like one of the classics, there aren’t any hints. Though the game offers flexibility in where you go first, the only help on offer is hotspots. I’m far from a cocky gamer, but the genre is one of my favourites and well-travelled with my mouse cursor. However, Fancy Factory did catch me off guard quite a bit, and that’s a good thing. As mentioned earlier, once you know the answers, it’s quite easy to steam through Scott Whiskers: The Search for the Golden Cat. Sometimes, even when you’ve experienced a playthrough or two, the runtime has taken a good three or four hours. With this, the runtime is about two hours or so.
I contemplated drafting up a walkthrough, but that’s not the reason for multiple playthroughs. First of all, I booted this up on the Steam Deck, and the interact button didn’t work. A key binding map shows up, yet I couldn’t reconfigure, thus play properly. On the off chance, as this is playable on the Mac, I installed it on my iMac, and due to not having high technical expectations, it played great, though with a Magic Mouse? Dreadful! That’s on Apple’s tech, not the game. Unable to continue you my saved game on my PC, I restarted and got to my current checkpoint in less than an hour. Additionally, repeat playthroughs are needed for achievements, as they are essentially awarded for photographing the NPCs and are super easy to do.
Getting back to the core gameplay, Scott Whiskers: The Search for the Golden Cat is simple enough in its narrative thread and reaches its conclusion without leaving anything hanging. The key challenge, and rightly so, is solving the puzzles and occasionally hitting a wall, not knowing what it is you need to do. Though it isn’t one of the hardest point and clicks I’ve played, I definitely dropped in and out of this, with repeat visits opening my eyes to areas I’d previously missed. By the time I reached its conclusion, I felt a fair sense of achievement, fulfilled in that I’d saved the day, but having a slight itch in that I’m curious as to what happened in the first adventure. Now might be the time to go back to where it all started…
