MEL THE SPACE CAT REVIEW

First Impressions

What is it with me and cats in space related games recently?

But seriously tho, Mel The Space Cat wins this week’s award for most obvious title to name our cute, indie, platformer in recent memory. Charming, adorable and colourful is the aim of the title here with our feline protagonist navigating the perils of the cosmos.

This game’s Gamerscore of 2000G is also once again incredibly easy to attain, heck my first achievement popped as I started Level 1 before I did anything, so one for the cheevo hunters in the audience also. With the whole list done by Level 22 if you so desire.

Plot

Mel is, well, a brave cosmic Space Cat who must travel across several alien worlds to find someplace safe. Along the way they’ll face danger in the form of lethal spikes, Laser cannons, and the strange dog shaped aliens called Theo.

Armed with a cat shaped space helmet, rocket pack and bags of charm, they set out to traverse 40 space levels were their timing and reflexes will be tested to the upmost limit.

Gameplay Overview

Once on the main screen of this game and pressing the obligatory ‘Press Any Button To Start’, the only options presented to you is ‘Start’, ‘Level Select’, ‘Options’ and ‘Credits’. Start will begin the game at Level 1 and begins to teach you the rather simplified control options to play the game. Level Select, unsurprisingly, allows you to replay any level already complete, out of the forty levels available. Options has just the one, which is allowing you to change the Volume from 0% to 100% which is strange why the developers thought anyone would prefer to play their game completely silent. Finally, we have the Credits option which shows the single screen names of the developers and the name of the studio behind the game. Starting the game will start you at the level you previously finished on, so if you want to play from Level 1 again, you have to use the Level Select.

As already mentioned, forty Levels are available to play to finish the game in its entirety. With the levels divided into blocks of 10 per ‘world’ starting with good ol’ Earth. You cat’s task? To make it from point A to point B to reach the space rocket and move on to the next level of platforming.

Jump is handled by the A button and the D-Pad or left thumbstick handles movement duties. Simple right? However, things get interesting on Level 2 when your shown that direction and the B button allow you to do a short boost in that direction. Things start off simple enough, but the game does require a lot of pixel perfect landings and judging the boost (which is just the one strength) means a fair bit of trial and error. Fortunately, if you fall foul to the gaps in the platforms or the various aliens and, later on ray gun turrets, all that happens is Mel let’s out a squeak that sounds strangely like ‘damn’ and a simple reset to the start of the single screen level you’re on.

Learning when to just jump (no double jump in this one), or jump-dash from platform to platform is quickly put into place as you progress through the levels. The only issue is, some higher up platforms require you to boost up and jumping, holding up and hitting boost can sometimes get lost in your fingers, leading to some silly and easy avoided deaths, this is amplified as things start appearing on the platforms patrolling them that kill Mel with a simple touch, let’s not also forget spikey platforms too. There’s no health bar, lives or chance at times. Fortunately, later levels also have little mid-level checkpoints you can touch to activate, allowing you to die repeatedly on a tricky section without having to replay all the level to get back to it. Level 6 also introduces teleporter to move Mel from one part of the level to another too.

The game has no collectables to speak of, so this is a platformer in it’s most simplest and basic form.

As seems to be the norm in these smaller, indie games, there’s only one jingle playing throughout. With no variety in the music whatsoever. Mel makes a ‘Mario-style’ noise when they leap and the boost makes a weird clicky sound when used and you get a ‘bling’ sound effect when you exit the level. And that’s all the sound effects you’re getting from this title. At least the background changes every 10 Levels to signify moving onto another world, which is a nice change from so many other small games such as this.

Presentation

Mel The Space Cat is presented as a very simplistic platformer. Simple in design and concept. Get from start to finish in a very linear way. The backgrounds change as the game progresses, but the style of the platforms, spikes and enemies never do. It’s all very pixellated as you would expect with Mel having only the most basic of animations, but at least they remain animated whilst standing still. The small selection of enemies, like the Theo, look charming enough and have similar basic animations to them.

The Bottom Line

Going for only £4.19 on the Xbox Store, there’s some short-term fun to be had playing Mel The Space Cat. However, an experienced platforming gamer can breeze through the whole game in less than an hour. If you’re looking to pad out your Gamerscore with some easy GS, and you have a fiver or so burning a hole in your digital Xbox wallet, then there’s worse games to spend your time and money on. It doesn’t try to be anything but a short, colourful, frustratingly hard to stop playing til you beat that one level that you keep dying on because you made a slight timing mistake. Precision, quick reactions and pixel perfect timing is needed and that can make this title worth your time for awhile. However, as with so many of these title, once you complete it there’s absolutely no reason to ever load it up again. So bear that in mind.

Right no more animals in cosmic escapades for me for a time…