Game Reviews

Naughty Kitties

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| Naughty Kitties
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Naughty Kitties
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| Naughty Kitties

The titular naughty kitties of Naughty Kitties aren't really naughty. They're noble, occasionally sleepy warriors who, rather than playing with wool and licking themselves all the time, hang off spaceships destroying robots.

There's an interesting arcade mash-up of ideas at the heart of the game, with chunks lifted from tower defence, RTS, endless-runners, and shooters all squelched together to make a game that, while it does have its problems, holds your attention pretty well.

Cat nip

The game sees you pushing cats onto a spaceship that's hurtling along at breakneck speeds, assailed at every turn by waves of robots determined to shoot it out of the sky. The spaceship has slots where you can insert the different felines, and you take delivery of a random selection of cats every second or so.

Your warriors can only cling onto the side of the ship for so long, so you need to keep refreshing them. There are cats who are actually alpacas who fix the ship, tomcat soldiers, and science cats who fire out swarms of laser-breathing robo-kittens.

Throwing three cats of the same type onto the ship at once makes for a fearsome combination, and while their energy bars will deplete in sync, replacing one fills all of them back up. It's a good tactic for some quick damage, but you'll need a balanced crew to get far in the game.

Boss fights in particular are battles of attrition, as you pair up a couple of fix-it cats to keep you alive, and throw in a damage dealer to chip away at the enormous opposition until your special cannon is ready to unleash a wave of fiery hell.

T-awwwwww-er defence

There's a variety of challenges to complete, and these give you XP. Earn enough and you'll move to the next level, unlocking new powers, stages, and other accoutrements to make your cat-ship even more powerful.

There's an annoying regenerating energy cookie system that makes you wait to play sometime, and without it the game would probably score a little higher, but if you can look past that, and the slightly grindy nature of the game as it wears on, you'll find yourself enjoying Naughty Kitties immensely.

Naughty Kitties

A fun, if occasionally frustrating mix of genres and ideas, Naughty Kitties is worth a play just to see how well it blends them all together
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.