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A brief review of Catball Eats it All

Let me state my biases upfront. I love quirky, ridiculous games. I love great game music. And I love cats. Catball Eats It All ticks all of these boxes. Later I discovered it started as a Kickstarter project - icing on the indie cake.

Catball Eats It All is a pinball-platformer game for iOS. You are the Catball, and must roll & float through the level eating all the little bits of food before the timer runs out. Once you've got all the food, you eat the level itself. It's a simple concept, and the delight is in the execution: great artwork (from Nosego), great music (from Ben Thornewill/Jukebox the Ghost), and great sound effects. There's also a refreshing absence of freemium piffle. Overall, it's a charmer.

There are some flaws, however: the controls can be irritating and hard to master. In many ways, the controls are the game. It's sometimes fairly hard but that tends to flow from the controls rather than the game itself. It also made a poor first impression, downloading its level data when you run it for the first time (instead of when you install it), so you're out of luck if you try it out somewhere without internet. Fortunately, this was fixed in a recent update.

It's a bit of a slow burner, and I found myself playing it more for the music than the gameplay. But it's a lovely little game for 69p, and definitely worth your time - especially if you like Kometun, pinball, or cats.

Overall: 7/10. Recommended; Available from the iTunes store.