Matthew BaileyGame 16 of the “Bailey Family Summer 2023 Board Game Bonanza” is “Catstronauts” played by Jack (8.), Toby(5) and myself.
“Catstronauts” is a new “mint tin” game from Alley Cat Games and is the sequel to “Kitten,” a fun little dexterity game where you have to build towers of kittens as quickly as possible. Another game that is part of this series is “Tinderblox,” a game that I am a big fan of and reviewed all the way back in September 2021, which is an equally small-sized dexterity game.
Despite being the sequel to “Kitten,” “Catstronauts” is a little bit unusual in that it is actually a reaction game in essence, rather than a dexterity game.
Firstly, each player chooses a colour of meeples. Now, let’s get this out of the way to begin with – the meeples here are the real star of the show. They are reasonably sized, screen-printed with beautiful space cat artwork, and the game comes with a set of stickers to allow you to individually personalise each cat. In all honesty, regardless of the gameplay, the cats really are some of the best meeples I have seen in a while.
In all honesty, i think the phrase “the meeples arent as good as the ones in Catstronauts” is going to become a regular phrase in my reviewers vocabulary.”
So once you have finished doing that, you then take a set of planet cards, and whichever player is the “chosen player” for that round throws the cards randomly into the centre of the table (and then inevitably has to move most of them when they overlap, which kinda defeats some of the purpose of throwing them randomly).
They then turn over a mission card that shows players the order in which they need to visit the planets. Each of your cat meeples has a number on the back, and it is then a race against time to put your cats on the right planet in the correct order that matches the mission card. Now, this is where I think this game is going to be quite divisive as to whether you like it or not. Admittedly, reaction time games are not necessarily my absolute favourite in the Bailey household, but there are some that we have enjoyed recently, so we were very open-minded when we gave this a go. The problem we found was that because it is so hectic when you are all trying to scramble to place meeples on cards, it’s very easy to not just knock and move cards, but also accidentally move other players’ meeples. On more than one occasion, one of us quite accidentally knocked another player’s meeple off a card, and in one case, knocked another player’s meeple off the table, which led to some disagreement amongst us as to the correct procedure for this situation, and unfortunately, the manual does not address this in any way.
After you have managed to calm down any potential arguments over foul play, the first player to successfully place all of their meeples can then grab the mission card and a kitten. It is then up to the other players to inspect their meeples and ensure they are in the correct place. If they get it wrong, they actually lose a kitten, which is important because it ensures that there is a penalty for making a mistake.
The winner is the first player to obtain 4 kittens. As you play in later rounds, more locations are added to mix up the variety and make placing cats that little bit more difficult.
When placing your cats, you are told to palm your cats randomly with your kittens in one hand and place with the other. This ensures that there is also an element of fumbling for the right cat as you are placing them down on the table. It is worth noting that you do not have to place them in any particular order; they just have to be in the right order when you pick up the mission card. So there is a little bit of decision making where you have to decide, do I search for the correct meeples in order, or do I try and place them as they come out of my hand. While this is a small extra rule, it does add a means to slow everything down slightly, which is necessary. The game suggests that for kids or when one player is much stronger than others, you can do things such as line up the cats in the right order or play with your non-dominant hand. As we played later rounds, I played with my non-dominant hand, and Toby had his meeples lined up for him. This did work well and seemed to level the playing field.
Production quality is outstanding for a relatively cheap game. The screen-printed cat meeples are quite literally some of the best I have ever seen, which makes the non-screen-printed smaller kitten meeples a little bit disappointing by comparison. I feel they probably would have been better off not bothering with the kitten meeples and just giving you the mission card to show how many missions you have completed. The cards are on decent card stock, and everything comes in a really nice metal tin.
I always thought of “Tinder Blocks” and this game’s prequel “Kittens” as travel games, down to the size and presentation of them. “Catstronauts” falls into an unusual position of coming across as a travel game but actually requiring a pretty large table to play properly. It’s also fairly tricky to play with children as everyone has to have really close access to what will likely be a reasonably sized area.
There is a lot to want to like about “Catstronauts,” and I definitely think there will be some people out there who really enjoy this kind of game. Sadly, as much as I absolutely adore the meeples, we were not overly enamoured by the game itself (especially the lack of rules when it comes to the inevitably moving of cards and meeples) and much prefer “Tinderblox” as our go-to Alley Cat “mint tin” game. I think you will know in advance if this is the kind of thing your kids will like, but if frantic reaction time gameplay isn’t your thing, then there isn’t likely going to be much here for you.
Apart from the meeples, did I mention how awesome they are?
Disclaimer: A copy of “Catstronauts” was kindly provided by Alley Cat Games for the purpose of review and also as a donation to the school at which I work. All of our thoughts and opinions are our own (try to convince an eight and five-year-old to not give you an honest answer, and you will see why this is definitely not in doubt).
