Cloud Cats’ Land is a point and click puzzle game with lovely and welcoming scenery and cute characters. It features puzzles that require keen observation and at times some very creative thinking.

Pretty Landscapes and Cute Characters

The artwork in each scene of Cloud Cats’ Land has soft, welcoming landscapes with details scattered throughout. Sometimes those scattered details help lead players’ eyes to a clue. In other cases, the details might be a distraction to make puzzle pieces and clues more elusive. Regardless, I appreciated the cozy backdrop in each area as I made my way through the puzzles. The various critters encountered are both cute and full of character.

Point and Click Puzzles and More

Cloud Cats’ Land challenges players to find objects hidden within scenes. Players must combine items in their inventory to create a new object that is necessary to solve another puzzle. Then they must use those discoveries to solve puzzles or mini games. A series of crumpled pages throughout the scenes provide story context for the player.

Challenging With a Dash of Frustration

Some of the objects that needed to be collected or interacted with were less obvious than others. This had me doing some hopeful clicking around the screen at times. Other times I tried every item in my inventory with every other item, because no logical combination was jumping out at me. A few times this paid off, but more often than not, it was just a lot of fruitless mouse clicks.

Because I have issues with my hands, I can only do so much clicking in a gaming session. I ended up taking a lot of breaks while playing the game. Occasionally, I’d use those breaks to look for a guide or hint online. More than once, finding hints online helped me get past a puzzle where I had been stuck long enough to start feeling frustrated.

Looking for Hints and Finding Something Unexpected

One of my hunts for help led me to the Steam discussions page for the game. I was surprised (not in a good way) at a couple of responses from the developer to players in the forum. The first was a response to a player struggling (like me) with some of the leaps of logic in the demo. The developer replied with a sexist comment and suggested the player not bother getting the full version because the game might be too hard for them.

In another post, a player asked if the “Very Easy” mode was bugged, because it took them right to the end screen. The developer’s response came off as a bit snarky to me. The developer’s choices when interacting with the players engaging with their game left me puzzled (not unlike where I was at in playing the game).

At Long Last – Making it Through Cloud Cats’ Land

I took a break from playing the game after seeing the Steam forum posts. Eventually, I returned to the Cloud Cats’ Land because I wanted to finish the game before penning my review. I got stuck yet again, and ended up using a written guide and a video playthrough to get me through. That combination got me to the end of the story.

I continued to enjoy the art style, but the logic of some of the puzzles got even more arcane as I approached the ending of the game. The clues when clicking on items were unhelpful or obscure to the point where even when I happened upon the right combination of items I didn’t necessarily see how the clues I’d been seeing would have brought me there.

Shiny Things

• Cats! Lots of fluffy cats!
• Charming art style
• Papers with notes to guide players through the story

Not Shiny Things

• Several clues rely on moon logic
• Could possibly use another level of difficulty or an expanded hint system
• Developer’s forum communications
  

Cloud Cats’ Land – Pretty to Look At, Frustrating to Play

Overall, I finished the game feeling a bit deflated, despite setting out excited to explore Cloud Cats’ Land. My brain wasn’t making the connections for too many of the clues and item combinations, and each session the gameplay devolved into a frustrating click fest until my hands had to stop. I generally like to just look for individual hints to get me past tough spots in puzzle games, but by the end I just went step by step through a guide in the forums to get through the final chapter.

If cute point and click games are your jam, and you don’t mind a bit of moon logic… this game might suit you. For me, it dropped with a thump on the ground. Finally finding a combination of objects that worked together was often just a sense of relief to get past a hurdle, rather than the satisfying feeling of deducing the solution to a perplexing puzzle.