Cat President: 3rd-Rate Candidate is an amusing visual novel where you assist in running the campaigns of your love interests… who are all cats. A purrfect example of balancing quality and hilarity.

Introduction: In Which I Justify Playing a Silly Game with Romanceable Felines

Many a time has a person claimed that their cat/dog/ferret/pig/rabbit/[insert pet of choice] would do a better job of leading the United States of America than whatever president is currently in charge. As a citizen of said country (albeit not living there right now), I can confirm this to be true. Sadly, this is unlikely to be tested in our world. That is why I am pleased to say that we can at least see the results in the Cat President series. This includes its newest entry, which is titled Cat President: 3rd-Rate Candidate.

Until this point, I had never played a game made by the devs of this series, who are known as Oh, a Rock! Studios. The Cat President series had been on my radar for some time, but I had not gotten a chance to play the first or second games. The good news is that despite being the third in the series, Cat President: 3rd-Rate Candidate (referred to as Cat President 3 from now on for convenience) doesn’t require any knowledge of the previous games. I had a great time jumping in and embracing the chaos without worrying about anything outside of it.

Story: In Which I Summarize a Wild Tail

I should provide some clarification before getting to the story. Cat President 3 gives nice flexibility for your character and the cats they will encounter. You get to pick your first and last name, your pronouns, and the genders of the cats you date. The default name of your character is George Adams, so I’ll call them George through this review, and refer to them and the cats with ‘they’ for the sake of ease. You also get to name your best friend, and since his default name is Thomas, that’s the name I’ll use for him.

The narrative starts with George being dragged to a political fair by Thomas. There they meet six cats that aspire to be the President of America. This makes perfect sense because humans were banned from being in politics due to being morally corrupt. At Thomas’ urging and the incentive of a free pizza from getting second place, George joins a raffle. They wind up instead getting first prize, which is to be the campaign manager for one of the six felines. Though George is displeased at this due to disliking politics, they pick one of the cats and do their best to keep their candidate’s political campaign running smoothly.

After that point, the story diverts wildly depending on the route you pick. There is no overlap to them in terms of an overall narrative. This means you’ll be avoiding repetition after the initial political fair, and it means many more surprises for each narrative. Don’t worry, all of the routes have lots of cat puns and political jokes. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

In all seriousness, the main dividing point for players who like this game and players who don’t will boil down to the humor. I was cracking up at most of the game. If you’re concerned about lack of political knowledge, don’t be. There aren’t many deep cuts and they’re general jokes. Heck, I’m not even into politics that much, and they still made me laugh. This is a world where cats are ruling the United States of America, so the real world’s current state of affairs doesn’t matter. What does matter is whether players like the way the humor is portrayed. Since comedy is even more subjective than most genres, all I can say is that I thought the game was pretty darn funny.

Characters: In Which I Introduce the Catnidates

I know what most of you are saying. “Who cares about the story? I came here for cats! Show me the cats!” Fine, I will! Here are the six fluffballs that you can devote your heart to, along with all of your possibly-limited political experience.

Cardoon: The Vice President who now wants to be President. Don’t worry, they would never try to get anyone killed to reach their goal.
Finkle: A Sharpclaw who hates all other Sharpclaws. Loves being an internet troll despite most assuredly being a cat in real life.
Jelly Jam: An unholy monstrosity that has the head of a cat and the body of a human. Lives for musicals and theatre productions.
Nano: A scientist that does a lot of things FOR SCIENCE! Is never mentioned as being cross-eyed despite looking like they are.
Pollytrix: A cat with heterochromia that acts like they have two different personalities. Their name absolutely does not give away the twist, why do you ask?
Zeus: A super-hero obsessed cat who totally does not have an alter-ego named Superter. It’s just a coincidence they’re never on the screen at the same time.

Each of these cats is a caricature of their interests. What I just listed above encapsulates their personalities without much more depth. That being said, when you follow their routes to the end, they do have some development. I found myself getting way more attached to most of the candidates than I expected. I was particularly fond of Nano, Pollytrix, and Zeus, though Cardoon and Finkle certainly have their moments. Jelly Jam is, I am not kidding, a joke route in a joke game. You would think they’d all be joke routes, yet somehow Jelly Jam takes it to a new extreme. This is not a bad thing; I found Jelly Jam’s route to be extremely funny. I just didn’t care as much for dating them, though that probably also had something to do with their very questionable appearance.

There is one other character that shows up in all of the routes: Thomas. While his roles are varied and can include him being a rival to George, Thomas is consistently George’s best friend. I liked this quite a bit. It’s rare to find friends like that in dating games. Usually a character in that position would be a romantic interest, or they would get pushed aside early on and never seen again. Having Thomas as a good friend throughout is a sweet addition and I want to see that more often in games like this.

In addition to the six stars of the show and your best friend, there is an array of other kitties and humans that show up in each route. These side characters are usually contained to one route each, but they’re certainly memorable despite their short screentime. Give me most one-route minor characters in other visual novels and I’ll forget them within a day. In this game? I’m not forgetting Fang, Funcle Sam, or the Narrator anytime soon, not to mention the rest of colorful cast. Part of this is because the jokes they provide are funny and that makes them stick out, but it’s also helped by the graphical style. See the below section for more details.

Graphics: In Which I Describe the Hilarity of Cut-out Kittens and People in Funny Suits

Most visual novels use drawn art. The Cat President series rejects this idea and uses pictures of real cats, humans, and whatever other creatures show up. The backgrounds are also photos of different locations, and a lot of them have amusing details if you look at them closely. Believe me when I say there are a ton of different character and background pictures. The cats and other animals have one image per critter, and humans have a variety of poses and expressions. They all can blink, something that made it even more amusing to me. If you’re not into the “creepy blinking” though (as the game outright refers to it as), you can disable it in the settings menu.

This art style makes the game all the more ridiculous, and I absolutely love it. Some of this might be coming from my adoration of Hatoful Boyfriend, but there’s something about the clash of realism and absurdity that works beautifully. They give personality to the setting and each character, with the cast being made all the more memorable for each goofy portrayal. While I’d say the writing shows passion for this visual novel as well, these pictures really portray how much fun the dev had making this. Again, this type of humor might not work for everyone. For me, it was fantastic.

Sound: In Which I Enjoy a Chorus of Meows

My guess is that the percentage of people who desire to play Cat President 3 for its music alone is less than the amount of Democrats in Florida. That being said, the music is perfectly suitable for its job. Some of it is quite amusing, especially the bombastic title theme and political fair music. Both of those tracks scream patriotism and would bring a tear to any American’s eye. The rest is mostly made of up mild background tracks to give some pleasant tunes without standing out too much. Each of the six cats has a separate track that plays in their routes, which is a nice touch. I’d say the soundtrack overall does its job without being anything to write home about.

What the sound design does right is the cat meows. The candidates have their own distinctive meows, and that’s what’s really important in a game like this. The screen for your route selection lets you move the mouse over all six quickly to mix up the meows, which I for one thought was true art. There are some pretty good noises mixed into the story as well, such as screeching and hissing that reminds you, in case you somehow forgot, that you are playing a game centered on cats.

Gameplay: In Which I Pointlessly Talk about Gameplay in a Visual Novel

It’s a visual novel. You have choices. You pick the choices you want. Revolutionary stuff. What more do you want from me?

Okay, fine, I can be a bit more specific. Each route has three endings. Your choices will decide which ending you get. This is based on how many ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers you pick. If you select the ‘right’ answer, a pleasant ding will tell you as much. A ‘wrong’ answer results in a low noise of disappointment. This makes it easy to keep track of which answers you will need for the best, middling, and worst endings. The best endings are heartwarming, the middling ones are sweet in their own ways and usually have a funny twist, and the worst endings are horrific. I did not expect to have my player character go through so many awful fates in the funny political cat game.

While I think it’s worth reading all of the dialogue for the different choices, if you just want to see the various endings, you only need to complete one ending for each candidate. The rest can be seen from the main menu if you prefer, as the other two endings you didn’t get per cat will be unlocked automatically. Thanks to being able to save whenever you want and having the skip option for what you’ve already read, it’s easy to choose all the options and ‘traditionally’ get each ending.

Once you get at least one ending for each cat, you will unlock a bonus section. It provides commentary and deleted scenes. This is actually one of the few negative points I’ll give the game. Some of the bonus scenes were, in my opinion, better than what we got! I was particularly endeared to the deleted excerpts from Nano and Jelly Jam’s routes. It’s good that they survived in the form of extras, but man, I’d have loved to seen them in the game itself. The commentary is nice though, and it does explain why some of the scenes had to be cut.

It’s actually difficult for me to think of many flaws in Cat President 3. I suppose I’d say some of the jokes don’t land, but that’s almost always going to be the case, and the majority of them more than hit the mark for me. I did see some typos, and I did run into a small bug during my playthroughs. However, I reported these to the developer, and they were quickly fixed. I was impressed by the speediness and dedication to cleaning these up. In addition, the developer was friendly to talk to and always courteous, making it a pleasure to play and enjoy their game.

There is one more thing I want to briefly address here for lack of a better place to put it. A lot of visual novels that try to be funny seem to think that they can sacrifice quality so long as they get a laugh. Some players might look at pictures of a game like Cat President 3 and think it looks like there isn’t much effort to it. Believe me, that isn’t the case. Not everyone is going to like this game, but it has a lot of care and love put into it. Don’t judge this visual novel by just a quick look at its unorthodox images. It deserves better than that.

Conclusion: In Which I Recommend this Game, Fur Real

Cat President 3 knows exactly what it wants to be and it succeeds in spades. You get to date kitties and make fun of politics. The hysterical images combined with the witty writing make it a heck of a fun experience. One could even call it… the cat’s meow.

Otome Lovers wishes to thank Oh, a Rock! Studios for providing a free review copy of this game.

Abridged review posted on Steam ➞

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