Skater Cat

Game Info

Skater Cat fell on my plate to review and it’s probably a good thing as those are two things I enjoy, cats and skateboarding. With these two things combined, I stated, hell yeah I’ll review this. I was humming the Spaghetti Cat song while playing this title for quite a bit. I found that Skater Cat is a delightful platformer that holds onto a fun concept and uses 3DS features in a unique way but is limited due to the lack of diversity.

Skater Cat has one game style mode where the player is a cat named Ollie and he’s skateboarding his way through thirty side-scrolling levels that are divided between three worlds. During his skateboarding adventures the key is to go super fast through the levels while collecting golden fish, golden cat rings and collecting other cats along the way. In doing all of this you’ll need to avoid spikes, rolling bulldog packs, and pits that will lead to your demise causing you to start the level over again. All of this is not very obvious when you start the game though. There is a how to play on the main menu but I think for the age group, Fun Unit could have put a little introductory pop up if you start playing immediately. You eventually figure out the goal of what you need to do after a level or two.

The gameplay itself is pretty straightforward. You use the analog stick to move forward and the B button to jump and double jump. The jumping mechanic feels good like a normal platformer should so that’s a bonus. One gameplay mechanic that’s added later in the game is a switch that will flip a player upside down where they will jump platforms on the top of the screen. Levels seem to be made up of a few obstacles and are generally quite fun. Once you get through a few levels though its apparent that they lack variety.

You could probably Skate through the game in 1-2 hours if you play it nonstop. It has a decent amount of content and holds high replay value. This game is excellent if you are sitting around and want to kill time, as it’s very addicting. The sound effects are hilarious which are cat meows and quite often made me laugh. The music was pretty solid too. It sounds like it fits in the Nintendo world quite perfectly. The only issue I had with the music is that there was only one track and even though it’s good, its constant loop almost drove me to insanity. Other than that this game is pretty solid.

There are some cool 3DS features that Skater Cat uses that make it unique. You’ll be able to play as your Mii, which is a fun touch of customization for a 3^rd party title. You can also swap level times over StreetPass, which adds to the replay value, as you’ll want to crush your friends and random strangers time. Unfortunately, the actual use of 3D was not too noticeable although it is there.

The Recommendation

Skater Cat is quick fun quirky pick up and go platformer title. It holds some unique features such as playing as your Mii and StreetPass time swaps. While the game is fun it does lack some guidance at the beginning of the game and also leaves a touch of level variety to be desired. It also could use a variety of music tracks for different levels. I would recommend this game to anyone that has a sense of humor, loves Cats that can skateboard and understand they aren’t getting an epic journey here but a fun platformer that you can easily enjoy and kill time with.