A Game of Cat & Mouth Review

22/01/2023

Isn’t it great to sit down and play some nice and relaxing board games in the evenings? Gather the kids, family and friends around the kitchen table moving pieces around a board, maybe dealing out cards or perhaps even trying to become a property tycoon. In our house we love to play those types of games, but we also love to play games with a bit more excitement as well, ones that bring out that competitive edge, and we have it in the brilliant and simple game from Exploding Kittens – A Game of Cat & Mouth! Yes, that’s correct – MOUTH not MOUSE!

A Game of Cat & Mouth is a tabletop game that pits competitive players against each other for fast-flinging frantic fun. It is a game that is suitable for 2 players aged 7+. There are no questions or answers involved, there is no board to move pieces around and there are certainly no puzzles to solve – you just grab your balls (the plastic covered magnetic ones that come with the game of course, not whatever you are thinking about), use your magnetic cat paw to fling them towards your opponent and knocking out the cats teeth, punching out its nose or just getting all your balls on your opponent’s side. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? It is a fusion of air hockey, slingshot and pinball all in one and is lots of fun.

Box contents:

Folding Gameboard/box
2 Magnetic Cat Paw Flickers
17 Magnetic Plastic Balls
Cat Face
Instructions

What is A Game of Cat & Mouth? It is a magnet-powered game that requires no batteries and is a bit like pinball except that you are flicking balls through the mouth of a cat head. The aim is to knock down 3 balls (cat’s teeth) and getting them onto your opponent’s side, trying to knock out the cat’s nose or trying to get all the yellow balls into your opponent’s side. It is competitive fast, frantic family fun.

The box is not just a storage box, it is also the game board that folds out to set up your playing arena. It also has a handle to make it easily portable. The box opens out to reveal the playing area and all the pieces. To play, the Cat Head is inserted upright into the middle of the board. 6 cardboard walls are then slotted into place around the board. 3 white balls (the cat’s teeth) are then placed on the holders in the mouth on the Cat Head and the black ball placed into the nose position. A magnetic Cat Paw flicker is then placed on the paw symbol on each side of the box. Once assembled you are ready to play – there is no turn taking, just speed of hand and a bit of strategic thinking are required.

To play the game, on the countdown of 3, place a yellow ball into the Paw Flicker and start flinging those balls through the mouth on the Cat Head – the paw pulls back and swivels to adjust trajectory and power. The first to five points is the winner and there is a handy scoring wheel (the cat’s eyes) that turns to mark and keep track of the scores. There are three ways to score points:

You hit the Black Nose Ball onto the other player’s side of the board
All 3 White Teeth Balls are on the other player’s side of the board at the same time
All 8 Yellow Balls are on the other player’s side of the board at the same time

Overall, we absolutely LOVED this game. It is a very fast game taking 10 minutes to play (unless both players are very bad shots). Fast ball-flinging fun that the whole family will enjoy. You just use speed of hand and mind to play as you need to load the Paw Flicker, adjust the angle, pull back on the paw and fire to get a tiny ball through the mouth of the Cats Head. It is a simple concept, easy to play and VERY VERY COMPETITIVE! A game of PAW-control. Is your strategy to try to knock out the cat’s teeth? Maybe you go for the more difficult shot of knocking out its nose? Or maybe you just try to fire all the yellow balls on to the other side? Whatever your strategy, just be aware of what the other player is doing because it could all change in an instant and you will be forced to respond, or you will be a paw loser!

Now, a board game where balls are being flicked, flung and flying through the air seems like a recipe for pieces to be lost. In this game it is managed quite well as it has extra cardboard walls to extend the height of the box and for the most part the balls to seem to only have enough power to stay within the playing area unless your aim is well off. When a ball does happen to bounce out, the player shouts outs “PAWS” and then retrieves the ball before play can continue after a countdown of 3. There are some spare balls in the box, but as we haven’t lost any we haven’t needed to use any.

This is a two player game but if you want to play with more players it has a Tournament Mode – just visit the Exploding Kittens website, enter the names of the players and whether you want to use single or double elimination and it sorts it all out for you. The tournament mode selects who plays who and keeps track of the winners until there is only one overall winner remaining. We love this feature and think that is an excellent addition to the game.

If you want a fast and competitive edge to your game nights, A Game of Cat & Mouth is perfect for family game nights whilst being just as much fun for grown up game nights. It is so simple to set up, easy to play and the game play is generally fast depending on how competitive the players are and how accurate their aim is. We love it and surprisingly we haven’t even lost a ball, injured anyone or broken anything (unless you count a broken spirit when you lose several games in a row).

A Game of Cat & Mouth is a fun and competitive game where age really means nothing to play – in fact the youngest player (10) in our house wins a much bigger percentage of the games (maybe her hand/eye co-ordination are a lot faster than the adults). We think that is excellent fun for all the family and really love playing it.

Rating: 5/5

RRP: £24.99

For more information, visit www.explodingkittens.com. Available to buy from Amazon here.