Prepare to bolster your feline force in the face of the robotic menace in Naughty Kitties for iOS and Android

"Hmmmm, fire-breathing cats riding a spaceship destroying its robotic aggressors, eh?"

That's what I thought when I first laid eyes upon Naughty Kitties.

It's a good job, too. If I had realised that Coconut Island (developer of Silver Award-winning One Tap Hero) was describing it to all and sundry as a blend of tower defence and endless-running, I may have run away. Never to look back.

It's an apt description, though. In each endless level in Naughty Kitties, you will have to safeguard a vehicle as it flies, swims, or drives to the right and into a barrage of enemy fire.

You will have to drag your kitties onto the vehicle to protect and repair it for as long as you can. The cats will automatically shoot at the enemy. They will, however, run out of energy, causing you to drag another one up to replace it.

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The cats will appear at random in three slots in the bottom-left corner.

If you get a rocket launcher cat but want a repair cat, you'll have to drop the undesired feline and wait a few seconds for the slot to be refilled. Hopefully, the one you're after will appear at the second time of 'asking'.

If you have three cats of the same type on board the vehicle - labelled a "combo" in the game - then they will become more powerful. There's a price to pay for this, mind: they will drain energy faster.

There will also be a special weapon on the spaceship you can use. It will come with a long cool-down, though... as you might expect.

Eventually, your vehicle will be destroyed by the big bosses and the screen-filling hordes of enemies. At that point, the distance you travelled will be converted into points that you will be able to use to upgrade your cats and buy better ones.

That's the gameplay cycle, then: protect the vehicle, upgrade your cats, get farther.

It's as compelling as these upgrade-focused cyclical games tend to be. However, I did feel that the cycle took a bit too long to go around each time. Or maybe I'm just good at the game? Doubt it.

By progressing through the levels, you will also unlock more stages and better spaceships, including a pink whale one. How can you resist?

Naughty Kitties will be available on the App Store as a freemium game at the of this month. An Android version is still some way off.