Anyone who’s been following Mass Deduction since the beginning (was it really 565 days ago?) knows I love games with interesting risk/reward systems. Games like “ArkX”, “Karnn Age Lite”, “Seizonrenda”, “Break Limit”, “Epic Dungeon”, “Square Off”, “Terwilliger”, “Ripple”, “Space Police on SuperHighway 9”, “Ultraviolet”, and “Astro Cluster”. I still think Space Police’s is one of the best: drive fast and it heals your car, but it also means you’re driving more recklessly and risking more damage.
Well, “CatSaber”‘s got one too. You press a button to release enemies into the screen. The more enemies you have, the more points you can rack up, but the more at risk your cat is. Enemies are infinite, but time is finite, so how many will you throw at yourself?
But what do you do to those released enemies? Well, stab them with your sabre made of light, naturally. As with sabres made of light from a certain movie franchise, you can absorb enemy shots with it and you’ll need to. You see, all your enemies have distance weapons but you only have your trusty melee weapon that requires you to get in close to use it. There are bonuses if you kill multiple enemies simultaneously, and bonuses for killing enemies consecutively without dying.
If you watch the embedded video, make sure to watch through to the second half when the player actually starts to swing the sabre around. The game is a high-score rush game, where you just try to get as many points as possible before time runs out. It’s still an 80 Microsoft Point game that nicely avoids easy categorisation and offered a lot of things that I enjoy. Oh, and it gets bonus points for the absolutely awesome box art on the Dashboard.
Here’s what the developer (Necotokusoft) has to say about the game:
“This is a game of a cat fighter wielding a sword of light.Press and hold the A button, which keeps the sword of light ready for the cat.You can call up enemies by pressing the X button.Aim for as high score as possible within the time limit.”
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