Calico

Calico is a cute and colorful community sim with a very definite target market... and a lot of cats.

Calico is a wonderfully weird and whimsical game. With a few tweaks to the rendering of the game, a few glitch fixes, and the ability to customise the controls, it would be an ideal island to visit for a few hours at a time. If only I could get my Animal Crossing island to have the same atmosphere…

Calico is nothing grand or over the top, but that’s the point. This small, quaint game is filled with lovely people and adorable animals for you to pet, collect, and ride as you resolve simple tasks and sell cute pastries in a beautiful little world.

Run and design your own delightful cat cafe in Calico, the latest from the two-person team at Whitehorn Digital. This review covers the release version in anticipation of a critical 1.1 console update. But with that in mind, there's still plenty to love.

A good life sim will suck you into a world you’d never considered before. I’m not a farmer or a full-blown cat lady, yet I gravitate to those worlds in games. Calico in particular represents a realm I’d left untouched before now. What if I owned a baker’s dozen cats, and could also do magic? If you need a cute escape into cats, cafes, and transformation charms, Calico will be perfect. While there are a few troubles to be found on this island paradise, You’ll still have a lovely time.

The worst thing I can say about Calico is that it’s undeveloped. While the entire experience can be described as relaxing, running the cat café isn’t all that interesting and most of the tasks you’ll complete for island residents boil down to the same two or three objective types. Anytime you’re doing something other than those two activities, it’s rather aimless. While its basic premise doesn’t have a strong enough foundation to carry the experience, Calico manages to luck out in that its undeveloped nature and general wonkiness add to its charm rather than subtract from it. The “cute factor”...