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1 Catline – Review

Oh, how the tables have turned. There was a time when a good chunk of EastAsiaSoft’s releases consisted of lewd, borderline hentai games like Seven Pirates H and, of course, the infamous Pretty Girls series. These days, however, the publisher’s focus has shifted toward more family-friendly entertainment. There is the occasional exception (looking at you, Baradroid), but we’ve mostly been seeing an uptick in cheap puzzle games in EastAsiaSoft’s catalogue. The latest title to join the likes of Tiny Biomes and Avenue Escape is 1 Catline, a game with a title seemingly designed to simply be at the top of the eShop when ranking alphabetically. Does the game deserve that top position? Story Things seemingly start out simple enough in 1 Catline: you play as a little ginger-haired girl, and you need to reach a red gemstone. Eight levels in, you’re joined by a dimension-warping, cat-headed abomination, which we assume is the titular Catline. We’re going to roll with calling it Catline, as the game itself doesn’t tell us otherwise. This creature is able to freeze time and turn itself into a platform for the little girl to walk and jump on. Why is there a 1 in front of the game’s title? What fresh hell did the Catline spawn from? Why are ‘it’ and the little girl working together? What is the purpose of the red gemstones? We have so many questions, but no answers, as 1 Catline doesn’t contain any narrative whatsoever. There’s barely even any text in the game, apart from the menus. Graphics Hiding behind the game’s AI-generated key art are simple pixel graphics. These are unlikely to set anyone’s world on fire, but they’re clear enough to telegraph everything you need to know. While 1 Catline boasts 50 levels, there is very little visual variety in the game, with only the colors of the walls changing between stages. When you shift from the little girl’s perspective to Catline’s, a subtle tilt effect occurs. This makes it clear who you’re controlling at any given time, although it isn’t always clear where Catline is relative to the little girl as a result, leading to the occasional unfair level failure. It probably goes without saying that there are no performance issues here whatsoever, although that has more to do with how light the game is than anything else. Sound There is just one single music track in the game that plays over and over again. It doesn’t loop, mind you, so in between the beginning and the end of this tune, there’s an awkward silence. While the game does feature sound effects, these are sparsely used and barely audible. Voice acting is, unsurprisingly, entirely absent. Meows would have been appreciated here, if only to break up the otherwise monotonous soundscape. Gameplay This is about as straightforward a puzzle platformer as it gets. Over the course of 1 Catline’s 50 single-screen levels, your job is to simply get the little girl to the gemstone. Once you reach that, the game moves on to the next level. There are no lives, time limits or even high scores to keep an eye on. Neither are there enemies, and the only way to fail at a level is falling into the abyss. That doesn’t mean that there is no challenge in 1 Catline, mind you. Getting the girl to the gemstone sounds easy enough, until you realize that she can’t jump very high or far. The vast majority of the stones would be out of reach for her under normal circumstances. That’s where Catline comes in. With the push of a single button, you switch between the little girl and Catline. Time freezes, with our brave little heroine even floating in mid-air, as you take control of the feline platform-thing. The idea is that you move Catline to a position where the little girl can use it as a way to reach greater heights or jump across gaps that she wouldn’t be able to on her own. There is a definite learning curve to 1 Catline, as new obstacles are introduced over time. Coloured switches, for example, that make walls and platforms disappear and reappear as you activate them. The individual mechanics that make up the stages are simple enough, but it is the way that they are implemented and combined here that make 1 Catline a deceptively challenging game. We do enjoy straightforward puzzle games like this, although another, entirely different part of 1 Catline’s difficulty isn’t necessarily intentional. Controlling both Catline and the little girl is iffy and tedious. It’s easy to overshoot Catline’s movement by a single square, and since it can only move in one direction, you’ll often find that you’ll have to navigate around and in awkward ways to get him in the desired position again. We even managed to softlock ourselves by accident, by moving Catline somewhere we couldn’t get out of anymore. It also isn’t always clear which switches activate which platforms, as the game doesn’t follow the internal logic it produces. Sometimes switches are color-coded, and sometimes all switches are in the same colour, meaning you’ll have to guess which switch activates which platforms. We even ran into instances where switches simply didn’t work as they should, prompting an unnecessary -and frustrating- level restart. While 1 Catline is built around an interesting idea, the execution ends up leaving a lot to be desired. The rather janky control scheme, particularly for Catline itself, makes for a tedious way to actually clear some of the puzzles, even if the solution is staring you right in the face. More often than not, we found ourselves inching towards the gemstone, moving Catline 2 squares, before switching to the little girl, making a simple jump and then switching back to Catline. Rinse and repeat until you clear the level. This also makes 1 Catline’s runtime feel artificially stretched out. Like its predecessors before it, 1 Catline’s 50 levels may sound impressive at first, until you realize that most levels can be solved in just a few minutes. Then again, the game’s €4.99 price also occupies a similar niche to that of its predecessors. Conclusion As far as simple puzzle games like these go, 1 Catline isn’t the worst, but it’s not exactly a title we’d outright recommend either. You’ll find that the occasional level restart is necessary, simply because switches don’t always behave as they should or because you’ll end up softlocking yourself. If that wasn’t an issue, then this game would probably get our vote over similar titles like Tiny Biomes or Avenue Escape. 1 Catline is the kind of game we consider a palate cleanser. It’s a cheap little game to play a few levels in between more intense titles, and it’s always good to have a couple of these sitting in your library.