Game Review: Cats in Time (Mobile)

From Pine Studio, Cats in Time has a very simple premise but nails it to near perfection making it one of the highlights on the mobile market. A relaxing puzzle game that has you explore 3D dioramas to find hidden cats. Set across 25 different locations and six different ages in time.

The cats are hidden though and you’ll have to solve puzzles and look in every corner to find them all.

The story sees Professor Tim Edger create a time machine but while showing it to you, his beloved cats get into the machine. Activating it, the furry felines are sent throughout space and time. Heartbroken, the Professor asks you to go and find them. You’ll be searching across time periods that include ancient Egypt, Late 20th Century New York and even, a future Tokyo. Can you find them all?

Each world has four levels, making for a grand total of 24 levels to complete with each one having ten cats to find. Some cats are easy to find, others require puzzle solving. While most are easy to work out, there are the occasional challenging head-scratchers here and there. Although a hint system will help get you around those if you’re really struggling.

Pine Studio calls this a relaxing and casual game and for the most part, they are right. You’ll rarely struggle to find all the cats. Combine the simple touch gameplay with nice visuals (sharp with a lot of detail) and soothing music and they can certainly say they nailed what they were going for.

An extra touch is that Cats in Time is also playable as an augmented reality game. In the regular game, you can rotate the screen around the level, but in AR mode you can walk around and get the feeling of really exploring these locations.

While billed as a free to play game on stores, only partial content is available. Call it a ‘try before you buy’ sort of thing. A generous one at that, as two out of four levels of each world is playable for free. If you want to play the others, you’ll have to stump up £5.99 to unlock all the levels which might sound like quite a lot but is more than worth it. Especially when you consider just how poor the mobile gaming market it overall. Quality games like Cats in Time shouldn’t be overlooked.

Furthermore, Pine Studio is using in-game data to help rescue real cats. In cooperation with a local cat rescue association called Real Paw, the developer has pledged to buy 10kg of cat food for every 100,000 cats saved in-game. How awesome is that!?