Ship’s Cat Review: A Cruise Drowns into ‘Glowy’ Horror

Somewhere midway through Ship’s Cat, I found myself asking, “How did I get from this… to THIS?” What began as a lighthearted, almost cozy experience quietly transforms into something far more unsettling. That tonal shift (unexpected, deliberate, and surprisingly effective) is the most remarkable thing about Ship’s Cat, and it’s the axis around which this entire review turns.

When people hear “cat game,” the immediate comparison is inevitably Stray. Beyond sharing a puzzle-exploration structure and a tabby cat protagonist, however, the similarities largely end there.

Stray leans into melancholy and existential dread, while Ship’s Cat presents itself as quirky, playful, and occasionally spooky (at least at first). That distinction becomes increasingly important the longer you stay aboard its luxury cruise ship.

Early Gameplay is a Whimsical Cat Adventures

At the outset, Ship’s Cat feels simple and lighthearted. You are a cat brought onto a massive, opulent cruise liner as an organic pest control. Passengers scream, you arrive, and a few unfortunate mice meet their end under your paws. It’s simple, even charming.

Between jobs, the game encourages playful interactions with the environment: sliding down a water slide, hopping across a children’s indoor playground, or spending an absurd amount of time playing mini-golf.

Even these distractions have teeth. Get your golf ball too close to the hole and a rat will burst out of hiding to steal it (unless you deal with it first). Moments like this establish the game’s early tone: whimsical, mischievous, and self-aware in its absurdity.

Adding to this atmosphere are the NPCs, the passengers and crew you overhear as you roam the ship. Their conversations aren’t profound nor emotionally engaging, but they’re entertaining in their sheer obliviousness. People argue about trivialities, misunderstand situations, and generally behave like fools. It’s easy to understand why cats, in general, have little respect for humans.

Eventually, though, the novelty of chasing mice begins to wear thin. Just as repetition threatens to set in, Ship’s Cat introduces tasks that feel well beyond your original job description. Not just as pest control, but as a cat.

Evolving Challenges and Shifting Tone

The game provides no HUD, no quest markers, and no explicit objectives. New tasks reveal themselves through intuition or by listening closely to NPC conversations. It’s subtle, sometimes even opaque, but it significantly enhances immersion and complements the game’s exploration-focused design.

Some of these tasks are undeniably unrealistic. At one point, you’re expected to activate water sprinklers inside a ventilation room to extinguish a fire. The crew can’t access the area because the door is locked, and they’re too concerned about maintaining the ship’s reputation to raise an alarm.

While this stretches believability, it’s a welcome change of pace from routine pest control. More importantly, it introduces new layers of challenge, and the realization that your cat is not invincible. Environmental hazards can kill you, and the stakes quietly rise.

Then, without much warning, Ship’s Cat changes again.

The whimsical tone gives way to something closer to psychological horror. Rats and mice no longer scatter at your approach. They become aggressive, moving in groups and actively attacking you. You begin noticing oversized paw prints which are clearly rodent, but far larger than any you’ve seen before. Following them leads to a grim discovery: a dead man.

From this point forward, the game sheds much of its original structure. You still kill mice when you can, but they are no longer passive obstacles. In many situations, running away becomes the smarter choice, which I can say is a humbling experience for any self-respecting cat. The sense of safety you once had aboard the ship is gone, replaced by tension and uncertainty.

The plot unfolds in directions that are genuinely unexpected, and it remains engaging all the way through. Interestingly, the game’s marketing material does little to communicate this tonal shift. While that may feel misleading to some players, it appears intentional. By hiding its darker half, Ship’s Cat allows players to discover it naturally. In practice, this approach works.

Technical Issues and Bugs

Unfortunately, the game’s most persistent antagonist isn’t a rat or some unseen horror. It’s the bugs.

Ship’s Cat may be new to PlayStation, but it originally launched in Q2 of 2024. Despite the time between releases, noticeable jank and technical issues remain unresolved. To be clear, some level of glitchiness is expected given the game’s scope and indie status. However, several issues cross the line from tolerable to actively frustrating.

There are moments where progress becomes impossible. Climbing through a vent can suddenly eject you off the cruise ship and into the ocean. Elevator buttons occasionally become completely inactionable. In these cases, the only solution is to restart the game and reload a previous checkpoint. At this point in the release cycle, these are no longer forgivable inconveniences as they undermine the experience.

Beyond bugs, there are also missed opportunities. One particularly striking example occurs in an aquarium room containing a great white shark, which bursts open flooding the area (by whom, I won’t spoil).

I fully expected a tense sequence where I’d need to swim to safety before the shark reached me. Instead, once the aquarium shatters, many of the assets fail to load, resulting in an oddly empty, anticlimactic swim. It’s unclear whether this was intentional or the result of technical issues.

Final Verdict: Good

Despite its flaws, Ship’s Cat is a bold and memorable indie experience. Its willingness to betray its own premise, shift genres mid-game, and trust players to piece things together on their own is commendable.

If its technical issues were addressed, this could easily stand among the best short games under 5 hours of recent years. As it stands, it may fall short at times, but the journey is rewarding.

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