Copy Cats turns obedient clones into a very crowded puzzle platformer
One cat is difficult enough
- Control a cat and her perfect clones
- Use walls and gaps to solve puzzles
- Stack copies into furry ladders
Cats aren't famous for doing what they're told. Copy Cats gets around that by cloning one and making every copy do exactly what she does. It's a puzzle platformer from Jussi Simpanen, the Finnish solo developer behind other games like Duke Dashington and Tiny Dangerous Dungeons.
A lab accident has left a small cat stuck in a strange virtual dimension, and the only way home is through a series of portals. She can't get there alone, so a mysterious cloning machine hands her an army of herself to help out. Every clone mirrors your moves, as the most committed round of Simon Says ever played. Run, and they all run; jump, and they all jump.
The puzzles come from turning the level layout against your copies. As far as I can tell, that means walls and gaps holding some of them back while the others carry on, until everyone's lined up where you want them.
Then you stack them into a furry ladder to reach whatever's out of paw's reach. Mechanics like this tend to turn fiendish quickly. You're solving for several bodies at once, and every jump counts for all of them.
It also goes very old-school on the visuals, and for a puzzler where you need to know which cat is standing where, that's no bad thing. It fits the studio’s back catalogue too, since Tiny Dangerous Dungeons was built to look like a Game Boy release, and going by the screenshots, Copy Cats sits in that same retro neighbourhood.
Obedient cats, then. Science really has gone too far this time. Copy Cats lands on October 29th for a premium of $3.99 on the App Store and Google Play.
Our list of the top retro games on iOS has more pixels to get through while you wait, if fewer cats.
