Lasercat: the digested review

Made2Game Lasercat Review Score: 9/10
Formats: XBLIG
Format Reviewed: XBLIG
Publisher/Developer: MonsterJail Games
Price: 80 MS Points

Xbox Live Indie Games is an annoying place. The PC 'indie' scene is genuinely quite well formed; lesser games occupy the advertisement-clogged back alleys of the internet while genuine, peer-tested, quality titles can frequently be seen on Steam's front page or raising money for charity.

Xbox Live Indie Games is, unfortunately, nothing like this. It actually feels like a mess of these two practises, with numerous Minecraft knock-offs added to clog up the system a little bit more. It's like being served a plate with Heston Blumenthal's finest cuisine then having a pile of McDonalds unscrupulously dumped on top of it.

Unfortunately this means that, contrary to the popular adage, cream can struggle to rise to the top. The top of the most popular Live Indie Games list is choked by those thoughtless Minecraft-alikes while many other frequently downloaded games are simple idiocy – Prank Caller? The $1.00 Zombie Game? Really?

The issue here is that this intelligence-sapping cholesterol is clogging up the very digital arteries that should be broadcasting a wonderful monument to the gleeful creativity of independent game design. And this means that some truly great titles are lost to the virtual intestines of the Live Indie Games system.

Lasercat is one such game. A delightful, charming, eccentric slice of virtual entertainment from the mind of Daniel McFarline, extremely well designed and put together and then played by all of five people, with no way of finding it unless through a knowing Bing search. This is a travesty. (The MonsterJail Games website is here.)

Wizzords castle is full of highlights but our highlight is the 'Existential Nightmare Room'.

The concept of Lasercat is simple – taking on the role of the titular feline, you're on a mission to explore the castle of the evil space-frog Wizzord with the goal of rescuing your friend Owl. This is because Lasercat doesn't have one hundred British pounds sterling to pay the ransom for his friend's release. The cheapskate.

To accomplish this you must platform through the non-linear castle's 225 rooms in search of thirty keys. Each room is an individual platforming challenge - focusing on jumping, enemy-dodging, and riding air currents - and upon finding a key you must answer a trivia question that ranges from knowledge about animals to the characters of the game or something completely 'out-there'.

The joy of Lasercat is undoubtedly the fun-mindedness evident in its construction. Room names are often designed with tongue firmly in cheek - the game is littered with movie and game references - while Wizzord's coherent castle has frequent silly asides. The trivia questions also have a disturbing fascination with 'Delicious Human Flesh'...

Lasercat is somewhat nonsensical but hugely entertaining with it, and the humour never grates against its exquisite playability. In fact one of Lasercat's key strengths is that it's never self-satisfying, its wry sense of humour is endlessly appealing and whereas other XBL Indie Games frequently fail to be funny, Lasercat is absolutely bang on with its humour.

Lasercat's heartwarmingly honest production is so delightfully endearing that your hour-and-a-half (ish) in its company will be over all too quickly. And chances are you'll want to play it again before long. Lasercat is a genuinely great Xbox Live Indie Game, and one that deserves far more attention than it has received.

Digested-digested-review: Utterly charming, thoroughly British adventure in which you guide a cat through a trial filled castle with some trivia on the side. One of Live Indie Games' true classics.

Words by James Bowden (Twitter: @Dalagonash)

Note: The digested review format: Games come in so many sizes, flavours and colours that it’s impossible – not to say a little dull – to review all of them in the same way. iOS, Android and other mobile games, for example, usually feature low prices and simple game mechanics. So for these we don’t want to waste too much of your time: you mostly want to know whether it’s worth the price and move on. So for most of these we offer special ‘digested reviews’, plus a 140 character or less digested-digested review.
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