Cat Palette: Merging Colorful Kittens

Do you like puzzle games? Do you like cats? Do you like puzzle games with cats? Well, have I got the game for you?

I’ve been on an accidental cat game binge recently, and purrhaps it has something to do with the upcoming Cat Quest 3, but I’m really not complaining. Cat Palette: Merging Colorful Kittens is a cute and simple puzzle game where you move coloured cats around the board and put them all to bed. This starts simple but the complexity is slowly increased as new mechanics are introduced.

I played this on Steam and used a keyboard and mouse to play. You move your cats by clicking them and using the keyboard to direct which way you want them to go. Be careful not to put the wrong kitty in the wrong bed or send them flying off the side of the board, because this will reset the puzzle immediately.

Then you have the colours to consider. Cats in primary colours can mix to make other colours, eg red and yellow make an orange cat. This means you have to collect and merge your cats in an order which combines them without leaving strays as purple and blue cannot mix even though there was a blue cat in the original combo. You can mix any colour of cat with a white cat, this makes them act more like a stopper to help move your cats around the board. Black cats stop your cats, but will not merge with others, so it will bump your cats back before vanishing.

Because of the way the cats merge and bounce, there are several ways to finish some of the earlier levels. There wasn’t really a “correct” way to play, but the later levels were much less forgiving which slowed my progression dramatically. There were a few puzzles I had to fully walk away from but managed them with a lot of tries. This isn’t a bad thing for a puzzle game though as I rather like to be challenged.

The music is cosy lo-fi and has meows over the top. Reducing the sound levels for the music and effects are the only real settings this game had. It’s actually worth mentioning there are only three buttons on the main menu, one closes the game and another deletes your save. I wouldn’t have minded an “Are you sure you want to delete your save” pop-up as I did not mean to do it, or the option to window the game screen. I realise the game itself is about £3 and made by a small dev team, but I feel like these are pretty basic asks from a PC game.

While some of the cats look more like squirrels, they are still pretty cute and it all works within the cosy theme. There are also 150 levels to sink your teeth into and having multiple avenues from many of the puzzles means the gameplay/solutions aren’t too repetitive.

I’ve already spent a few hours playing Cat Palette: Merging Colourful Kittens and I’m hitting more and more challenging levels which leave me stumped. The game itself is fun and stars easy, but finally figuring out some of these tougher levels was quite satisfying.