Cat App Review: Cat Condo

Today we’re pleased to bring you our brief review of a cute app called Cat Condo.

In this game, you start off with a small cat condo with a little white kitty cat on each of its platforms. You combine two white kitty cats to create a gray kitten. Then you combine two gray kittens to create a sneaky cat, two sneaky cats to create a Japanese bobtail … and so on, combining cats at higher and higher levels to create new breeds. As you progress, your condo grows with the addition of more and more platforms to accommodate all those cats.

Here are just some of the 40 cats you can unlock in Cat Condo.
The condo grows as you reach higher levels.

Empty platforms will automatically fill with cat carriers holding white kitty cats, and sometimes you’ll get a surprise cat—a sneaky cat, say, instead of the white kitty cat. If you watch an ad, you can upgrade your surprise cat. You also earn coins that you can use to buy higher-level cats so you can progress to the new breeds more quickly. But each time you buy a cat, the price of that type of cat goes up. And of course you can spend real money to make the game go faster.

Cat Condo is a lot of fun at first, as you get to the new breeds quickly. But then it starts to take a long time to create the high-level cats needed to unlock even higher-level cats, and honestly, combining tons of white kitty cats into gray kittens into sneaky cats and so on and so forth gets old after a not very long time. There are 40 cats you can unlock, and after about three weeks of occasional play, we have only gotten to number 15 (a really cute American bobtail).

At least as far as we’ve found, there isn’t much strategy or challenge to this game, so it doesn’t take a lot of concentration. That makes it good if you want something cute and easy to occupy your hands while you watch TV or whatever (since you humans can’t seem to do just one thing at a time these days). But if you want something more engrossing, this is not that game. Still, Cat Condo is mildly distracting, and old SoLT finds it relaxing to check in for a few minutes in the evening to work toward unlocking the next cute cat. Maybe someday, far in the future, she’ll unlock all 40!

Cat Condo is available for iOS and Android devices. We played on an iPad.

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good app; two paws is for a great app. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

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!

App Review: Simon’s Cat—Crunch Time

Today we bring you our review of a relatively new match-3 game: Simon’s Cat—Crunch Time. We love Simon’s Cat, so we have been looking forward to trying this game. Turns out it is really cute and very easy to learn, but on the levels labeled “Hard,” they are not kidding!

Easy to start…

In Crunch Time, you are basically taking a trip through a series of backyards and fields. To progress through the levels, you solve match-3 puzzles by connecting strings of colorful cat treats. The puzzles present different scenarios. In one scenario, your object is to feed the cats by collecting a certain number of each kind of treat. In another, you match treats to collect the fish crackers hidden underneath them. There’s another where you feed a dog, and one where you collect acorns to throw at a squirrel.

Of course it starts out super-easy. But pretty soon you reach the levels that allow you only a certain number of moves to complete your objective. If you run out of moves before you’ve fed all the cats or whatever, you lose a life. (You start with four lives; if you use them all up, they will regenerate over time.) You can also do a “Level Rush,” in which you try to complete a certain number of levels within a time limit. And of course you can compete with other players, but we aren’t into all that, so we don’t pay any attention to it. C’mon, we mainly want to see the cute cats and have something to do during commercials while we’re watching TV, right?

Old SoLT made this video of herself playing one of the early levels. Looks easy, right?

But then it gets more difficult…

This is a shot of the early part of your journey, when things are
pretty easy. We love the little scenes you come across as you
advance through the levels.

There are boosters you can use to help you clear a level (by clearing a whole row for you, for example), but be careful how you use them. Old SoLT squandered her boosters on some levels just because she wanted to get through them quickly, but now she is stuck on level 53 and has no boosters to help her (there are videos on YouTube about how to get past level 53, so she is not the only person who has this problem). She also doesn’t have enough coins to buy any more, and it is really not that easy to get coins. You get them for achieving certain things (“complete level 50,” for example), but these don’t come along too often, and they will typically get you only two, three, or maybe five coins. A booster costs 70 coins. Yes, you can use real money to buy things, but we rarely do that in games, at least not this early into a game. You can also earn coins and boosters by watching ads—1 coin or 1 booster per ad, but everything you want to buy costs 70 coins (thought that was worth repeating!).

But we didn’t come here to talk about money. Our real point is that if you want to get very far in Crunch Time, you need to pay attention to what you’re doing. You need a strategy. This is a simple game to learn, but on those levels labeled “Hard,” be prepared to put your little gray cells to work. (BTW, “little gray cells” means your brain cells—just in case you’re not familiar with Poirot, or brains.) And if you get to a point where you are out of boosters and low on coins, well, you are pretty well stuck with playing that level over and over until you either get it or give up.

Our verdict

At a much higher level than we're at now, you'll come
across this neat crop circle along your journey.

This is a fun game and we do enjoy playing it—we love the graphics!— but we think it could be tweaked to enhance the fun factor. We like that Crunch Time is challenging—it would be boring if there were no challenge to it—but we wish you could accumulate coins more quickly so you’d at least feel like you had a chance of being able to buy boosters when you need them. We feel like we’re being pushed into buying stuff to continue with the game, and that annoys us. That’s often THE thing that makes us stop playing a game. We’d like to go back and replay some of the lower levels to earn coins (that's what we do in other games), but that’s just not how this game works; we’ve been playing lower levels for a few days now and have earned exactly zero coins.

So, we regret that we can only give Crunch Time one paw up. This saddens us, because we wanted to love this game, but the deal with the coins is just too annoying. (While writing this review, old SoLT has used up all four of her lives—again—on level 53. Each time, she is just one or two moves away from getting that stupid mole!)

Details

Simon’s Cat—Crunch Time is published by Strawdog and is available for iOS and Android devices. We played on an iPad. The download is free, and you can make in-app purchases. 

App Review: Pet Vet Doctor: CATS Rescue

We had high hopes for this app that promises you will be able to care for virtual sick kitties. Our hopes were somewhat fulfilled, as the game has several good points.

How to play

Using the stethoscope to diagnose a cat.

Here are the basics: You choose a cat to care for. Unless you buy the full version ($7.99) or buy individual cats ($1.99 each), you can choose from a black cat or a seal-point Siamese. Your task is to examine the cat to see what is wrong with her. You have four ways to examine the cat: a glove, a magnifying glass, a stethoscope, and an x-ray machine. You use each of these to check the cat, and when you find the problem, you’ll get a little message saying you’ve diagnosed him with a cut, a broken bone, high blood pressure, or what have you. Then you get to treat the injury with disinfectant and a bandage, or pills, or a cast. Once the cat is taken care of, you give him a little gift and take a picture, which you can share to Facebook, e-mail to someone, or just save to your device.

It's fun, as far as it goes

Now, I’m not going to say that this isn’t enjoyable, because it is. The first few times you do it, it’s fun to examine the cats and learn the different ways to treat them. After those first few times, though, you’ll figure out that you’re seeing the same two cats over and over (yes, the names change, but I know you’re pretty smart, so you will not be fooled by that). Yes, you can get the full, ad-free version for eight smackaroos, but purrsonally I think that is a bit much for a game that seems to offer no challenge beyond treating the same few injuries on the same few cats over and over. The game would be better if there were some way to advance to do gradually more difficult things.

A cat we healed. She had a broken rib.

An app for young aspiring vets

That said, we think Pet Vet Doctor could be a good app for a younger person who wants to be a vet. It’s neat how you hold the stethoscope over the cat’s chest and feel the heartbeat, and putting bandages on is fun. The graphics are good, and we got a kick out of the balloon release for each cat you heal. For a kid who’s going to play this game a lot, the price tag might be reasonable. They might enjoy having access to many more gifts to give the cats and filling up their device with pictures of cats they have healed. Old SoLT herself would have been totally into this when she was 12 or so. But at 40-something, not so much.

Pet Vet Doctor: CATS Rescue is available for iPhoneand iPad.

Mildly recommended.

App Review: Cat Hotel

Ever thought it might be fun to run a hotel full of cats? Well, oddly enough, there is an app called Cat Hotel in which you get to do just that, and She of Little Talent and I have played it for a few weeks so we can tell you exactly how much fun it is.

In the game, your job is to feed and water the cats, keep the litter box clean, give each cat a medical exam and sometimes some medication, and groom and play with the cats. In return, you earn coins that you can use to buy new things for the hotel. There is a slight learning curve at the start, but once you’ve got the routine down, the game is very easy to play.

Fun interactive play

Our favorite part of Cat Hotel is that you don’t just press a button to do things. To groom one of the cats, you grab the brush (virtually, of course) and then brush it across the cat’s fur. To play with a cat, you choose a game (feather-wand toy, laser pointer, or a game where the cat gets to smash a series of items on a shelf), and then you have to interact with the game correctly or else it won’t work and you’ll end up with a disappointed cat. For example, to play with the feather wand, the game will show you a pattern to trace across the screen. If you do it correctly, the cat gets to chase the toy. If you do it wrong, the cat just gets confused. The patterns range from a straight line to a W. Old SoLT messed up the straight line more than once, so don’t assume this will be easy!

A few downsides

The interactivity was our favorite part of Cat Hotel, but we do have a few not-favorite parts. First, on our iPad, the game tends to crash every time we hit the icon to put the guest cat to bed for the night. This is more than a little bit annoying. Also, while the cats are cute and it’s fun to play with them, it quickly begins to feel like you are doing the same things with the same few cats over and over again. You can buy lots of decorations for the rooms, as well as upgraded toys and even different cat breeds, but we found that the game got boring before we accumulated enough coins to buy much.

We wish there were more of a management challenge to this game and/or more variety to the things you get to do with the cats. For example, keeping track of three cats at a time (each with slightly different needs) would be more fun than doing the same routine over and over with just one cat at a time. The Cat Hotel description promises that you will be able to watch the cats play together, implying that you will be hosting several cats at a time, but we played every day for nearly three weeks and still had just one cat in our hotel. We think the game would be more fun if it got more varied and more challenging early on.

All that said, old SoLT does enjoy grooming the cats and playing with them. It’s kind of relaxing to play for a couple of minutes at the end of a busy day, she says.

Cat Hotel is free to play, but you can spend real money on coins to buy new stuff for your hotel. The game is available from Google Play and the App Store.

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good app; two paws is for a great app. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

App Review: Cat Simulator

We weren’t sure what to expect from an app that promises to simulate a cat. If you have cats, you’ll know what I mean. Cats sleep a lot, and when we’re not sleeping, we’re gazing out a window or sitting on something soft and meditating. That would not make for a very exciting game. So what does Cat Simulator do?

Breaking stuff

Basically, you are a cat and your goal in life is to break stuff. You get points for breaking stuff, and if you earn enough points, you open a new level, where you can break more stuff. You also collect coins, which you can use to upgrade to different, more powerful cats, including a baby cheetah, a mummy, and a Mighty Cat (basically, if the Incredible Hulk were a cat, he’d be Mighty Cat). This game can be played in multiplayer or single-player modes. We played as a single player.

Fun? Yes! Cat
Simulator is a fun game
with great graphics.

At first, we were not impressed. Because cats in real life do not go around constantly breaking things (see opening paragraph). But as we played further (and got better at the game), we realized it’s fun to break things. We’d break a bunch of vases and then look around for more things to break. We’d look at a microwave and wonder, How can I break that?

Beyond breaking stuff

Okay, there is more to Cat Simulator than a cat breaking stuff. Each level presents you with a new scene: the downstairs of a house, the yard, another house, a market, a restaurant. Your goal is to earn as many points as possible within a set time. You get points for breaking things, but you also get to do things like open refrigerators, fill bathtubs, and (our favorite so far) knock a human out with a pool ball. The game also records your romps through breakable objects so you can replay your exploits and share them with friends.

Of course, with each level, it becomes more difficult to rack up enough points to move on. This means you have to create a plan: What combinations of things can you break to earn big points?

"Bond. Fluffy Bond, 007." Cat 007 is just one of
many cats you can play with.

The verdict

I’m glad we gave Cat Simulator a chance, because it becomes more fun the more you play. We played on an iPad and experienced smooth gameplay. We had trouble controlling the cat at first (our poor cat kept turning in circles and falling off things, and it took a while to get the hang of jumping and going forward at the same time). But as we got beyond the first couple levels, we started to appreciate the challenge of the game. The graphics are excellent, and the cats are really cute.

Plus, it’s fun to giggle at the sound of breaking glass.

Cat Simulator, created by Swift Apps, is available as a free download for Android and iOS devices.

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good app; two paws is for a great app. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

App Review: Cat Match

Today we have a brief review of a fun and addictive tile-matching game called Cat Match. In this game, you are the manager of a cat rescue center. As cats come in to your admissions wing, you get them ready for rehoming by playing match-three games to fill in their “attribute bars.” When the bars are filled in, the cat moves on to the cat wing, ready to be adopted. It sounds simple, and we found the game very easy to pick up and play, though there is a bit of a learning curve at the start, when you spend some of your coins to set up your cat wing and stock it with supplies.

Yes, I said “spend some of your coins.” Because besides being a fun match-three game, Cat Match requires you to manage your rescue center. This is not too difficult, though it is easy to spend your coins faster than you earn them, as some cats need vaccinations, neutering, grooming, or pain relief before they can be adopted. Some of them even need x-rays or treatment for diabetes. And of course they need food and bedding.

The match-three portion of Cat Match.

You can also expand your center to take care of more cats, and you can add things like a lab, a vet block, laundry, gift shop, and café. Then there’s the supplies to buy for each admissions wing and cat wing, drugs for the vet block, books for the gift shop, toys for the behavior suite…

Yes, you do have to watch your coins, but no, it’s not too difficult. Of course, if you run low, you can always make in-app purchases. The app is free to download, and we think the additional coins are reasonably priced, at 1,000 coins for 99 cents, 2,500 for $2.99, or 5,000 for $4.99. The best part is that the profits go toward helping cats in real life, through Cats Protection, a UK feline charity that helps over 200,000 cats each year.

You'll be rehoming sad cats like Molly, whose
former owners just got bored with her.

We found Cat Match to be really enjoyable to play. The match-three part is fairly easy, and it’s fun to watch the cat you’re playing for go from looking sad and unwell to happy and healthy. I say the matching is generally easy, but if you take too long at it, the cat will become too stressed and will have to go to the recovery wing until he feels better. So there is that pressure to actually help the cat instead of stressing him out.

And there is always another cat to play for. Often, our admissions wing is full and we’re matching, matching, matching as we try to make room for the new arrivals waiting to get in. We tell ourselves, “They’re not real cats. They’re not real cats,” but still, it’s hard to stop playing.

So, if you love cats, enjoy match-three, and would like to do some light management as an additional challenge, all while helping real cats with any real money you spend, try Cat Match. It's  available for iOS and Android devices.

Highly recommended!

Check out the video:

App Review: Ghost Towns: The Cats of Ulthar Collector’s Edition

We have spent the past two weeks or so completely obsessed with this app, Ghost Towns: The Cats of Ulthar. If you enjoy puzzles and hidden-object games, if you like a game that also gives you a story, and if you don’t mind spending some money (about seven dollars to play on iPad), this one is worth looking at.

The story

At the start of the game, you find yourself in a strange town (Ulthar) where a boy is about to be executed for murder. Your mission: prove the boy’s innocence before he’s burned at the stake. No pressure though.

The boy, Menes, stands accused of murdering an old couple. In this town where cats are revered, Menes supposedly set a bunch of cats on the couple to rip them (the couple, not the cats) to pieces. Sounds grisly, but the game itself is not scary or gory.

The game

You then proceed to solve the mystery by exploring the town and solving a series of puzzles and hidden-object scenarios to “find” useful objects that will help you open the next puzzle or find the next object. The puzzles are located in several locations throughout the town, and at first it’s fun to just look around, solve a puzzle or two, get a couple of objects that you don’t know what to do with…

I say “at first it’s fun” because pretty soon you’ll be trying to keep track of half a dozen objects that may or may not be useful in this or that lock or drawer located in this or that room in this or that building on this or that end of town. In other words, there is a lot to keep track of, and unless you’re smarter than She of Little Talent (which is entirely possible), it may take you a little while to get the hang of it, and it may be frustrating at times.

I think they call this “brain training.”

The paywall, and the verdict

At least for us, we hit the paywall (Get the full app for $6.99!) at the exact moment we were starting to get the hang of things and really have fun again. So naturally we paid up to keep playing because, you know, Menes was counting on us. We did not regret that decision, as we enjoyed getting engrossed in the game for a short while every evening.

We played in “casual” mode so we could get lots of hints along the way, but you can play in a harder mode if you need more of a challenge. (She of Little Talent found casual mode plenty challenging though.)  There is also a guide if you want step-by-step instructions, though old SoLT preferred to randomly peck at the screen hoping to stumble across a new clue (just like real life!).

The graphics are really nicely done—very detailed and hauntingly atmospheric.  There is also a bonus game at the end, which we haven’t started playing yet, but we are looking forward to it. That sudden paywall thing was kind of annoying, but we are glad we hit “purchase” instead of “delete.”

Ghost Towns: The Cats of Ulthar Collector’s Edition is from Big Fish Games and is available for iOS, PC, and Mac.

Recommended!

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good app; two paws is for a great app. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

You may also like:

App Review: Neko Atsume

App Review: Neko Atsume

Socks and Cocoa spend some
time playing and sleeping
on the snow sled.

The kitty-collecting game Neko Atsume is all the rage among, for lack of a better term, cat gamers, and it’s easy to see why. First, it’s available for free download on both Android and iOS devices. Second, it reminds us a lot of what it’s like to try to make friends with actual cats (i.e., the cat controls the pace). Third, it’s just so gosh-darn cute!

How Neko Atsume works

Basically, you get a yard area where you can set out food, toys, and other fun items to attract cats. As you collect cats, you get to learn their personality traits, their favorite objects, and their power level (and don’t ask us what the power level means, because even after weeks of game play, we have no idea).

Photo from the Neko Astume game. The
cats in the yard are Snowball, Spots,
Pumpkin, Ginger, Speckles,
and Marshmallow.

When you first start the game, you learn how to set out some food and buy a toy to put in your yard. Then you close the game, and you wait. Five minutes later you open the game to see if anything has happened yet. Nothing has. You close the game again. This time you wait twenty minutes. Nothing has happened. This time you wait overnight, and when you open the game, you discover that all the food is gone, but still you see no cats. With a little glimmer of hope, you refill the food dish and close the game. And you wait. One day. Two days. Each time you open the game, the food is gone but there are no cats in sight, so you refill the food dish and close the game. You begin to wonder if you’re being punked, if the game developers are sitting somewhere laughing at all the millions of fools who download their app just to refill an empty food dish for no apparent purpose.

Then, perhaps on the third day (and I did say “perhaps,” mind you), you open the game and…

There’s a little cat playing with the red ball! And it is the cutest cat you have ever seen in your life. Never mind that the little cat just makes the same back-and-forth motions with the red ball over and over and over… You can’t stop watching.

Cue the cute…and the happiness

Soon there will be more cats. Soon your yard will be full of cats, all being ridiculously cute. Ridiculously cute. I cannot stress this enough. It is absolutely ridiculous how cute these cats are, and it is equally ridiculous how much happiness they seem to induce in people. She of Little Talent and her mother can both attest to the feeling of happiness that will wash through you when you open the game and see a bunch of little cats playing with the toys you set out for them.

Senor Don Gato is one of the "rare" cats in
Neko Atsume. He enjoys dressing up and
spearing stuffed mice with his sword.

Neko Atsume is a drug, basically. But it’s free and has no unpleasant side effects that we’re aware of, so play on.

The cats who visit your yard will leave gifts for you, in the form of fish that you can use to buy them more stuff. Yes, you can spend real money to buy more fish and get even more stuff for your kitties, but you can absolutely enjoy the game without doing that. If you want to buy more fish, though, the prices are reasonable (four dollars will get you a whole mess o’ gold fish). As in all financial dealings, mind your budget and remember you can have a lot of fun for free.

Once in a while, a cat will bring you a “memento”: a cicada skin, a damp matchbox, a scuffed dime. We haven’t figured out the purpose of the mementos yet, or even if they have one, other than to make you feel all gooey inside because a pretend cat brought you a little present (“Oh, Tubbs, you brought me piece of fish jerky. Thank you!”)

You can also take pictures of your cats and save them to each cat’s album. Then, on those occasions when you open the game and don’t see any cats (yes, this will still happen), you can browse through your album and remember all the good times you’ve already shared with your kitties (cue the happiness rush).

Then there are the rare cats you can lure in with specific items. Billy the Kitten likes the cowboy hat, for example. You can find lists online of the rare cats and which items they prefer, if you want to attract a particular cat. Or you can play like we do, being pleasantly surprised by each cat who shows up.

The verdict

Neko Atsume is not an exciting, action-packed game, but it is a lot of fun for cat lovers. We like that you can play and collect lots of cats for free. And we especially like how, if you’re feeling a little down, you can just watch your kitties for a few minutes and feel better.

Very highly recommended!