Ben Madilynn
If you’re a big cat lover, I advise you to tread with caution with Copycat. But you should also immediately play it because it’s an excellent game. It’ll just make you never let your cat out of sight again. I’m allergic to cats, so rather than clutching my four-pawed pal once I finished and sobbing quietly, I had to dwell in the emotional turmoil Copycat had put me through. This is probably why I want to project it onto as many people as I possibly can so I feel less alone in all this.
At the start of the game, you take on the role of Olive, an elderly lady who is visiting her local animal shelter to adopt a cat. The dialogue between Olive and the shelter worker implies that it is Olive’s first visit to adopt a cat, but the worker comments that she visited a few months ago, a fact that will make a lot more sense later on. As you pick out your cat, you’re told about how they ended up in the shelter and what sort of attitude they have, which I thought was a nice touch rather than leaving you in silence as you stare at the selection. I took this decision seriously, as you play as the cat once you leave the shelter rather than staying as Olive. I opted for a ginger cat that has a striking resemblance to my friend’s cat, Soup (which was a terrible idea given how emotional the story gets), and headed home.
Fortunately, I wasn’t burdened with naming the cat, which is huge a plus for anyone like me who gets far too attached to anything they name. Olive branded me as Dawn, which is nice enough I suppose, and took me home. From the second I arrived, I wasn’t exactly pleasant to Olive. My options as she stuck her hand into the cat carrier were to either bite or scratch her, and as soon as I stepped out of the carrier I wanted to run away from her. Lucky for me, Olive has the patience of a saint and left me on my own to adjust to the new home. Before long, Olive explained she used to have a cat that looked exactly like me, but something happened to cause her to run away and never come back.
But regardless of how much time and patience Olive was prepared to give me, Ihad only one thing on my mind—and that’s escaping. This temptation is the only direction you have at the start of the game, and it becomes overwhelming at points. No matter how hard I tried to stay put, my hand was forced into leaving. But I guess if I could just stay with Olive and continue scratching up her furniture and stealing her dinner, I’d just be playing a cat simulator and Copycat would never have the opportunity to showcase its emotional story, which begins after Olive is involved in an accident and rushed to hospital, leaving me behind.
The illusion of choice plays a big part in Copycat, with it seeming like you have control over what will happen when in reality you don’t. For example, when I was let into the garden for the first time, there was a hole in the hedge from which I could easily escape. But when I tried, something would forcibly distract me and I wouldn’t be able to leave just yet. This gave me just enough time to feel settled in Olive’s house before being thrust into another entirely new environment once I finally could escape, but I wish control wasn’t wrenched from me to achieve this.
Despite the urge to escape that overpowers every action at the start of the game, when Olive is taken to hospital this feeling is completely stripped away. All you can do is sit and wait for Olive to come back, which she does a few days later, but it’s not the same. Her daughter is with her and was furious that I had trashed the place in Olive’s absence. She kicked me out of the house and onto the streets, telling me not to come back like last time because Olive is too vulnerable to look after a pet. It’s then that I realised this is what happened to the last Dawn, and probably the one before that too.
When I was on the streets I felt free.Freedom gets boring after a while, though, so I decided to return to Olive’s with my tail quite literally between my legs, ready to meow at the door until her nasty daughter let me in, but it wasn’t that straightforward. When I got home, I was already replaced by another cat who looked exactly like me, also called Dawn. The relationship we’d built before I left was reduced to nothing, and all I could think about was the shelter worker saying he knew Olive from somewhere. It’s because she was constantly replacing the cats she adopted with identical replicas and pretending that they had never run away.
At times, Copycat feels like a horror game, contrasting with the wholesome yet heartbreaking experience I knew I was signing up for. After all, the life of a shelter cat is far from easy. When I finally took control of Dawn, I very quickly felt nervous about running around corners or exploring new parts of the house, mostly because I didn’t want to encounter Olive. She’s a nice enough character, but the way she constantly towers over you in the house at the start is haunting. Moreso when you realise she’s just been replacing her cats with replicas when they run away. But that’s the point, Copycat is supposed to instill this anxiety within you to simulate the feeling of feeling minuscule in a daunting new environment, and it’s something it achieves perfectly.
Even though I went into Copycat knowing that I’d be in for quite a heartbreaking journey I didn’t realise it would be this rough. There were moments when it felt impossible for me return home, especially after Olive looked at me on the porch and told me that I looked exactly like her cat and told me to be on my way. It takes a lot to make me cry unless an animal is involved, so as you can imagine Copycat became a bit of a tear-jerker. But it has made me want to go to whichever animal shelter is closest and bring home every single cat regardless of my allergies, which is probably the most positivity you can get from a game so sad.
