Alien Cat Review – A Fun and Short Single-Screen Puzzle Platformer!

Usually, games in a series follow the same genre for each title. However, the Alien Cat series is distinct in that every game is a different genre than the one before or after it. So, when I saw that Alien Cat 2 was on Indie Heroes Collection 1, I was curious about completing the original title before playing more of the second.

For a slightly shorter version of this review on YouTube, please see here.

Gameplay

This first game is a single-screen Puzzle Platformer where you control an alien cat and try to obtain all the little square coins in the level before going to the next stage. Often, doing so involves jumping over spikes, avoiding enemies, and later, inverting gravity and walking on the ceiling!

This latter technique is a big part of the game, and a bit easier to do than what one may initially expect. Basically, you push up or down on your controller while you are in the middle of a jump to go to the ceiling or floor. There is a good deal of skill that’s involved in learning how to do this effectively. You cannot just keep pressing alternating buttons on the d-pad to keep your little cat in midair.

Difficulty

Even though there is a decent challenge to the game, it is rather short. It’s made up of 30 single-screen puzzles to complete which took me about 20 minutes to finish. About 5 to 8 of them were more difficult, with at least a couple taking probably ten tries to complete. One thing that I appreciated was that there was very little wasted time between losing in a stage and being able to try it again. I think the delay is less than a second, which is impressive!

This extremely short delay between attempts and the unlimited lives contributed a lot to the game being completed quickly. By the way, Alien Cat also includes a continue feature in case you want to return to the game later.

Pixelated Gore

Concerning failure, know that when you die your alien cat often explodes in gory pixelated blood. This would have surprised me, but Alien Cat 2 has gory deaths as well. I guess this is part of the graphical style of the developer.

Both your cat, and the enemies you defeat, explode when they die. I say this so that potential players are aware of this fact before purchase. The Steam page for the game has the tag of “family friendly,” but I think some parents will disagree with that assertion.

Concerning graphics, the only aspect that stands out is the 8-bit gore. The resolution for the game is really low. This is especially noticeable in the menus. The movement of your cat is smooth, which is nice, but there isn’t a lot of animation in the game.

Music and Sound Effects

Although I didn’t care for the gore, I liked the game’s musical score quite a bit. There may only be one or two tracks, but I liked them, and the main one that played was more enjoyable to me than what I’ve heard in Alien Cat 2. The sound effects were fine.

Control

To me, the worst thing about the game was the control. Moving your cat around was not the best. It felt like I was playing on a grid, or ice. Even though I could tap my controller to make him move a small amount, something still felt off. This may be because the game doesn’t directly support controller input. To play with a controller I had to use Steam’s controller interface.

At first, I played the game with an 8bitdo Pro2 controller, and while I could play it with the analogue sticks, the D-Pad didn’t work at all. I didn’t like using the controller for this game though, my alien cat moved way too fast!

I then switched over to the 8bitdo M30, and the game felt a bit better, but not by much. The big advantage of using the M30 was that it only has a d-pad, so i didn’t have to fight with an analogue stick to play it.

I think the game’s fast speed, sense of moving on a grid, and lack of native controller support all contributed to a mixed opinion of this game’s control.

Additionally, I also noticed that the control could be frustrating when I pressed up or down in the middle of a jump. Only the first input of a direction would work. Pressing down after already pressing up would do nothing. Eventually I became used to this, but it did make the game feel like a precision platformer at times.

Game Length

As I’ve already said before, this game has 30 levels and then it ends. Prior to purchase, I didn’t look at the Steam page very closely, so I was surprised that the game was over so quickly once I beat that last stage.

That was slightly disappointing, as I wanted to play the game further. I liked that little bits of gameplay mechanics were being introduced throughout the game up until the end. Even so, it wasn’t that satisfying to complete. Perhaps it is because there wasn’t really an ending. Or maybe it was because it ended so suddenly. Still, I bought the game for only $0.49 so that wasn’t a huge deal.

I do wish the game had 20 more levels, or a level editor where players could build their own stages and share them with others.

Summary

Overall, I enjoyed the game a good deal. Nothing was remarkable about it. It’s just a short single-screen puzzle platformer with gore and twitchy controls. Although it wasn’t really satisfying, the game’s reasonable price alleviates that issue to some degree. I look forward to playing more titles in the series!

Some other recent reviews I’ve done include Quest Arrest, an overhead adventure game for the Gameboy Color, and Chain Break, which is a side-view runner developed for the original Gameboy. Both of them are playable on the Indie Heroes Collection 1 for the Evercade. They are also free to play in some form as well.

Title: Alien Cat (Steam page)
Genre: Single-screen Puzzle Platformer
Year Released: 2020
Developer: Repa Games (Steam games list)
Available On: Steam
Price Paid: $0.49

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid.