The Cat and the Coup is a bizarre walkthrough of major events in the life of Mohammad Mosaddegh, a Prime Minister of 1950s Iran whose nationalisation of the oil industry led the United States and United Kingdom to arrange a coup and oust him as Prime Minister. Sounds super political, especially if you’re an oil-loving, red-blooded American, but the appeal of The Cat and the Coup is that it doesn’t really seem to be batting for any political team or ideology. It’s been called a ‘documentary game’, and while it may lack the detail and presentation to be compared to anything we might associate that with, it’s wacky aesthetic and fascinating presentation keep it engaging.
Only the bare basics are covered – that essentially means everything in the game appears in the first paragraph but this review – but you’re doing yourself a disservice not to install this little slice of artistic vision. The game’s art style consists largely of images pasted in to create a portrait of events and characters; these images vary from simplistic cardboard cutouts to historical paintings to photorealistic pictures of animals. Slap onto this a strikingly minimal soundscape and you’ve got what might be one of the most fascinating storytelling efforts since video games first appeared.
Dylan's Morsels 