Cat Pipes Review

There don’t appear to be many true puzzlers in the gaming space these days and very occasionally I do like to put my brain to the test. Cat Pipes is a short yet sweet indie title developed by Afil Games and published by Tribus Games. It’s been available on the Xbox family of consoles for around a month and came to Windows PC slightly earlier with around 17 positive reviews over on Steam. This review isn’t going to be lengthy since you can complete the game in a little over an hour at a good pace. Achievement hunters will want to hone in on this one though since you can rack up the full lot in one playthrough and there is 2000 gamerscore on offer here.

Link The Pipes & Wake The Cats

There is a tutorial in Cat Pipes but it is very lacklustre and doesn’t serve much purpose, it’s fine though because you can easily figure out how the game functions yourself. The premise of the game is to link a series of pipes and turn them red to connect to the location of the cats. This is via a grid-based system and pipes remain the colour white if no connection is visible and then turn red when the connection is made. To complete each level you’ll need to ensure the pipes are connected and linked to each cat on the grid. Levels start simple and gradually get a little tougher with some grids not requiring all the pipes so this is where the brainpower and guesswork comes in.

There is a restart function if you want to reset a move you have just made although I very rarely used this function, possibly on a few occasions. I can’t knock the team for placing this in there though for people who require it more often.

Visuals & Audio

Onto to the visuals, Cat Pipes is very basic and understandably this is probably a title done on a tight budget with a low number of developers. Some of the background art in the levels is well presented but I did find that the cats throughout the game weren’t very prominent. Some cats thrown in with better animations or even in the background would have spruced up the game and made for a warmer experience. The soundtrack was relaxing though and very fitting with the atmosphere of a simplistic puzzler and much needed after dealing with enemies on The Callisto Protocol.

Final Thoughts

Cat Pipes is a simplistic puzzler that is perhaps far too easy and short. The price point of £4.19 reflects the small return on content here, but it may prove as a nice challenge for the younger generation. I let my 6-year-old play a few levels and he appeared to be invested in solving the puzzles, chanting “Yes” and air punching when he clocked each puzzle. The repetitive nature does kick in though after about ten levels and even though I am not bothered about achievements, I found myself playing through the 45 levels to clock it. I’d recommend this one for younger gamers who are just getting familiar with gaming and the achievement hunters.