For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Super Cat Tales: PAWS from NEUTRONIZED. I played this game on an iPhone 14 Pro so i also had a look at whether or not the Dynamic Island was an issue.
This is the third game in the series and i hadn't played any of them before today. i don't think it's important to have played any of the other games. its possible that those games may have added some back story for the characters and the world, but for the first world that i played through it didn't seem to be an issue.
the game doesn't feel like the first in the series. it's very polished and refined, and when you combine it with the graphic style and the bright bold colors, it makes an impressive first impression. So much so, that through the hour of playing i could only come up with some small critiques where and there. that was until i came across a bug. for some reason an advert played after a level had started and once i was able to close it and get back to the game, it was clear that the game had taken my last command of pressing right and was stuck on it. i could press left and the character would briefly go left but as soon as i let go the character went back to going right even though i wasn't touching the screen. what was more unfortunate was that this part of the level required me to run on a treadmill like device and it just wouldn't activate. i had to kill the character and restart that level.
The adverts were really the only issue i had with the game. they're soo bad it almost felt rude and even though the game is as great as it is, the adverts can't be ignored as they are part of the experience. Super Cat Tales: PAWS is a free to play game and i have no issue with there being adverts. but the way they're handled feels so rough and sloppy compared to the refined game. the first advert came out of nowhere and didn't ask for permission to play or at least give me a heads up. the game is played horizontally and yet most adverts were vertical, so they were tiny on the screen. and even the horizontal adverts didn't fill the screen so there were big black bars either side. it's a shame they couldn't so something like play an advert in-game, like in the sign they use to advertise paying for the game to remove ads.
The controls are simple, there are two buttons; left and right. each time they add a technique to what those two buttons can do, they do it brilliantly with a simple graphic showing how it's done. that's something i can really appreciate and it really makes the game accessible. something else that makes the game accessible is that your character can, mostly, take a hit. the cats run into enemies to defeat them, unless they have a pointy end, but if you make a mistake and walk into them it's OK as the enemy will have taken a hit and you won't have died.
Even tho i only played through the first world, the variety of levels was quite impressive. it didn't feel samey nor did they feel too difficult. with a control scheme as simple as this game has, the levels feel like they take full advantage of it with their layout but with the art direction and colors, the levels also were clear to navigate and i always knew where to go. there is one exception and that's the home base. i feel that maybe a little tutorial is needed to act as an introduction to show what's where. it felt more luck than design that i managed to complete that section.
Super Cat Tales: PAWS is a game i do recommend people play. it's great there's no additional download when you start the game, but people need to be aware that the game will throw video ads at you. there weren't as many as last weeks Neodori Forever, https://youtu.be/peXQekqMcTM, but there was one that did kinda break the game. it only happened once so for now i'll assume it's a bug. Super Cat Tales: PAWS gameplay and design and art and music and characters, i feel, are well worth it. But that does mean this maybe a wifi only game for some people.
