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A Game of Cat and Mouth comes from the team behind Exploding Kittens, but apart from the art work and cats they are very different. Contained within this sturdy box is not only everything you need to play, but also the arena itself! The game describes itself as pinball crossed with catapults and 'pinball'ish'!
Tiny Soft Balls
Cat and Mouth certainly combines elements from a few different sources, but adds wrinkles that edge it above the usual dexterity game. TL:DR this is excellent. It starts from the moment you open the box. The quality of components is brilliant. The box is also the play arena, and held together in box form by a sturdy magnetic flap and handle combo. The cat mouth is a impressive plastic piece with the scoring dials acting as the cat's eyes. Brilliantly these dials are connected so only one of you needs to update it when you score. The arena itself looks like a weird tennis court with one of you sat at each end.
The weakest component are the cardboard walls that slot in around your half of the arena, but they are easily good enough to serve their purpose. And that purpose is to stop balls pinging off all around the room. The balls come in three different colours - black, white and yellow. To win a point you must get all the balls of one colour on to your opponents side of the arena. The balls are catapulted by cat paws which magnetically attach to the board and work really well at flinging the balls around. The balls are sturdy but slightly squishy so they won't leave anybody with any injuries.
Eyes and Ears and Mouth and Nose
To set up each player places four yellow balls on their side, three white balls in the plastic mouth of the cat as 'teeth' and the one black ball which fits snuggly in the nose hole. Both players start flicking at the same time trying to get all the yellow balls on the other players side, or all three white teeth balls, or the black nose ball. Of course you have to knock the teeth and nose parts out of their respective areas first. With the teeth this is not too hard, but the nose is going to take a few good hits before it pops out. White 'teeth' aren't the end of the world as when they end up on your side you can fling them back, but as soon as the black 'nose' dislodges the point goes to the player who knocked it through to their opponents side.
These three winning conditions make the game more tense and strategic than the madcap nature of play would suggest. Do you risk it all to attempt the nose shot? Or if your opponent is hell bent on 'nosing' you do you change to try and knock the three teeth loose? All this thinking takes place while you are trying to keep an eye on how many white and yellow balls are residing on your side of the arena at present!
Thanks to the cardboard walls, balls don't tend to ping outside the board too much, but when they do players simply 'paws' until the ball is retrieved. To win the whole shebang you simply need 5 points. If you are playing with younger players you could take turns at taking shots, but in most cases playing at the same time is best.
A Game of Cat and Mouth Final Thoughts
Some games are brilliant because they make you feel clever. Others take you on a narrative journey. Some games are good fun for all ages. And some games let you fire tiny balls with magnetic catapults to win points. It didn't have to be so clever or pretty and I still would have loved it. But the Exploding Kittens team have done a great job of making this feel like a premium product while also not breaking the bank. This is an absolute bargain even at RRP.
The scoring systems also elevate it over mindless flicking into a game that, while still mad, provides options. The magnetic kitty paw catapults work perfectly and simply without any mechanisms to go wrong and allows aiming to be quick and easy. Had this arrived a tad earlier in a 'normal' year, it's easy to imagine it being the hit Christmas game. As it is it is still a great choice for families and gamers.
I haven't even mentioned properly the portability and clever fold into the box design. If you like dexterity games at all, if you love Klask but can't be bothered to cart it around, if you desire Crokinole but can't stomach the high price, pick this up. It's a purfect one for the meantime.
