Bomb Cat

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in Purrfect Collection, along with Fit My Cat, Magic Cats Pots, and Neko Bento.)

Bomb Cat is a Puzzle game released in 2024 on Nintendo Switch, and it has players dropping round-shaped cats into a transparent box, trying to match cats of the same size and color, causing them to transform into a larger cat with a different color. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same core gameplay as Suika Game. But as I often say, there’s nothing wrong with a copycat so long as it’s a good copycat. So… is Bomb Cat a good copycat?

I suppose I should start by saying this isn’t exactly a Suika Game clone, as it does have one major difference – in addition to normal circles, you also occasionally drop bombs into the box that cannot be disposed of normally. Instead, they must come into contact with the red cat-circle thing (the fifth size up out of eleven), which sets off the bomb, exploding and causing nearby circles to bounce around.

In theory this adds variety and helps to jostle the circles so they don’t just get stuck in the same place throughout a game session. Unfortunately, the execution here is terrible. The bombs themselves always make things worse when you get them, because they take up a lot of space you can’t use for other circles, but making them explode to get rid of them is bad too, because they don’t get rid of other nearby circles like you’d think. Rather, they bounce those nearby circles, sometimes up and out of the box, forcing you to instantly lose even though you had no way of knowing they’d bounce in that way.

So as a result, this is a game mechanic that just forces you to either accept a permanent handicap, or a risk of an instant loss, due to no fault of your own playing. And that’s if you even have the red circle you need to explode the bomb in a position you can use it – being the fifth-smallest circle means you can go a while without being able to make one, and if it’s separated from the bomb by other circles you may not be able to get them to touch.

You can’t opt to play without the bomb cat mechanic, but even if you could, the rest of this game is a pretty poor Suika Game clone, with physics that aren’t especially great and with everything taking the same boring circle shape, just in different sizes.

The presentation here does at least use decent enough-looking hand-drawn 2D visuals with a good use of color… but then it makes them repulsive by making the eyes of these cats roll like slot machine reels, which is really creepy and off-putting. Add in jazzy but forgettable music, and sound effects that seem like they came from a public domain mobile game starter pack, and that pretty much rounds out everything here.

That’s not even the worst part. Not only is Bomb Cat a terrible take on the Suika Game formula, it’s one that costs over twice the price of Suika Game. But even when this game goes on sale, I still wouldn’t recommend it. I credit Bomb Cat for at least trying to find some way to distinguish itself from its inspiration with its bomb mechanic, but that mechanic only makes the game worse, not better. If you really want a game like this, get Suika Game or one of the many other (better) copies of that game. Do not buy Bomb Cat.

tl;dr – Bomb Cat is a Puzzle game where players drop different-sized circular cats into a box, trying to match them and combine them into bigger ones. This is pretty much the same gameplay as Suika Game, but worse, and with a terrible bomb mechanic and an unsettling presentation, all at a price over twice what Suika Game costs. Do not waste your money on this terrible copycat.

Grade: D

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