Cattie Review

Precision platformers are a dime a dozen, though for our money the breakout game Super Meat Boy still reigns supreme, Cattie, from EastAsiaSoft, attempts to ape the feel of Meat Boy, albeit in far simpler terms in both style and challenge. It’s a fun enough way to spend an hour, but there’s a bit too much of a reliance on awkward obstacle placement that is at odds with the slightly stilted gameplay feel, as well as some levels that all but play themselves.

It really doesn’t get much simpler to play – d-pad to move, A to jump, and X to swipe an attack. Each level is a brisk affair, ranging from 5 to 30 seconds, and the titular Cattie moves fairly quickly as well, meaning we blitzed through the fist dozen or so levels without realising it.

Hazards take the form of spikes, lasers, water, or one of several enemy types. These can mostly be ignored by jumping over them, though some are more fiddly to best than others. A single hit causes Cattie to die, albeit with no live system in place death is more of a mild set back than an actual punishment.

Occasionally we’ll need to swipe our paws to hit an enemy, but this means Cattie stops in place. Even in the short runtime I found this annoying, all too often just missing a swipe by a few pixels, leaving us open to being hit ourselves. Jumping and attacking ares better as Cattie keeps moving, but this isn’t always an option.

By the time we’re at level 30 and above there is a slight increase in challenge, but at no point would we say it was in any way a hard game. Infinite tries mean we can just keep going at any sight setbacks, and that the levels whizz by in the blink of an eye makes them feel even easier. Some even get mid level checkpoints that feel like an addition because they felt they had to, rather than them being needed.

It’s not a big challenge then, especially compared to its peers, but while it lasted we still had some fun with Cattie. Some of the level layouts are at least nicely designed, and other than attacking Cattie controls fairly fluidly. There’s also a nice (small) twist once we beat level 50, and the next 50 levels might just look a bit familiar to players – but we’ll save that for you to see.

One final note; we like the monochrome art style, but the ‘8-bit soundtrack’ can absolutely get in the bin. It’s repetitive guff, so do yourself a favour and stick on a podcast or something while you play.

Conclusion

Players looking for a short, snappy precision platformer would do well to at least entertain the idea of Cattie, even if it misses the mark in a few areas.