Coloured Static Press / Game review / Comedy visual novel
A dog offers career advice. A cat wants the presidency. A cardboard-box factory employee somehow becomes our most reassuring political option. Welcome to the election campaign nobody asked for, but one that occasionally makes a surprisingly persuasive case for itself.
There are games that ease you into their premise. Cat President 2: Purrlitical Revolution has no such patience. Within its opening stretch, Nancy is looking for work, a dog called Don is offering distinctly questionable career advice, and a perfectly ordinary employment problem has become a bid to put another cat in the White House.
None of this is treated as remotely unusual by the people involved. That straight-faced commitment to a ridiculous world is the game’s sharpest comic weapon. Sometimes it hits. Sometimes you find yourself staring at the screen, wondering how a conversation about education policy has become an argument about chew toys for humans.
Our reviewer’s time with the game produced a peculiar mixture of amusement, genuine affection and a growing desire to take a more active role in the campaign. The cats have plenty to say. Whether they give you enough to do is another matter.
Mr. Biscuits has our vote. Probably.
With several presidential hopefuls available, we opted to back Mr. Biscuits, a single father who works at a cardboard-box factory and wants a better future for his daughter, Hallie. In a political field this peculiar, an honest worker talking about education almost counts as a radical manifesto.
Mr. Biscuits gives the story a useful emotional anchor. His ambitions aren’t confined to winning an argument or securing a flattering photograph. The relationship with his daughter adds something recognisably human to a cast that is, somewhat inconveniently for that description, largely feline.
Of course, no sensible campaign lasts very long here. There are embarrassing social-media incidents, awkward family complications, attempts at sabotage and the ever-present danger that someone will suggest a policy that makes the entire party look ridiculous. Rival candidate Fe.Line adds further disruption, while the tensions around Mr. Biscuits’ past relationships gradually give the campaign more substance than its joke-heavy opening suggests.
It would be easy for this to become a parade of disposable gags. Instead, Mr. Biscuits’ route develops a little warmth. The campaign eventually rewards the time spent with these characters, and its personal stakes make the final chapters more engaging than we expected. We won’t spoil the election result here.
A manifesto of human chew toys
The game’s best jokes come when it asks you to participate in the nonsense. At one point, our reviewer faced a choice between lowering taxes and providing chew toys for humans. The chew toys won our support, naturally. Whether this made us a bold political visionary or the worst campaign manager in the country is open to debate.
These moments show why the concept works. Cat President 2 understands the value of delivering a completely absurd proposition without pausing to wink at the audience. The characters behave as though the fate of the republic genuinely depends on it. When a joke lands, that contrast is delightful.
Not every punchline enjoys the same success. Cat puns are almost a constitutional requirement, and their sheer volume means some feel considerably less fresh than others. Our playthrough included conversations that raised a proper laugh and others that inspired little more than a bewildered pause.
Humour is subjective, of course. Anyone who enjoys deliberately daft visual novels may find the relentless commitment to feline wordplay irresistible. We found it pleasant in bursts, but rarely strong enough by itself to carry a long stretch of reading.
We came to manage a presidential campaign. We stayed to debate whether the electorate deserved chew toys. Democracy has had quieter afternoons.
Photographs, cut-outs and an admirable lack of dignity
Visually, Cat President 2 is a very different proposition from the illustrated character portraits associated with many visual novels. It combines photographs of cats, dogs and people with photographic locations, placing the cast into scenes as cut-out figures.
It isn’t elaborate, and nobody is likely to mistake it for a lavishly animated production. Yet the approach suits the writing. A carefully chosen animal expression can give a ludicrous exchange an extra kick, especially when the dialogue is being delivered with complete seriousness.
The result has the flavour of a deliberately assembled collage: strange, direct and unusually memorable. The presentation is part of the joke, rather than simply a budgetary compromise we must politely ignore. That doesn’t make every scene visually interesting, but it gives the game an identity of its own.
The problem with being a campaign manager in name only
The biggest frustration lies in what happens between the jokes. For much of our reviewer’s playthrough, the experience consisted of reading long conversations before receiving two dialogue choices, usually one fairly reasonable and the other apparently drafted during a particularly chaotic cabinet meeting.
That is not an automatic flaw. Visual novels live or die by their writing, characterisation and pacing. Expecting them all to function as strategy games would be unfair. But Cat President 2 specifically casts you as a campaign manager, so it creates an expectation that you might occasionally steer the operation rather than simply comment on it.
Our reviewer wanted more substantial involvement: decisions with a stronger sense of consequence, more opportunities to shape a campaign, or occasional tasks that made the role feel practical. Instead, a great deal of the story unfolded while we watched.
The short chapters help. They keep the campaign moving and make the next development feel reasonably close, which is valuable when the game is so dependent on dialogue. But that brisk structure cannot completely disguise how little agency the minute-to-minute experience sometimes provides.
It is an important distinction for prospective players. The attraction here is eccentric writing and a selection of character routes, not deep political simulation. If you’re hoping to draw up a budget, outmanoeuvre opponents through sophisticated strategy and rescue a debate performance through impeccable planning, this probably isn’t the campaign for you. If you’d rather watch a cat attempt to survive one absurd scandal after another, the ballot paper looks more promising.
Different candidates, but do you want another term?
Multiple candidates provide the game’s most obvious replay incentive. Mr. Biscuits is only one route through its peculiar political universe, and the remaining campaigns offer fresh personalities and stories to discover.
After finishing his storyline, our reviewer began a second run with Kaleidoscope, a famous actor trying his paw at public office. A welcome convenience quickly made itself known: previously seen introductory dialogue could be skipped, allowing us to return to the candidate selection without trudging through the same conversations.
That sounds like a minor feature until you’ve played a visual novel that expects you to sit through its opening every time. Being able to clear the familiar material in seconds is exactly the sort of small consideration that makes repeat routes viable.
And yet, despite appreciating the shortcut, we weren’t particularly eager to launch straight into another complete campaign. The possibility of different stories is appealing; the memory of long stretches spent reading between occasional choices was less so. Replay value on paper isn’t quite the same as an immediate desire to replay.
Final verdict: 71/100
Cat President 2: Purrlitical Revolution is a wonderfully peculiar visual novel that commits wholeheartedly to its absurd premise. Mr. Biscuits’ campaign delivers some unexpectedly warm character moments, the photographic animal cut-outs suit the comedy, and the option to skip familiar introductions is genuinely appreciated.
But the laughs are inconsistent, and the campaign-manager fantasy is much more entertaining in principle than in practice. Too often, we were left reading about decisions rather than feeling involved in making them. For an audience that loves character-led, pun-heavy visual novels, there is plenty to enjoy. For players looking to influence the election beyond the occasional dialogue choice, the experience feels rather less presidential.
Game details: Developed and published by Oh, a Rock! Studios. Originally released on PC in October 2020, with a Nintendo Switch release in November 2026. The assessment below is drawn from the Coloured Static Press team’s hands-on playthrough. Official Steam page · Nintendo UK listing.
This original Coloured Static Press review retains the team’s 71/100 judgement and specific hands-on observations. Major story outcomes have deliberately been withheld to avoid spoilers. Review by the Coloured Static Press team.