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Exploring the world of modern board games
Make your corner in the Cat Café the best one possible! Entice cats by drawing toys for the cats to play with. Place the toys in the most favourable way possible, and win by attracting the most cats!
Gameplay
Cat Café is a light roll and write game, however, unlike many other games in this genre it features a dice drafting mechanic.
Each round, the first player will roll a number of dice equal to the number of players plus one. This player will select one die from the pool, followed by each of the other players in turn. Once everyone has taken a die there will be one remaining in the pool, which will act as the community die to be used by all players in the item marking phase.
During the marking phase, players will use their own die along with the community die to place an item onto one of their cat towers. In Cat Café, there are six items that can be placed on a tower which each have different ways of scoring points, these are; mouse toys, cat houses, cushions, balls of wool, butterfly toys and food bowls. Some of these have multipliers meaning that the item scores more points the more of them you have. One of the dice will be used to determine placement of the item and the other will determine the item that it placed.
To place an item on a cat tower, players mark the relevant item on the position they want to place it in the tower. Players can either draw the symbol representing each item, or for those who are less artistically inclined mark the first letter of that item on a position in the tower.
Once players have finished one of their cat towers, by placing an item in all of the spaces they must check if their completed tower has a cathouse on it. If it does, and they are the first player to complete that tower, they circle the higher number at the top of the cat tower.
All other players that haven't completed that tower draw an X over the higher number, to indicate that it has already been completed and those points have been claimed. If there is an X already over the cat tower, players instead circle the lower number when they complete a tower.
Once a player has completed three cat towers, the game comes to an end and all players work out the point scoring for their cat towers.
So what do we think of Cat Café?
Cat Café is a highly accessible, and affordable addition to the roll and write family, the gameplay is really easy get a grasp of and it is super simple to teach and learn, meaning that it would make an excellent gateway game into the genre for people who have not played a roll and write game before.
The game has a simple but appealing design, and a theme that will definitely draw in the cat lovers among the gaming community. The player sheets are well laid out, the symbols that are used to represent each item are clear and easy to follow as well as being really fun in design. We really enjoy drawing the little symbols and the design/ style of these really lend themselves to the theme of the game.
Cat Café plays very quickly so I can see it making a perfect game to play as a family or as a quick filler/ warm up game for a group of gamers. Due to the size of the box and the simplicity of the components it would also make an ideal travel game to pack up and take with you anywhere.
2-4 players
30 Minutes
Age 10+
Designer: Lee Ju-Hwa & Keewoong Kim
Publisher: Alley Cat Games, Mandoo Games.
Artist: Yuri Jang
Our rating: