Developed By and Published By: Nostra Games
Category: Puzzle
Release Date: 09.24.26
Price: $12.99
Ghostly Whiskers is a game where you play as a cat who discovers that it’s human owner has disappeared. You wake up in the middle of the night and go on a short 3D adventure. It’s often charming and cozy, but occasionally infuriated me. But because it’s such a cheap game, I can get over many of my complaints. But is Ghostly Whiskers a game that you’ll enjoy?
During the first few minutes, you might be thrown off by the controls. One of your early objectives is to leave the confines of your house. You can crouch, run, jump, and scratch your way across the map. But the controls aren’t smooth at all. When you jump, there’s often a delay that can mess up your timing. Controlling the cat while running also felt a little clunky. Once you’re out of the house and have more space to stretch your legs, movement felt a little better but still quite obnoxious.
But if you like puzzle games, you should grow accustomed to the mechanics after a while. Ghostly Whiskers is basically a mix between Escape Room, 3D Platformer, and mystery novel. The puzzles themselves are actually quite easy too. At the start, I was angry at the lack of direction. The game told you what to do, but didn’t really give you advice on HOW to do it. After about half an hour, I realized how easy the puzzles were.
The game practically holds your hand while you play by always telling you exactly what you’re supposed to do. If you’re an escape room fanatic, maybe you won’t care for this. This is because there isn’t really anything that needs to be solved. The game will tell you what you need to do and probably where you need to go. All you have to do is find the place it’s referring to. I did get lost once and was attacked by a spider, but once I realized what I was doing, I was just going from place to place without any thought.
Imagine going to an escape room and the staff told you what you needed to do every thirty seconds. That kind of defeats the purpose of puzzles, but it lets you focus on the exploration and the story itself. That’s neat because there’s a lot to explore and admire. There’s a bunch of cat-shaped coins scattered across the world that you can collect and trade in for hats. You can also find spots to dig up additional hats. This doesn’t really serve a purpose, but if you love fully completing games, you’ll enjoy collecting everything.
The world itself also looks great. The games cover image does it no favors. I wasn’t too interested by that image, but the 3D models and environments actually look great. I was surprised by how good the first house looked and there’s always a subtle horror vibe with the lighting and colors. It’s just an all around eerie experience with some charm.
Overall, it’s a decent game. It’s a short game that can be quite difficult if you can’t get a hang of the controls. But it’s well-priced, has some great visuals, has a decent story, and has a few spooks here and there.
6/10