Crazy Cats

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you find yourself naked in a public place? It's one of those scenarios that many people seem to recount, yet to this day I've never experienced this so-called seminal dream.

Indeed, lately my most common dream is one where I'm a dog being chased around a series of cuboid worlds by a pack of purple cats.

Before the medically trained amongst Pocket Gamer's audience start pestering the site for my email address, that's actually Crazy Cats' rather bizarre storyline. Yes, Pixalon's platformer-cum-puzzler is the kind of title that's so bizarre, its plot is entirely superfluous to the actual gameplay.

While ostensibly you take on the role of Bark the dog (the studio's clearly not interested in picking up prizes for originality), keeping a check on his efforts to rid his mind of said pesky felines, Crazy Cats is actually a fairly modest game of gravity manipulation.

You take charge of Bark as he navigates his way around a series of four-walled worlds. Each level takes the form of a square, with Bark able to tip the world in either direction by simply running up to a corner and mounting the connecting wall.

The cats (and, latterly, moles, crabs and an assortment of other beasties) are susceptible to gravity, and the idea is to tip the square so that your foes end up upside down, crashing to the bottom as a result. A swift follow-up bark from Bark then knocks them out of play.

Contact with the Crazy Cats's assortment of animals is to be avoided at all times and, as the levels pass, they become wise to your tricks. These magic mammals eventually manage to construct walls designed to separate themselves from your gravitational games.

As you might have guessed, the plot remains absolute gibberish from beginning to end, but it doesn't actually detract from the gameplay in any real sense. Crazy Cats's play style could reasonably be plonked straight into any setting, the important component being the level shifting itself.

Managing to tip the balance in your favour, all the while avoiding the ever-increasing number of adversaries out for your blood, is a constant challenge and one that steps up smoothly with each new level.