Nekosan review - a ridiculously hard platformer with cute kitties

If someone were to tell you that the developers of hard-as-nails platformer Mr Jump had released on a new game starring a cute cat, you'd be forgiven for being cynical.

But it's true – Nekosan is a game about a cute cat from the makers of Mr Jump. It also happens to be a stupidly hard, one-touch platformer.

And while some will scream and pull their hair out at the difficulty, others will enjoy its elegant design and minimalistic visuals even while they're dying.

Nekosan gives you control of a tiny kitty who moves in one direction until it hits a wall. The only thing you can do is jump by tapping the screen.

The length of your tap determines how high the cat jumps, so a short tap gives a short hop, and a longer tap will give the cat its highest jump.

You can reverse direction by wall-jumping, which will fire the cat back on itself and see it move in the opposite direction until it once again hits a wall.

It's a deceptively basic system, and one that requires practice and precision to use effectively if you don't want to constantly fall to the game's numerous traps.

Because while the gameplay may be easy, the levels themselves are not. Each is full of one-hit-kill spikes, giant moving blocks, and pesky mice that will mess you up no end.

Completing each level requires pixel-perfect timing and jumps, and death comes often to those who mess up even one small hop.

You have nine lives per set of 10 levels, and losing them all sends you right back to the start of the set. Beat the lot and you unlock the next, harder group to take on.

But Nekosan isn't hard in an annoying way. It's elegantly designed to gently introduce you to new mechanics as you go along, and death never feels cheap – you know what you did wrong and how to fix it next time.

You jump back into the game almost straight away, so there's no reason not to stop playing. And you'll give it another go. And another. And another.

It's all tied up in a beautifully simple art style, that reveals everything the player needs to know without overloading them with information.

And it all just works wonderfully. Gameplay is incredibly smooth, levels flow perfectly, and when you get it right, the whole game is like poetry in motion.

Nekosan isn't a game for everyone. Casual platform fans will be turned away by its ridiculous difficulty and reliance of perfection over free-form thinking.

But stick with it long enough and Nekosan will surprise you with just how well it plays and how much fun it is to experience.

It's often infuriating and inaccessible, but put in the effort and it's a game that will reward you with excitement, thrills, and muffled shouts of "yes!" when you finally nail that one annoying level.