A Petite Puzzle Game That May Be Too Easy For Some
Budget puzzle games on the Xbox come in two varieties: so diamond-hard that you could shave with them, or cozily easy. There aren’t many that lie between. Catnigma is firmly in the second group. It curls up in your lap and drops 2000G down from its mouth.
Catnigma is a slider game. You’ve likely played a few or encountered similar puzzles in adventure games like Legend of Zelda. The cat you control can only move by sliding in a cardinal direction. You can’t stop until you’ve hit a barrier, so you’re at the whims of the walls. Your destination is a cardboard box, so you’re tapping the direction buttons until you navigate into a position that slides you inside.
Fishing For Achievements
To enliven things, there are fish dotted about the environment. You need to catch all of these before nestling into the box. This makes the cardboard box something of a hazard, at least initially: you don’t want to climb in prematurely.
To double the hazard, there are cacti. These spike your cat, so you’re ensuring that you dodge them while snagging the fish. And as the 30 levels progress, there are portals. These teleport the cat to an exit portal, sliding in the direction that the cat entered in. It’s a simple addition – there’s never more than one portal in each puzzle – but they can make you feel like a puzzle supremo, working out how to slide directly into a fish.
And that’s it. Catnigma’s contents fit snugly into four paragraphs of a review. All that’s left to say is that the puzzles skew incredibly easy, and there is 2000G for completing most of the game, thanks to a title update. Checking my watch, I’d say that you could get them all in fifteen minutes if you’re quick.
Between A Rock And An Easy Place
It makes Catnigma a little awkward to review. It’s smooth as cream: the controls are spot-on, the collectible fish act like stepping stones to the solution of the puzzle, and we never, ever felt like reaching for a guide. In some ways it is a cozy game, never threatening you with a time limit or a diminishing pool of lives. A solution is never more than twenty or so taps away.
But it’s also inoffensive and flavourless (also like cream, as it happens). If you come to Catnigma with any expectations that it will do something new, then you’re in the wrong place. We’ve encountered hazards like the cacti and portals in virtually every slider game that we’ve played. And there’s no challenge. I’ve got a ten-year-old kid, and this was their first slider game. They breezed through it all in less than the length of a TV episode.
Her reaction to that 30 minutes encapsulates the problem. She never hit a cactus, and only landed in the box prematurely a couple of times. She never needed help, or even got close to asking for it. It was a one-sitting game for £4.19. But she also enjoyed it. The cat was cute, she got her introduction to slider puzzles, and she wandered off with a positive skip.
A Friction-Free 2000G
My response to Catnigma was similar, as it happens. This is a slider puzzle with no airs or pretenses. It’s 30 puzzles of low-to-mid difficulty with a satisfying chiptune of achievements providing the soundtrack. On occasion, I was foxed by a remaining fish, but that foxing never lasted more than thirty seconds. The levels are too small and the options too limited for it to really test me.
You will know already if that depth of challenge is for you. Maybe you’ve beaten Elden Ring or Shinobi: Art of Vengeance and emerged, bruised, wanting the gaming equivalent of a hot bath. Well, Catnigma certainly fits that bill. It’s as fluffy and adorable as its main character, and its claws are very much sheathed.
If you’re hoping to grapple with more of a puzzle tiger than a puzzle kitten, then you will be disappointed with Catnigma. There’s more difficulty to be found in opening your mail. We found that degree of challenge to be calming and even endearing, but we don’t expect it to work for everyone else.
Important Links
Ready for 2000 Gamerscore? Catnigma Brings New Puzzling Xbox Adventures – https://www.thexboxhub.com/ready-for-2000-gamerscore-catnigma-brings-new-puzzling-xbox-adventures/
Buy from the Xbox Store, Optimised for Xbox Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/catnigma/9N0MV342W78Q/0010
There’s an Xbox One version if you prefer – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/catnigma-xbox-one/9PCMZXHW9B4Q/0010
Or one for Windows PC – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/catnigma-windows/9P97JGBZJ0RD/0010
