Gray Cat

short and simple. Could be beaten in 5-10 mins. Takes a little time to learn the timing but there is only movement and one action button. The parkour is well thought out and i had fun playing it.

Would not buy at full price but if it was for sale then i would give it a go!

Gray Cat is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere.

This one is from the Russian shovelware group, Red Twice Potato, famous for breaching Valve rules about review manipulation. The platformer has a gimmick where certain abilities only work in certain backgrounds... the beige background allows you to jump, red to shoot... this adds nothing to the old dead platformer formula, it just makes things worse.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

Bewilderingly, the game doesn't include proper audio controls, so you can't turn off the annoying sound/background music, you'll need to alt+tab out and stop it using the Windows sound mixer. This is obviously not okay and it's unclear why the developers chose not to include this basic feature.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.

To make matters worse, there's no mouse input, despite this being sold on PC as if it were a PC game. This is unacceptable and somewhat insulting to PC gamers. It's a good demonstration of the poor attitude the developer has towards PC gamers, and this attitude has resulted in yet another defect in this game.

This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.

Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs.

A strong argument can be made that construction kits like GameMaker Studio should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", Anatoliy Loginovskikh has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 6 players, and the worst part is these weren't genuine players, these were the Russian fake review accounts that the developer paid to make the fake reviews. Since the fake reviews are all done, now the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.

[quote]Warning: Review Manipulation!

This game features a number of fake positive reviews from accounts known to be in the business of review manipulation/paid reviews. They're all written in either Russian or broken English, appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the game launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the game, and the accounts are used consistently to write fake reviews for asset flips and other cash grabs/scams. The "Positive" review score on this game should be disregarded due to this blatant, unethical review manipulation. This is done to deceive and scam gamers into paying for a bad product.

Due to the 2024 FTC ruling (16 CFR Part 465), these fake reviews are a violation of US Federal Law.[/quote]

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

Gray Cat is relatively cheap at $8 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

got this discounted and i still feel like i was robbed out of my money and time... the initial instructions are not very clear and there's not a single checkpoint (one mistake and you're all the way back to the beginning). this "game" is closer to a waste of time rather than being considered a platformer. even as a person that likes going for achievements/completions, (i will acknowledge that this would be an easy 100%) i refuse to put any more time into it than i already have.

Even though i tend to give this kind of cheap games a pass, gray cat is barely a game, even less a paltformer.
It's just a short runner game where you have to just press space in specific times other than that theres not much to this game. And for what the game is it's very overpriced.
If the creator polished it and gave it more time it oculd have been a fun little game.
Not like it's not fun or hard, but other than that it's bad.

It could be good if the creator decides to make a sequel with more though than this one.

The game is a crap. Don't play it, don't buy it. If the game developer can't make a save in one point in the game, don't make the game.

Overall - 27/100

Playing as a cat - 20/20

Acting like a cat - 2/20

Adorableness Level - 0/20

Polish - 5/20

FUN! - 0/20

P R O S

C O N S

3 / 10

Very solid platform game. Its semi punishing with the fact that you have to start over from the start when you die, but since the game isn't that long - its not "uninstall" rage inducing when you need to start over. 8/10

Fun platformer. Fairly challenging, especially for a noob like me, but it's not too difficult to clear the entire thing in a short time. I'd say its worth it if you like this type of game. Also, the theme music is an incredible banger.

---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Very Good
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe

---{Gameplay}---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It‘s just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☐ Just don‘t

---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape

---{Audience}---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Human
☐ Lizards

---{PC Requirements}---
☑ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boiiiiii
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{Difficulity}---
☑ Just press ‚Space‘
☐ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{Grind}---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isnt necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You‘ll need a second live for grinding

---{Story}---
☑ Story?
☐ Text or Audio floating around
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It‘ll replace your life

---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{Price}---
☑ It’s free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{Bugs}---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

[quote=] ♡ 𝓅𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓈𝑒 𝒸𝑜𝓃𝓈𝒾𝒹𝑒𝓇 𝒻𝑜𝓁𝓁𝑜𝓌𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓂𝓎 𝒸𝓊𝓉𝑒 𝓁𝒾𝓉𝓉𝓁𝑒 𝒸𝓊𝓇𝒶𝓉𝑜𝓇 𝓅𝒶𝑔𝑒 ♡ [/quote]

I absolutely adore this game but I'm quite awful at it. Little kitty platformer~ ❀ ฅ/ᐠ. ̫ .ᐟ\ฅ ᵐᵉᵒʷ ~ ♡

It is a very short game (I got it on discount and would recommend only at a reduced price,) but it's kinda fun! It's a bit of learning what to step on, what not to, and planning your jumps at times, and it does get slightly more difficult as the game goes on, however I never found it infuriating personally!
It's a fairly basic game and I don't think everyone will enjoy it, but I would recommend if you want something to distract you for a little while :) (also very easy achievements!)

GrayCat just barely qualifies as a game where you go right and hit one button a few times until reaching the end. Took 30 minutes to 'beat' it using a game controller. Difficulty is Moderate to Easy.

- Game play consists of going right. When you're over a white box you jump (you're expected to walk off ledges), when you're over a red box you shoot. Both use the same button.

- There's a little challenge in not dying from tiles blowing up and animals in your path, and there are a few easy achievements to reach that'll keep you going if you don't immediately back out.

- There is one level. It'll probably take about 5 minutes to go through beginning to end. But if you die you have to start back at the beginning of the level.

- There's no real 'end' to it. You hit a 'the end' text and are expected to jump off a ledge and die.


In all, Gray Cat comes off like a high school project in a 'Game Creation Station' class. The graphics are low grade, the entire game is comprised of one 5 minute level, and it'll grow on you like stockholm syndrome as you repeatedly die and have to start over for stupid reasons. Gray Cat is most definitely not worth 4 bucks. Maybe 50 cents. If the game had more to it, levels, an actual jump feature that doesn't involve falling into white squares, it might've gotten a thumbs up. But as is it's hardly a game.

That was a fun and interestingly paced game. Definitely recommend.

In Gray Cat you play as a Gray cat (duh) on the hunt for a delicious fish and on your travels you have to dodge lots of bombs, beams and sparks. Gray Cat is such a fun indie platform game! I personally loved and pulled my hair out at the hardcore element of this game but honestly I feel without it the end would feel no where near as rewarding. I feel for the price i paid which after discount come to 84p was a fair price given the 2 hrs of gameplay I got out it. Definitely going on my list of quick yet harsh hardcore games.

Only recommendations I would have for the developers if they come back to this game or wish to produce games like this in the future is to have a defined main menu to allow for audio adjustment because man was I getting Super Hexagon PTSD and maybe an optional checkpoint option to allow those who are unable to complete the game in one run the ability enjoy the game in its fullest.

4/5 rating from me!

Simple and interesting game! You can safely kill time. At the same time, the game is difficult and interesting, I really liked it. Definitely like this game

Quite an interesting and hardcore 2D platformer. Lovers of cats and this genre will like it =) The graphics are quite minimalistic, I liked it!

[★★★★★]
Prepare to die like a hundred times if you aim to beat the game. But it is incredibly fun!

You basically hold space and the left arrow key for 5 minutes and then you win. I got this with a 75% discount and I still feel cheated out of my dollar. I will be refunding.

Save your eight dollars for anything else, this at most will take you 1 hour to beat, and the difficulty is extremely artificial (plus, if you know what you're doing you can complete it in 10). You can only jump or shoot when standing on the respective beige or red box, which is a mediocre idea on paper, but adds even less to the game then you would expect. Most of the challenge comes from lose conditions setups or unidentifiable risks because of this game's hard on for exploding floor tiles.

Even if you see it at a discount, you'd have more fun putting quarters into coin-operated binocular stands. Also 80% sure several of the positive reviews are botted. 3/10.

[*]

Morlan's shorts:

Gray Cat is, pretty addictive and the controls makes it a unique game.
Even though I'm not very good at it, the game is extremely challenging and tests your reflexes and will keep you sharp!
The controls and mechanics work well.
If you like difficult platformer games, I would definitely recommend this game.