Herding (or Stacking) Cats: 4 Cat-Themed Games

Okay, Cat Stax is not quite the same as the other games in this list, but it does involve playing with cats. It’s a puzzle from Brainwright (a sister company of Gamewright) about stacking plastic cats into particular patterns.

At a glance: Cat Stax is a solitaire puzzle game for ages 8 and up, though of course you could have multiple people working together. It retails for $15.99.

Components:

• 12 plastic cats (in assorted shapes)
• 24 double-sided Challenge cards
• 24 double-sided Solution cards
• Plastic storage case

The cats aren’t extremely square-looking, but they are essentially cat-shaped blocks, each taking up 2 or more grid spaces. There’s a small removable plastic tray at the top of the storage case–if you keep it, you’ll have to remember how to put them all back in (I took a photo to help me). Otherwise, you can remove it and then the cats can be scattered on top of the cards. (My kids really wanted to keep the tray.)

The Challenge cards are double-sided, so you have 48 puzzles to solve total, with four difficulty levels. Each one shows a number of cats, a number of layers, and a colored grid. The solution cards show the arrangements of cats that solve the puzzles. It’s handy to have the puzzle and solution on separate cards, since you place the cats directly on the card and it would be hard to check on a solution without removing all the cats.

How to Play

It’s pretty simple: choose a puzzle and find all the required cat pieces for the puzzle. Your goal is to place all of the cats such that they fill the colored grid exactly, without sticking out of the grid or omitting any spaces. In addition, you’ll need to have between 1 and 3 layers of cats. Sometimes with multiple layers, you’ll have some cats standing upright so that they cross multiple layers. However, some cats will balance on certain edges and others won’t, so it’s not the same as if they were all blocks made of cubes.

The Verdict

My two older kids (9 and 12) really loved Cat Stax and immediately started working their way through the puzzles… until the toddler ran off with one of the cats. We finally recovered the missing cat recently, so we can get back to stacking.

The puzzles start off fairly easy but get really challenging, particularly when you move into the multi-layer puzzles. There is an element of dexterity involved–even when a cat is supposed to stack a certain way, you’ll have to be careful not to bump it too much.

I classify this sort of game as a “packing” game–like Tetris or City Square-Off, it’s all about getting shapes to fit within certain boundaries. There are some people (like me) really love that sort of thing. And the others–well, they’re the ones traveling with enormous suitcases. Anyway, if you like packing puzzles, Cat Stax will provide a nice challenge. Buy it now on Amazon, or check your local game or toy store.

Disclosure: I received review copies of these games.

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