• Price: $8.99 USD
• Developer: Oh, a Rock! Studios
• Publisher: Penguin Pop Games
• Release Date: March 5, 2025

A review code was kindly provided by Penguin Pop Games on behalf of Oh, a Rock! Studios. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning: rated T. Sexual harassment, references to alcoholism & “drugs” (catnip), cat kidnapping, tons of cat puns 😎

In times of great political strife, sometimes you just need something to make you laugh. Oh, A Rock! Studios took this to heart, creating Cat President: A More Purrfect Union, a visual novel that uses cats to parody the U.S. political system.

The story goes that around 20 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that humans could no longer govern due to their extreme corruption. Today, the only “PAWliticians” are cats, and “…the government is a lot more effective this way.”

Your character did not pay attention in her government classes, but her friend drags her to the PURResidential debate, where she’s randomly selected to ask the final question of the night. You ask them what they’ll do for you – the everyday person – as president. After hearing you’d just lost your job, they all offer you a spot on their campaign team.

Instead of having a common route that splits into individual character routes, you get to choose which kitty candidate you’ll work for right away. There are 6 options, with some of them more qualified and more feline than others…

Each playthrough is fairly short, taking me about 30 minutes max to get all 3 endings per cat. There are 20 choices in each route, with different point ranges resulting in the bad, normal, and good endings. I thought it was kind of funny how choosing the “wrong” dialogue option would often cause my character to say the right choice anyway.

While it isn’t incredibly long, I still found myself impressed – and aMEWsed – by the writer’s fairly expansive changes to the U.S. “CLAWnstitution” and PAWlitical system. I laughed at the way they poked fun at these issues, and because it’s meant to be a lighthearted experience, they took care to not court controversy by creating entirely new parties.

Granted, there do seem to be some thinly veiled references to things that have happened in real life politics here and there. But I loved the political cat puns, and they even went so far as to come up with entertaining parody business names as well.

Besides the political subplots, you also get to romance each cat in their route, but it’s not that deep. They address the human-cat relationship issues with a procedure that turns humans into cats or vice versa.

This game is just so ridiculous and strange, and I enjoyed the political shenanigans. I liked the majority of the characters (with the exception of the aptly named Frisky).

Rover is a fun character due to his “secret.” Banders was my favorite cat even though he wasn’t one of the main characters; I was really happy they added more scenes with him. Mrs. Drew, the (human) high school government teacher, also stole the show for me despite her status as a minor character.

Regardless of your favorite cat, once you’ve played through each route at least once (?) you’ll unlock the bonus section, which provides you with some background information about the game’s development, among other things.

They used photos of real animals, people, and backgrounds, which was an interesting design choice that I appreciated. The title cards for each chapter were cute, too. I think they made a lot of smart choices in making Cat President. I did wish they had focused more on the political aspects than romance here, but the game is reasonably priced and makes a nice distraction from real life for a few hours.