Product Category: iPhone / iPod Touch Game
Price: $2.99
System Requirements: 3.6MB of free space
Pros:
- Extremely fun;
- Great "pick up and play" game;
- More cuteness per second than any game in history.
Cons:
- Sound effects may freak out cat owners;
- Hitting home key wipes your game out.
Summary: Nothing says cute like kittens, and this game has loads of cuteness.
Another Falling Block Game?
Let's face it; the "falling block and color matching" genre has been beaten to death. Every game is a clone of either Tetris or Bejeweled. It's almost gotten to the point where developers don't even bother trying to come up with new concepts and instead resign themselves to making clones. Luckily, Shivering Kittens isn't one of those games.
Figure 1: Shivering Kittens in action.
The rules are very simple. A bunch of kittens, after a very cold couple of days in Minnesota, have been trapped inside ice blocks. To free them, you can do one of two things: Arrange five kittens so that they're touching (in any configuration or shape) or complete a line of frozen blocks (with or without kittens) from one side of the screen to the other. Doing so will get you a really cute meow, and the kittens will disappear off the screen. That's the game!
What Makes it Fun
The great part of Shivering Kittens is the strategy involved. Unlike Tetris, where the blocks fall in complete pieces, these blocks slide down when they land as if they're separate parts.
Figure 2: Blocks fall as separate sections, not one contiguous block.
This is what makes the strategy more intense. You'll never have empty space and you have to plan where your pieces are falling in order to make sure you complete rows correctly. If you time it just right, you'll get massive chain reactions and big points.
What Makes it Fun (Continued)
There are no on screen controls or accelerometer-based controls; instead, Shivering Kittens relies on a gesture-based control system of swipes to move the pieces around the screen.
Figure 3: The control guide from inside the game.
The controls are responsive enough to be twitchy when you need them, an essential part of keeping a puzzler playable. Many iPhone puzzlers I've played have awkward, if not awful, controls, but the controls really work well here meaning you won't end games in complete frustration.
Conclusion
When I first got the e-mail asking if I'd like to review this game, my immediate reaction was "Oh, a Tetris clone with cute graphics," and while that is true in some ways, it really is more than that as well. I've found the game to be very addictive and something you can play for long periods of time without getting bored. The way they've integrated matching of shapes with Tetris-like controls makes the game fun and if you're into puzzlers, this one will definitely hold your interest. It's a bargain at $2.99 and you should definitely check it out.
Vincent Ferrari is an Apple fan, videoblogger, blogger, writer, and all-around geek from the Bronx. He works in the IT Department of a cellular phone company that shall not be named, and lives in a very comfortable apartment with his lovely wife, two lovely cats, three Macs, two iPhones, and God-knows-how-many iPods of varying age.
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Cute, Cuddly, Cold & Fun
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