Cat App Review: Cookie Cats Pop

Today we are reviewing a fun game called Cookie Cats Pop. Even the name is fun, right? Well, don’t be fooled by the fun name and cute kitties, because this game can get quite challenging once you get past the lower levels. At least old SoLT has found it challenging—addictively so.

See, there’s this octopus, and she has these kittens…

The story behind the game, as far as we can make out, involves an  octopus in a hot-air balloon who has snatched some kittens to give them a bath. Your mission is to pop bubbles and rescue the poor little kittens. You do this with the help of five cats—Berry, Belle, Ziggy, Smokey, and Rita. The cats have superpowers, but only if they’ve been fed enough cookies. Popping bubbles of the appropriate color feeds the cats cookies, and gets you closer to freeing the kittens.

Well, you know how these things go: The first levels are so easy and so much fun, and the graphics are just so cute, especially when the little kittens are rescued, plus the cats sing to you.… It’s easy to get sucked in. You learn about the boosters that give you a little edge in bursting those bubbles (we wish we could have Cat Vision and Triple Swap all the time!). Anyway, you start to think you’re pretty good at this game. Then the difficulties begin. You hit some levels labeled “hard” (a couple of these we actually found rather easy—or maybe we just got lucky). You fail to rescue the kittens—the poor little kittens who are being given a bath they do not want! Before you know it, you’ve used all your boosters and run out of lives, so you can’t play any more until your lives regenerate.

But hopefully you haven’t used all your boosters (use them conservatively—unless you want to pay real money for more, in which case, use all you want!). Yes, you can get extra cookies, extra moves, and other help by watching an ad, but it may not be the help you’d hoped for. This is another game that hands out coins sparingly, so it’s not like you can play a bunch to build up some coins and buy yourself some supplies. You can either be frustrated about this or accept it and strategize accordingly. We highly recommend accepting and strategizing because this game is just so much fun, even when you’re stuck on a level.

Our verdict

I guess I’ve already given away our verdict. We love Cookie Cats Pop. Old SoLT looks forward to the time she can spend playing each evening. She has “watched” quite a few TV shows with no idea what is going on because she is so busy popping bubbles and freeing kittens. Yes, some of the levels are frustrating, and she’s been stuck with no more lives quite a few times (translation: “every evening for the past two weeks or so”). But there’s always tomorrow, when she’ll have a full set of lives again. If you happen to be better at this sort of thing than old SoLT (and really, this would not be difficult), there are now 1,000 levels for you to play, so this game could keep you busy for a little while. Old SoLT is currently stuck at level 93. We doubt she will ever get anywhere near level 1,000.

Cookie Cats Pop is created by Tactile Entertainment and is available for iOS and Android devices. We played on an iPad and had no trouble at all with gameplay. The game is free to download, and you can play for a long time without spending real money.

You can also follow Cookie Cats Pop on Facebook and Instagram.

Highly recommended!