Super Puzzled Cat Review

Welcome to Super Puzzled Cat, a game where you can fulfil your desire to be a kawaii cat girl with pink hair. Your goal is simple; in each level, you want to figure out the safest and fastest way to get the ball of yarn. Once you reach it, you are shown replays of all your unsuccessful attempts, along with the one where you made it to the prize. This reminds me of when you die in Super Meat Boy, where you were shown all the ways you had died on that run. In the beginning, you’ll be making a lot of blind jumps into pits where spiky balls are waiting to destroy you. Once the replay is done, you have the option to retry that stage to improve your time and collect items you missed, or you can move on to the next level.

This isn’t your typical platformer where the only thing the protagonist can do is jump; here our cat girl will use a variety of different items to get through the traps that are placed in the stage. The name of the level usually hints at what you will need to do in the level to successfully complete it. Like Bounce Around has you pick up Bubble Gum that will let you bounce on spikes using the LB (left shoulder button) or Water Escape, trying to go up as high as you can to avoid getting soaked from the rising waters, if she touches water, she perishes. So you will need to jump into jet packs to fly out of the hazardous water zone. There is a ghost power-up that makes you fall through the floor when you activate it; make sure you have everything lined up perfectly, or you will be forced to restart the stage. Timing is very important in this game; activating or turning off an item at the wrong time can doom you. As you progress and the puzzles get trickier, some stages will require you to combine two items together, like the Bubble Gum with the Jet Pack, creating a new item that lets you fly up and ricochet off the spiky walls placed in your way.

The main character is very adorable with her kitty ears, a fluffy tail, and big anime-style eyes. The whole game has a cutesy feel to it, with flowers, fluffy clouds, and a colour palette of pinks and light yellows that give you the impression that this game will be sweet and relaxing. This isn’t totally accurate, as the puzzles you encounter in the stages can be incredibly challenging, requiring multiple attempts to successfully complete. Our pink protagonist makes a cute, surprised meowing-type sound when she dies and the music accompanying the game is upbeat and catchy. If you stand in one spot for too long and take too long to move, a bunch of question marks appear over her head. She seems confused as to why you aren’t doing anything, or sometimes a bird will sit on her head resting until you start playing and it flies off.

Super Puzzled Cat uses another unique mechanic in the stages. You have the option to press Y to create a save state, which allows you to restart from that exact location upon death. You can also get back to this location if you hit the X button. Problems arise if you save (on purpose or by accident) at a location that isn’t an ideal spot to start from. At this point, you may just need to pause the game and hit retry. I did this by accident once, trapping myself in a dead-end area that I couldn’t get out of. So I needed to start from the beginning again; it makes sense why the stage was called "unfair."

While in the pause menu, there are options to select the level you want to play, the world where the different stages are, and then if you collect gold coins that you find, they can be spent at the Catshop. The Catshop isn’t a traditional store like the usual ones you find in videogames, here it’s more like challenges that you need to complete before you are allowed to buy the item located on that space. This definitely adds some replayability to the title; for instance, if I want the umbrella, I will need to clear 30 levels without using any save states. When you hover over some of the items to learn how to unlock them, it says “How to unlock is locked too!” I guess this will just be something that will be randomly revealed as you complete the different puzzles. My favourite description is on an item that looks like fire: “Sealed away due to its evil power.” That makes me want to unlock that space even more! The first item you can purchase is binoculars; these let you look at the stage before you start playing so that you have an idea of the correct route to take and you aren’t just jumping blindly, hoping that you will land on a platform instead of a spike ball.

My time with Super Puzzled Cat has been wholesome and surprisingly challenging. In the beginning, I never realised how important your timing really is. You need to be precise when you are activating your items. Use your Bubble Gum too late and you will get impaled by the spikes, but if you don’t turn it off when you get to the platform, you will bounce too far and hit the puddle of water. It will take some attempts to get familiar with exactly what you need to do. With over 150 levels and tonnes of different items to unlock, Super Puzzled Cat will keep you busy for many hours. It may get frustrating at times, but the sense of accomplishment you get when you successfully complete a stage makes it all worthwhile.