House of Cats

• Designers: William Attia and Kristian A Østby
• Publisher: Aporta Games
• Players: 1-6
• Age: 10+
• Time: 10-15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Aporta Games/Matagot

Per the publisher: Fill your house with cats, mice and dice! Form rooms using numbers. Then use the rooms’ special abilities to score the most points. There are 4 unique levels (each with their own rules), and every time you play you use a random set of 4 out of 12 possible abilities. This ensures new challenges every game. House of Cats is a quick and clever roll-and-write game, and the first collaborative design by veteran designers William Attia and Kristian A Østby.

To set up the game, decide what level (1 through 4) you will play, and give each player a scoring sheet for that level.  The twelve ability tiles are shuffled and four are flipped up, one at a time – all players write the revealed icons in the 2, 3, 4 and 5 ability spaces on their sheet in the order they are revealed.   If you are playing Level 2 or 3, roll three dice and the three results must be placed in three starred spaces on the sheet.

Once set up, play turns until one of the players has filled in all the spaces on their sheet.  To start every turn, someone rolls the 4 dice, and then all players must choose 3 of the dice and draw them on their sheet.  You must write your numbers/icons in an orthogonally adjacent group.  The dice sides are: 2, 3, 4, 5, mouse, cat.

You create a room anytime you have a group of X adjacent squares all with the number X in them – as soon as it is created, draw a line around the room.  You now also darken the outline of an ability circle to the right of the same number.  Once a circle is darkened, you can cross it out to take the matching ability at any time. Note, a few abilities are immediate; they must be used as soon as they are gained.

Again, continue playing until the end of a turn when at least one player has filled in their entire sheet.  At that point, it’s time to score – conveniently, this can be done on the right hand side of the sheet.  

• Score points for completed rooms
• Negative one point for each empty space on your sheet 
• Special rules per level for the cats/mice

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the least empty spaces on the sheet.

My thoughts on the game

House of Cats is a clever roll and write (RAW) game which takes a surprisingly short amount of time to play.  The basic rules are quite simple, and those basics can be taught in just a few minutes.  However, the four different rules sheets provide quite different challenges, and it is almost like getting four different games in the box.  Well, almost.  The basic rules definitely give a stability to the game, but the different ways in which you use the cat and mice certainly changes with each sheet.

As players choose three of the four dice results each turn, the sheets diverge from each other rather quickly.  I tend to like RAW games that do this because it makes each roll worth something different to each player; and it prevents players from taking the easy road from trying to copy what someone else is doing.   

This is definitely a strictly simultaneous solitaire game; there is no interaction between the players at all – just use 3 of 4 dice each turn, mark your spaces and see who has the most points at the end.   No goals to race for, no ways to affect the sheets of your opponent.  Is that a bad thing?  Not for me; I’m happy to puzzle away on my own sheet; but unlike some other RAW where one player isolates some dice for themselves (and thus at least marginally affects the other players), everyone has the same roll here.

The graphics are well done, and I like the large ability tiles with bold easy-to-see icons.  The only thing that I would note is that the cheese icon is definitely not what I’d consider standard.  Instead of (what I think is the prototypical) wedge with holes, the cheese here looks like an asteroid with craters.  Who knows, maybe this is how European cheese is represented.  The pencil is fairly easy to see on the sheets (except maybe the blue Level 1), but I would caution you against using a pen – the sheets are double sided, and I did make a Level 2 sheet unusable when I used a felt tipped pen for the Level 1 side.

If you’re looking for a new Roll-and-Write that offers a fair amount of variety and strategy, House of Cats should be on your radar.  Also, good for people that want to be judged by the ruleset…

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Joe Huber (10 plays, including plays of various prototypes) – I realized, a few years back, that I’m done with roll-and-write games.  Not that there’s anything wrong with them – they just weren’t holding up for me.  But before I came to this conclusion, I played one roll-and-write game I really loved – the game which became House of Cats.  So when I saw that the game was finally coming out, I made an exception and picked it up – and I still love the game.  It’s possible that my distaste for roll-and-write games will limit how much I get out of House of Cats, but I’ve played it enough that I’m convinced that even with more play I will still at a minimum like it – and for now I love it.

Dan B. (4 plays): I like the game – I appreciate that it has four boards which do feel fairly different in play, and each board I have played so far is interesting – but it doesn’t stand out that much from other roll/flip-and-writes for me. (For one thing, it’s somewhat reminiscent of Travel Over, which I think I like a bit better, but that game is not one most people have access to.)

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Joe H.
• I like it. Dale, Dan B.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…