Scram Kitty and his Buddy on Rails is one of the most challenging games I’ve played all year, it’s also one of the best.
The top down shooter/platformer hybrid is not only one of the best games on the eShop, it is one of the best games on WiiU; a wondrous throw back to a simpler time when skill, silliness and clever design were king.
In Scram Kitty you play as the best buddy of the titular cat in a tale that any pet owner can instantly relate to.
After going missing for several months your cat, Scram Kitty, somehow contacts you from the world’s biggest orbiting space laboratory to tell you that he and the rest of the worlds cats are being held captive by insane super smart, power hungry lab rats that were accidentally created by the Council of Great Scientists.
Seeing no other way to save your beloved moggy, you grab your anti-gravity spin board and take a trip to the space lab to defeat the megalomaniacal mice and rescue the world’s felines.
Scram Kitty is split into two modes; Adventure and Challenge. Adventure mode takes up the main bulk of the game and has you blasting, spinning and jumping your way in a non linear fashion through 29 levels, exploring a map that slowly opens up as you save more cats.
Challenge mode, on the other hand, is a sort of time attack endless runner type thing as you have to see how many cats you can rescue before the time runs out.
The term “easy to pick up difficult to master” doesn’t really cover the hidden depths of what, on the surface, appears to be a very simple shooter. Moving the left stick guides Buddy’s spin board around magnetic rails that stop him from plummeting to his death. A and B let you jump from rail to rail, double tapping the jump button at the right moment allows you to perform a fire jump that can harm enemies and gives you extra height and speed. X and Y fire your weapons and L lets you cycle through your current arsenal.
However you can only fire forward, so the angle of your shots is determined by where you are positioned on the current rail, so not only do you have to be quick on the trigger but find the best place to fire from.
In each level there are four kinds of cats to rescue, some easier than others.
First up there’s the Lazy Cat which is Found at the Exit of each Level.
Next up there’s the Lucky Cat who appears after you’ve collected 100 coins that are scattered around every level. These start off relatively easy to get but get considerably harder as the game progresses.
Then there’s the Black Cat, who appears after you’ve killed the level’s Mouse Commander, an annoying little bugger that chases you round the level until you either outrun him or kill him dead. Still he does provide a nice kind of dog fight feel as you try to out manoeuvre and out gun the git.
Finally we have the Scaredy Cat. that you have to find and then chase around the level getting to various points and trying to grab him three times before he finally goes and joins the rest of his feline friends at the exit. Needless to say these are the hardest cats to get.
Sounds simple enough: ride the rails, rescue the cats and mow down anything that gets in your way.
Well it is, but don’t expect an in depth tutorial, refreshingly and in keeping with its retro feel there’s also zero handholding. Instead you learn by doing and experimenting rather than reading.
After the opening Approach levels teach you the basics of the game, you’re thrown into the deep end, left to your own devices to find your own path to the final fight to free Scram Kitty.
The game also does a wonderful job of introducing new mechanics and increasing the complexity of the levels at a steady pace but not to the point of feeling overwhelming. Adding new and more aggressive types of enemies, rails that act in different ways for example forcing you to go in a certain direction or speed and additional weapons that help you overcome different obstacles and enemies like the high powered laser and my personal favourite, the flame thrower.
Before you know it you’ve gone from steadily riding a couple of rails and gunning down small bands of kamikaze mice with a satisfying pew – pew from your machine guns, to dodging incoming fire from massive laser turrets whilst wave after wave of mice charge at you, as you jump from rail to rail avoiding spike obstacles, all the while hunting for more kitties to add to your collection.
From intricate mazes to out massive gun battles the game’s level design is as varied as it is meticulous, you never quite know what’s going to come next. But you can be sure that it’s going to be a challenge and a hell of a lot of fun.
But if you do get stuck, there’s no need to fret because you can always try another level, as every cat you rescue adds to a total that helps to open up multiple air locks in the space station and with it another set of levels. As such, if you get stuck trying to get all the cats in The East Wing you can always try your luck in the Test Chambers instead.
Another nice touch I found was that you didn’t need to get all of the cats in one sitting either, so if you’re having trouble getting one of those damn Scaredy Cats (bane of my existence, they really are) you can always come back later.
I’m sure some of you will be happy to know that you can also play the entire game on the gamepad without the TV turned on if you want to. Most of the time it just shows a larger area than the gamepad does and occasionally Scram Kitty pops up to offer you useful advice like a cat would, by reminding you that you’re almost dead or showing you the next location of the Scaredy Cat (OK. That is handy).
If you fancy going proper old school though I highly recommend giving the Gamepad Pro a go because it makes the game feel like you’re playing it on a SNES. It also helps that it’s got more sensitive analogue sticks than the standard WiiU gamepad as well, making manoeuvring your spin board and particularly jumping a hell of a lot easier.
Channelling 16bit greats like Smash TV and GunStar Heroes, with tight controls, devilish yet brilliant level design and a whole lot of heart of heart: Scram Kitty and His Buddy on Rails is an exercise in pure unadulterated fun that every WiiU owner should add to their collection as soon as possible.
