Demo Impressions Part 23

Featuring: Cats Around Us: Black Cat, Cats in Cozy Rooms, Flick Shot Rogues, Is This Seat Taken, and Possessions

Anyone order another side of demo impressions? As always, games marked with (*) still have a demo available as of time of posting.

Cats Around Us: Black Cat*

I kind of found that I don’t enjoy hidden object games that much, but this one did grab my interest. Mainly since I saw that you could color in the level like a coloring page, which turned out to be kinda true as you can do that in photo mode with what part of the level you captured in the dedicated square. Anyway, you get to pick three colors you want your game to have. You can pick the color the cat’s outlines become once you click on them, the color of the page, and the color of the filled-in parts that default to black. Then, all you have to do is find all the cats in the level, which has a hint system but it takes a long while until you get another hint. Though, I did find this to be pretty easy. Which I loved about this title. So it looks like I’ll be checking out the other Cats Around Us games.

Cats in Cozy Rooms*

Coming August 15, 2025

I liked this one, though the minimum items required threw me off. This is a really cute game where you’re tasked to decorate the homes of cats. While this demo only includes two cats to decorate for, it’s enough to get a feel for the game. Each client will present you with a letter detailing what they want and what they don’t want. Don’t worry, you don’t have to remember it as the game does break it down to what they want and it’s visible the whole time. Each cat also has their own budget. Basically, each cat will have something thematic that they like, want a specific style of furniture, and will tell you what they absolutely don’t want. And the rest is up to you. From floors/wallpapers to knick knacks, you can put and place anything you think will fit what your cat client wants. Plus, some furniture has some color options. However, while you may feel a job is done, you do need to make it to the minimum item requirement. Which I honestly thought was the maximum amount of items since I happened to skip over it when I was doing the first client (oops).

Once you’re finished and meet all the requirements, you can click finish, get graded, and get started with the next client. If you really like what you did for a client’s home, you can also take a photo. The nice thing is that not only will the UI slide out of the way, but the client will also be in the photo! So yeah, very cute and looking forward to this one.

Flick Shot Rogues*

The trailer for this one looked so interesting and unique that I just had to play the demo. Flick Shot Rogues is a roguelite where it seems like your ship was wrecked and that’s why you’re here. This goes the Slay the Spire map route where, once you get past the tutorial map, be faced with a map with a couple routes and nodes. There’s a node where you can grab an upgrade (which can be for the character themselves or the relic a character has), one you can get a relic (a character can only hold one by the way), an encounter, a campfire so you can rest, a shop, and lastly combat. Combat is the unique aspect here, which was what got me interested. It’s turn based combat, but instead of using cards or actions or tactical-move-by-grid, you flick. Your character, as well as the enemies, are coins with a standee and a health bar on it. The possible characters have different ways of attacking, but the one you start with attacks when they collide with another and the second one I got did an AoE attack. While you do have two characters with you, you can only have one on the field so you have to pick which one you feel is best for the situation.

Anyway, once everyone is placed on the board, you go first and gameplay is very easy. You just click, drag, and aim. Don’t worry, the game does show you a preview of you’re movement as well as your attack radius if you’re playing a character that don’t damage by colliding with an enemy. Once you do your turn, the enemy will then do theirs. But their turn is a bit different as while they can move, they can’t attack that turn. Instead, they set it up so you have a chance to respond. Which definitely helped elevate frustration that could have happened. Enemies do have different moves, like dealing damage on collision or jumping to another spot, but it’s easy to tell what they’re doing. An encounter can have one round or multiple rounds and a round is ended either when you destroy all enemies or if you destroy the golden leader if there is one (and the golden leader can spawn in more enemies). In addition, relics can help you a lot here. Like I got the Barbwire Bramble and that was so powerful. Then, you’re back on the map to choose what path you want to go on and do the nodes.

I liked Flick Shot Rogues way more than I thought I would. I was surprised with the node based map, but I honestly ended up loving the whole flicking aspect of the combat. I was a bit unsure about only having one character on the field at a time, but I do think the game does well with balancing everything. You can technically argue it leans more on favoring the player…but I’m not going to complain. I really liked it out of the gate and stopped the demo early when I was like “yeah I really like this”. So definitely check this out.

Is This Seat Taken

Coming August 2025

This one was such a cute game! I have to admit I wasn’t quite sure how this game would work when I first saw it being announced since I didn’t watch the trailer, but I was intrigued when I saw that it was a puzzle game. So, when the demo dropped, I for sure jumped on it. Is This Seat Taken basically sets you with a task of seating everyone based on their preferences. Whether it’s a bus or an event, each level will have a couple stages as well as some people waiting to be seated. The amount of people you need to sit, and the amount of seats (or standing spots) varies, but each person has their own preferences. Some want to sit by the window, some want to sit with their friend, some want to stand, and so on. However, as the game goes on it does add in other elements to make it harder. Stinky people appear and thus people with the preference of hating stinky people appear. Some people want to talk. Some people are loud. There are kids. There are more, but I won’t dive into each new type that appears. People will also have multiple preferences. Like wanting to be close to something/someone, but not wanting to be by someone stinky. Also, don’t worry, for people that have an area affect (like being smelly or talkative), you do see their area of affect so you know which spots are affected. Some levels even shake it up by having some people stay across stages (as usually, all of them disappear so you can have a fresh puzzle area).

Your goal is to have everyone be happy on where they’re seating. If someone is unhappy, you do get a little tab sticking out of the notepad on the bottom right, but you can technically confirm it once you have everyone seated (or standing). However, this isn’t ideal (plus, what are you doing if you’re not here for the puzzles). You’ll miss out on a star(s), which will miss you out on a perfect sticker on the level selector and you’ll have to redo the whole level to get it. You’ll also miss out on the bonus levels, which unlock when you have a perfect score on that set of levels. I’m not sure if each set will have the same amount of levels, but the Barcelona set has five. And honestly, I liked the bonus level included here. It was a nice challenge as it added in new preferences and types and I liked the theming of it being a wedding.

This demo included the first five levels, plus a bonus level. It was actually a great demo and I was quite surprised by the little story here. I’m definitely going to look out for the full release.

Possessions*

This one was a surprise. This one looks like an unpacking game or a decoration game at first glance, but actually going in (and reading the steam page unlike what I did before downloading this demo) reveals it to be a puzzle game.

This demo goes over the first chapter of the game, containing 11 levels, where you won’t be placing items where they belong, but shifting your field of view so they’ll be where they belong. Each level is basically a room floating in a space where you can spin it around and shift the camera up or down to an extent. So what do you have to solve? Well there are a few objects that are actually out of place and floating in mid air. All you have to do is move the room so your perspective makes it look like it’s sitting where it’s supposed to be and then the item will snap to that spot. You get a three point indicator so you know you’re in the right spot, but slightly off, and you can highlight all of the out of-place objects. The first couple levels you only have one object to align and then it slowly adds more (and don’t worry, you don’t have to find the spot where all of them align as you do it one object at a time). Also, more and more items will be in the level’s room, with the group of levels that take place in the same room starting with simple decorations and slowly getting more items added in as the room gets filled out the more time these characters live there. There is also a story here that plays after certain levels, but there’s no dialogue and sometimes it’s a bit hard to really tell what’s happening.

I liked Possessions so far. I liked the puzzles here and it was pretty easy to figure out where the objects are supposed to be. While I was confused at points on what was happening during the cutscenes, I do like it and like how there’s storytelling with the levels as you see how rooms change over time or seeing how the one level rooms are like.