Super Cat Tales

With excellent controls, sharp level designs, lots of secrets, and an adorable presentation, it's hard to find anything that's not to like in Super Cat Tales.

It does a lot with a little, using its compact two-button control scheme to define its entire design, with spectacular results. If you are looking for a mobile platformer to sink your teeth into, this is it.

Super Cat Bros. is a fun albeit hardly unforgettable old-school platformer, which manages to set up a decent free to play formula. 

There’s an awful lot here to like. If you’re a fan of old fashioned leapers then you’re going to be in your element here. And if you’re not, well there’s enough new stuff going on that you’re likely going to leave with a smile on your face as well.

A smooth, fun platforming game, but an incomplete one. Controls are simple: hold left or right to walk that way, and to climb up walls in that direction. Double-tap to run and automatically jump off ledges. Each stage has between one and three special items, and you have to collect most of them in order to progress. You can skip a few hidden cat bells, but you'll need most of them, and all the keys, to reach the end of the game. As you play, you unlock different playable cats with different abilities, but each ability is used to specifically bypass a particular type of obstacle: break through breakable walls, crawl through narrow passages, swim against currents, etc. The right cat to use is always the one you need to progress; otherwise it makes no difference which one you pick. They have no other advantages or disadvantages (except for the last one, but the difference is minor). However, the cat select screen shows 10 unlockable cats, but only 8 of them actually exist. The developers intended to put two more in, but they never made it out of beta and the developers say they never will. There's also no ending. You complete the last stage and there just aren't any more stages. The cats, marooned in this land when their hot air balloon crashed, are apparently just stuck there. My other complaint is that some of the challenges just aren't fair. You lose a life and have to restart the stage when your cat takes two hits within about 5 seconds. It's very easy to get knocked from one enemy to another and die instantly--there's no invulnerability period. There are also sections with moving platforms where you have to stand on one side to move the platform in that direction and dodge enemies while doing so; the controls aren't quite responsive enough to make these tight movements in a narrow area, so deaths here can feel cheap. A word about advertising. Skippable ads appear from time to time; they interrupt gameplay but only for a moment and never at inconvenient times. You can also watch video ads to recover your lives (instead of waiting), get a temporary floating helper (offered randomly), or become invincible after losing two consecutive lives in the same level. The last of these is extremely unbalanced, as it's basically a free pass for the whole level. If you use more than two at a time, you have to buy a $1 IAP (no more free uses from watching videos). Unlike other games with similar "mercy" power-ups, you aren't penalized in any way for using them. The game is good enough that I'll look out for an improved sequel. Even as it is, it's a fun romp with only occasional frustration.