Little Kitty, Big City
Little Kitty, Big City
Game
Game2021
Secret Government
Developer GameTrek
Global strategy game about secret societies. You’ll lead the Brotherhood - an organization that juggles the whole world. The key feature of the game is the manipulation of powers. Instead of giving direct orders, the Brotherhood provokes countries into doing what the Brothers want. From the Steam store page
161 reactions from 2 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky) · newest Aug 16, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
41
Mixed
65 positive · 93 negative
95% range 34–49%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 65 | 93 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
3 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
Steam's own rating
Mixed
155 of 299 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 161 · most liked firstGame concept is good and the potential is there. Here is the thing though: You need to make the game more secret government and less brotherhood battles. I understand the idea behind other factions competing but the game becomes dominated by these battles against other brotherhoods. You spend more time focused on the other brotherhoods and less time meddling in international affairs. Either nerf the competing brotherhoods, or in the very least, provide players the option to either disable…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has a lot of potential. However, it is clearly an Early Access game that the developers released without declaring it to be Early Access. Even within an hour and a half, I encountered multiple game breaking glitches and bugs. I've restarted the tutorial 3 times now and am stopped by various ingame errors. I love the concept. I hate this particular execution of it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really want to like this game, and in a lot of respects I do. I actually wish Steam had a middle option between the binary of recommend: yes/no, and the last thing I want to see is the devs give up on this due to negative feedback. However, I'm sure most people would be disappointed by the game in its current state, so "no" it is. It's a great concept and it has a lot of promise, but the game is incredibly game breakingly buggy and there are some very obvious gaps where development just…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →12/1/20 - Picked up Secret Government again and gave it another chance. It won't even start now. I'm done with it. The old review from when I could somewhat play the game is below. Secret Government looks and plays well enough, although the loading times are long and it runs a little bit choppy sometimes. No CTDs in just over an hour of play. The way you can bring your brothers along and promote them is nice. I enjoy things like that. However, the save feature doesn't work properly. When you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Played just under an hour so far all in the tutorial campaign. The good - It works! The basic gameplay loop is fun and compelling, the UI isn't amazing but does what it has to, and the subject matter of the game and the gameplay work well together. Still in the 1600s and I feel like the founder of the illuminati! What I'd change - (1) 1C needs a native speaker of English who can write well to review **every line** of text (fortunately for their bottom line, finding this kind of talent…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As others have mentioned, the UI is not equal to the amount of information you need to track, making getting the information you need tedious and take too long. Example: What to convert a member of the government? You can bribe, intimidate or persuade each government official. You can have up to 6 masters that can do so. The game will only show you the success rate of one master preforming one type of conversion at a time. That means to see who has the best chance of conversion, you have to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is great, even with the bugs.. and there a lot of bugs. Recently I managed to industrialize Russia, the year was 1777. We had a booming, unrivaled economy, more prestige than the papacy and a stronger military than Portugal. Even the aristocracy was happy. It was a Utopia, and it broke the game. But even with the calculation bugs that resulted, we Russians settled New York and Louisiana. It was glorious. Cold war averted, all Americans already spoke Russian. No need for the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →You spend so much time defending against other brotherhoods that you can't do any of the other features. I wouldn't recommend at this time until the enemy brotherhoods are nerfed a bit Additionally, once a save game is loaded you cannot zoom in or out or move the map around
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Let me level with you: this is a thinking person's game. Though its aesthetics reminds one of the Europa Universalis games, if you lack the patience to tackle your goals in a subtle, clandestine way, you will suffer. Unlike the EU games, you cannot simply go up to a ruler and order them to go to war with another country, nor can you simply go to the citizens and order them to support your newly created political party. In fact, it is best if neither are aware of your existence at all as they…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really want to like this game. And in fact, while playing the tutorial, I could really see myself enjoying it. The problems however, are at present too large to recommend this game. There are two core issues: the game is too shallow to provide a lot of long term fun; after you've beaten the tutorials and play the full game, you'll realize there just isn't a lot there to do. Most of what you're doing involves just sorta clicking on something and waiting for things to happen. It's not…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I read a lot of the reviews for this game before purchasing. I also watched some of the few available youtube videos. So I knew what I was getting into. This game is obviously a work of love, the programmers are competent and have a great solid concept here. The problem is accessibility. I love convoluted deep strategy games, bring on the Dwarf Fortress, the Aurora 4x and any Paradox grand strategy game and I'm in heaven. Being this type of person, the confusion and convolution of this game is…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I've been following development from early access when it was first on sale and there are a lot of great things about this game. Being the secret hand of government, influencing the course of a nation, of history etc and it can be really fun tying in those game mechanics that result in influencing the course of a game by your hand but the thing that continues to bug me. Especially, now that the game has been fully released, is the total disregard to accuracy in any of the playable time periods.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm about 15 hours in and so far.... I'm in love. In fact, it's been years since 'grand strategy' felt this fun for me. The basic gist is that you build and maintain a shadow government. An Illuminati. A 'Brotherhood'. And you're subtly pulling the strings of countries far more powerful than you... While evading detection, you're manipulating culture, economics, criminals, the military, immigration, royal weddings... All kinds of stuff. More buttons and dials than you can imagine. And there's…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It was decent at the start, but it's frustrating when you give the player missions and then throw so many sliders and tabs at them without any explanation on what they all do. Assassinate a party leader? Cool, where's the button to do that? Probably buried in all the tabs and clickable portraits. It's a cool concept of a game and I'm open to changing my review in the future as it gets more developed.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i only have 5 hours in the game so far, but I am enjoying the game. there are a few things that I would like to see addressed. One of the things that I was disappointed about was the free-roam mode. I thought the game was about building a secret organization the free-roam mode starts you with a full leader cast as well as a full row of initiates. The FPS of the game also suffers quite badly sometimes, and this might impact the response of the mouse and keyboard because it doesn't always pick up…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game abandoned by Devs. Last update from them in 2022, shouldn't have left early access. Good concept, lack of tutorials and poor VA work are major draw backs.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is about what I expected of a $20 early access game, it's a little buggy, clunky, needs kinks ironed out, and straight up needs more development (but of course that is why it's in early access and not released). I can see alot of promise here, there is a very complex system here allowing you to manipulate the economy, demographics, political parties, international relations, and so on of any given country. With enough time and effort any state is putty in your hands. This game is still…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you enjoy Paradox games or Sid Meyers and you're looking for something new, give this a try. It has a unique flavor and quite a few moving parts to keep track of. A great base game with plenty of room for expansion into other time periods, Secret Government has all the makings of a long-running, dare-I-say "cult-classic", game series.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I try to sum up some positive and negative aspects. Positive: the game and the ideas behind it are really original. This game has a lot of potential and can become a really nice one if developers continue working on it. Mechanics are very complex and interrelated at some point which makes the game more interesting. Cons: The game is really, really buggy and it is clearly unfinished. They got the game out of "early acces" recently but I dont know why. There are a lot of similarities with…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game was abandoned, and isn't even functional. They messed up their math in multiple spots and your ledgers do not give accurate numbers, and some numbers that read negative are actually positive, and vice versa. Literally would not be worth playing even if free.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is abandoned by devs in early access. Unpolished, unfinished, ton of bugs and problems. Do not buy.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →No updates since 2022. Cool concept, doesn't quite do anything of note well. foundations are there. they just refuse to build.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Looks so promising, but is so bad. Don't get baited, Devs have basically abandoned the game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Unfortunately, Secret Government is one of those games that probably looked better on paper than it turned out to be in practice. It looks similar to Europa Universalis, although the game mechanics are different and I'm not keen on them - they're too abstract and pretty unrealistic, with countries declaring war on others seemingly at random and with no warning that it’s likely to happen. Gameplay seems to be more a matter of stopping and/or converting rival cult members than it does actually…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Summary: 2/10 - A delight for masochists which look fondly on the patchless era of the 80's and early 90's Secret Government is a game in a niche which is rarely filled and stands among hidden gems and giants like "Evil Bank Manager". That's about as close to greatness this game will ever come... being mentioned in one sentence with a game like EBM. This game encapsulates the idea of overengineered and underdelivered, ideas over substance. It wants to incorporate all parts of a grand strategy…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dead game. Abandoned and left to rot.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Tried to play it, only for a few minutes if I'm being fair, but the tutorial is unintelligible, both in content and in plain English. The UI is indecipherable, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing nor are any of the options explained. I've played a lot of Paradox games so I felt like I would be able to stroll into this and eventually figure it out, and maybe if I stuck with it longer I could have, but this game is ROUGH. Maybe there's something good there, but I'm too old and have too many…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is abandoned, wich is a little sad. but thats the situation, the gameplay isnt anything to write home about and well as stated before, the game was abandoned by the devs. save your money for something else
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Terrible tutorial and UI. I can't figure out how to do anything.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game really needs a better tutorial. I will give it another try later. The controls could use some improvements too.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is abandoned.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great idea but falls down in the implementation. The game is simplistic in that it revolves around a few simple resources to limit your power but in an effort to create balance you're faced with enemies with limitless power. It feels a little like they've built the game around a narrow focus group of early players which has created layers of needless complication instead of depth.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is very deep and fun.But i must say AI is very unbalanced.They can use acolytes while i restricted with 6 people to operate.And they are so aggressive it's almost impossible to catch their speed.Most of the time i spent my time to kill or capture enemy agents instead managing countries.And i think AI must be less agressive.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I put so much faith in this. Enjoyed the concept, tried to get into it and learn the ropes for a while. Unfortunately, the developers didn't fix key problems with the game and eventually abandoned it. It's a pity, because grand strategy games focused mostly on espionage do not exist.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wanted to like this game. I really did. Instead what I found was a tutorial that maybe covered a teeny tiny part of the game and pretty much left you to figure out everything else. I have no idea what I'm doing and there doesn't seem to be any in-game way to get some assistance, and the interface itself is confusing as all hell. I guess there's third-party Youtube tutorials but I really shouldn't have to resort to that to learn the bare basics of a game. Maybe sometime down the line the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Amazing potential. Terrible tutorial. Limited gameplay. Layout and experience is clunky. Unrealistic, unrelated and limited options to learn, improve and play. I tried my best to play and give the game a chance, but after 8 hours, I gave up. Too late for a refund.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So i choose to play the america scenario, i choose to help america declare independence, and i choose the ideological route. One problem, I CAN'T GET MY ORATOR TO AMERICA! To do anything related to undercutting and promoting ideologies and parties, i need the orator, so i need my orator in america. So i try transporting him from europe to america. he runs out of secrecy too quickly. i try sacking my current orator and promoting some rando neophyte to orator, but i need the worshipful master for…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Just six hours in so I may need to revise this. This game is amazing because there are so many complex moving parts to consider and affect. I like it because I need a game to work my brain. If you want mindless entertainment - this isn't for you. It's for people who want to experience the complex arrangement of organizing a secret government as best as a game can do it. So, I recommend that you get this if you want to make your mind work.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Update: Updated to not recommended, for now. I've experienced problems most other ppl have mentioned. I see what they really meant now. 1. This game has a serious pacing problem. AI countries expand too fast without logic: starting in 1775, by 1776 Russians have occupied half of France, France has occupied Prussia, England has occupied Naples and Papal State, Austria has occupied half of England. None of those war score, military access restrictions from Paradox games exist in this game, so…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm so disappointed I really want to like this game, and I'm sure I will if I'm ever able to actually play it. My relatively modest rig can play far more demanding strategy games at equivalent graphics settings without any hitching or significant drop in frame rate. The best I could achieve with Secret Government is 1-2 frames per second at best and I got a matching experience with the audio. I love the concept, I love the setting, and I can overlook the little bugs and typos that one would…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A fantastic concept, poorly executed. Poor explanation of game mechanics, frustrating UI. In many aspects, it reminds me of Crusader Kings 2: a lot of menus and notifications, but it can overwhelming quickly. Only difference is that CK2 is a game you can play after a bit of trial and error. But Secret Government? It's just frustrating to deal with. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the devs seemed to have abandoned this title completely. I've been waiting for years for some semblance of good…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is chock full of bugs. There are traces of development that was stopped halfway. It has a really good concept, and I really really want to play it, but the bugs is a let down. The enemy brotherhood has endless numbers of neophyte and will sabotage you endlessly by removing and eliminating your own neophytes without a chance to fight back. Just a small guide if you are playing this: if you want to start a war, you need MUTUAL relation between countries to be below 20, that means you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great promise, just doesn't seem to have been more than half finished. Linux support is still crap. The developers have moved on to other projects maybe because mostly building an interface around a cool idea is easier than actually delivering a balanced game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The concepts and the gameplay are pretty cool, but this game has plagued me with repeated crashes ever since I bought it many moons ago. I picked it back up today (Nov-2-2021) hoping it would be more stable, and was sadly disappointed with yet another crash after less than an hour of gameplay. Two years later (Dec-29-2023), The game still has crashes that make it essentially unplayable. After this long of the problem not being addressed, I'm convinced that the developers aren't making an…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this game is pretty much looks good but has way more potential than what i am seeing here for the price they were asking for, for instance the fact that this is a game that covers the aspect of a secret organization that survives through the ages infiltrating nations and governments but has no research into improving the organization or the capabilities (and i did see something like that in a trailer showing for the game) of it's operatives. i have been playing the tutorials and tried to play a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Wait for further development. It's too laggy too buggy and i can't even continue my save file due to the bug where persons cease to exist.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →While the game has some fairly interesting mechanics and a fairly deep system of statistics for the player to manipulate, the UI design is very much a failure. Despite fairly intricate systems of influence, economy and diplomacy, it comes out to a management game where you're constantly fighting a clumsy UI in an effort to get a clear overview of the things you need to know to make good decisions. Too many icons and not enough text and tooltips for a game with this level of depth. On top of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game seems really deep and complex. So deep and complex that I have absolutely no idea what to do or how to do it. Somthing is happening but it is very difficult to understand, why or how to deal with it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this game was supposed to be the sh*it, being a secret society that gradually takes over multiple governments? you kidding me? ive been waiting for a game like this for ages. But its garbage, and i dont think going beyond early access will vindicate it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I tried this when it was in the first few stages of early access because the concept sounded great. Back then it was stale with not a lot to do and the tutorial just took way to long to get through. I dropped it until they got more work done on it. It now has some progress the tutorial is more streamlined and there are a lot more things to occupy your time so you no longer just wait. I think it can only get better from here if the devs keep at this like they have
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What game in 2021 does not support high resolutions or UI scaling? If you run anything about 2056x1024 get ready for your eyes to pop out of your head trying to read anything on screen. The only thing I can find is it was not a priority during early access, so what does that mean for those of us who waited but still can't play the game due to the extremley small text and UI size?
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is really fun, as has so much potential, there are flaws, e.g. The tutorial needs work and there are some things which are left really unclear, such as how to get a government to import more of a certain good, or to build industry to exploit more of it's natural resources, and most importantly to me how slow the game can be at times, sometimes the days take almost a minute to tick over, albeit that may be more related to my PC than the game itself; but despite these flaws it's a…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →tldr: a fresh, very ambitious and deep strategy game with all the problems that come with that. I really want this to not be abandoned and brought to it's full potential. This game has insane depth and is very fun when things work, but along with that comes the need for an indepth guide or a wiki. And there is no such thing. You have to find out all the deep stuff yourself through testing. And then wonder if you are messing up, or if the systems are supposed to work that way, or if…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →After playing this for a short time, I am so glad this exists. The idea and concept are very good and although others like this may be out there, I haven't seen them. I eagerly await the future of this game and I forsee many hours on this one. I can hear you asking, 'If it is so awesome, why only 4 hrs (or so) on it?' Well... it is nowhere near finished. At the time of my typing this, about 90% of the discussions involve the game being more Mafia Wars than Secret Brotherhood. There is another…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Ill be honest, i can not comment on the gameplay. for the simple reason, that this games interface is just so attrocious, that i just sat there for the entire time searching for buttons, that would allow me to do stuff. Its anything but intuitive and ill be honest again - if a game nowadays has an interface, that is not intuitivly understandable, its a big "no" for me.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is the third and probably last time i´ve installed the game and tried to actually get it, but its just unbearable. There is a bug that just prevents time from progressing. Its not a freeze, because i can still issue orders, enter menues, and so on, but the date just won´t change anymore. Why? No idea, the game does not tell me. Save and load seems to work, but it happens so often, that its just not playable. But the real reason why i have to give this a bad review is the UI. -There are…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wouldn't recommend you purchase this game. It is at once too complex and too simplistic. The mechanisms are too complex and often are difficult to get in, and the history is simplistic, with even leaders being randomly generated. The British government is presented as having a "Jacob" ideology in 1689, the people mean nothing, the ideologies are superficial. The mechanisms are detailed, but too complicated and difficult to understand honestly.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dear dev team, This game changed, and I need a little tutorial to catch up By the way, I still like this game
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really like this game. I've learned it by doing a lot of trial and error. It's fairly complicated and you have to learn where all the levers are and what they can do. You also have to pay attention to the changing information in the panels. For instance the one on estates informs you about their wants and needs plus immigration status, and you have to adjust for them and know where you can go to adjust their situation. There is also an adversary organization wearing red robes that has to be…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm not very far into the game yet, however there's a reason for that. Namely the game continues to crash during the first portion of what's considered its tutorial missions. While that the problem will be addressed by the devs eventually, as things stand at the moment this does not give the game a very good light, in spite of what appears to be a very impressive, and ambitious, political sim. Another problem that I've run into, again with the beginning tutorial, is with the actual, opening…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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