Cat and the Tower

• Designer: Masazaku Takizawa
• Publisher: Arclight
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 6+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with copy provided by publisher

In Cat and the Tower, you will work together with other players to help Toto the cat on his way up a perilous tower to reach the stars, where he believes his mother is waiting for him.

Each turn will have you choosing options from the cards available to either build the tower ever higher, or testing how steady you can keep your hand by performing dexterity challenges that will help Toto climb up higher to his destination.  It is up to you and the other players to build the tower yourself, which will require a constant balancing act of mismatched walls and moving Feline Friends.  Build up the tower, place the Feline Friends and get Toto to reach his goal to win the game!  Cat and the Tower has cute cats, engaging gameplay, and a storyline that will tear at your heartstrings and leave you giving it your all to help Toto complete his adventure.

To start the game, the 1st floor tile is placed on the table and Toto is placed on the paw token.  The wall tiles are sorted and kept nearby as are the 2nd thru 24th floor tiles.  The two starting action cards are placed face up on the table and the rest of the deck is shuffled to form the action card deck.  One goal card is chosen at random and placed on the table as well.

All of the cards are non-translated (in Japanese) – but there is a helpful two page flyer with pictures and full translations. It’s simple enough to look up the two action cards at the start of each turn.

On a turn, the active player first performs an action – usually attempting to place an additional tile onto the stack or to add a feline friend to the tower.  The floor tiles are numbered and must be placed in order.  When placing things, you are allowed to use one or both hands.  You can adjust the objects you are placing while actively placing things.  Discard the action card used and draw a new one to give the next player two to choose from.

Depending on the luck of the draw, you may be stuck with options forcing you to build with walls of extremely varying height that can send the entire tower toppling over if you are not careful.

Toto’s Feline Friends will also come along for the adventure, and their presence can both help and hinder you. Adjusting their location will let you rebalance the tower, but they may also end up in inconvenient spots that get in the way of you placing walls to build new floors.

After the action is complete, the player looks to see if any mission card has been fulfilled.  You can only fulfill one card at most on a particular turn.  As you discard the completed mission card, move Toto up the number of floors as shown on the bottom of the card.  Replace the discarded mission with a new one from the deck.

When Toto sees his friends making it to the floor above him, it gives him the bravery needed to climb up higher and higher himself.  The game may start off seemingly easy, but you will soon find that it is unsurprising to see the tower fall apart once you start building from the 5th floor and beyond.

If you get Toto to the 10th floor, all players count to 5 and make sure nothing falls off the tower.  If it is stable, then everyone wins!  Alternatively, the players lose if five or more wall tiles have fallen off the tower over the course of the game. 

Once you clear the first stage (10 floors), you can see more of Toto’s story as he journeys to reunite with his mother. There are cards for 13, 15, 17 and 20 floor challenges.

My thoughts on the game

I always have misgivings about cooperative dexterity games because I have a track record of being the person to let everyone else down.  I’m honestly pretty awful at dex games in general, and anything that involves balancing things on top of each other – umm, maybe it’s better if I remain a spectator unless everyone wants a super short game…

Much of the game here is left to luck of the draw – as far as what action cards are available to you when your turn comes up.  Without this variability, honestly, there wouldn’t be a lot of game going on here – but when you have to figure out how to deal with non-ideal action choices – that’s where the challenge comes in.

I’d definitely play on a stable surface – we had the best success on my pool table.  First, you can’t move the table, and honestly, even if you bump into it, it’s not going to move.  Secondly the little bit of friction offered by the felt helped keep the base stable. When I played on a smooth surface (kitchen counter), the shiny/slick surface made it hard to stack things up without falling.

My small intention tremor, anxiety over toppling things over and mildly over-sweaty hands result in the usual building disasters in Cat and the Tower, and this is one of those games that I can see with ease that it is “Not for me…” – but not for any faults of the game but simply because I am no good at games like this nor do I enjoy them.  I’ve been a spectator of a game that made it to the sixteenth floor, and everyone was having a great time, and I enjoyed watching them play – knowing that such a result is not remotely possible when I have to take every fourth turn in the game…

If you’re into  balancing and dexterity games, this is worth a try.   I’ve seen groups build some impressive structures with this game, but none of those games included me…   The tower only has one life, not nine, so you’ll need steady hands and the ability to roll with the punches as the different action cards come available.  

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.
• Neutral.  Mark J
• Not for me… Dale Y