Will you be the winning cat lady or will this game drive you to be a crazy cat lady? Is this board game app a purrfect port or should you have paws for thought?
Cat Lady is a card drafting and set collection game where you are tasked with feeding and entertaining all of the cats you manage to pick up along the way; after all, we wouldn’t want a cat to go hungry would we! The game is played across a 3 x 3 grid of cards where the players select a row or column and collect all of the cards within that row. Each cat you collect requires feeding it’s special diet so make sure you’re picking up enough of the food type they like to eat. Add to that a plethora of toys for each cat to use as well as costumes for your cat which act as bonuses and you have a more in depth game than it may appear on first glance.
Cat Lady was an excellent candidate for a digital adaptation for a number of reasons. First and foremost the gameplay is light and very simple to pick up and play within 5 minutes which makes it a welcome entry for any phone. Secondly the art style of the physical game is fantastic and exceptionally cute which makes it an appealing play once you have it on your phone; after all who doesn’t like cute cartoon cats on their phone at all times anyway.
Despite it’s cutesy look I found Cat Lady to be a challenging prospect in single player mode. Although the game has 3 levels of AI difficulty it took me a while to get to grips with a winning strategy on the easiest level. After a few plays through though I soon progressed to the hardest difficulty level where a win more often than I lose; but it is not a guaranteed win every time which some board game apps can be guilty of with their AI.
Multiplayer comes in the form of pass and play for up to 4 players which works as slickly as you’d imagine for such a simple and quick game. There is however no online multiplayer which normally would frustrate me however the fast paced nature of Cat Lady means that I’m happy at the decision to omit this as the thought of waiting for someone to make a simple move would frustrate me even more.
Cat Lady is an fun, quick and light weight game with enough going on to keep me entertained on a regular basis. The presentation is gorgeous and whimsical which adds to the enjoyment of the game. With a robust AI and pass and play Cat Lady is a board game app you can play whenever you have a spare 5 minutes and can be a great starter or pallet cleanser for some of the more in depth apps such as The Castles of Burgundy or Catan Classic.
Cat Lady
The Good
- Beautiful Presentation
- Simple Tutorial
- Quick Gameplay
The Bad
- No Online Multiplayer