What does a free roaming, tree loving cat have in common with an underground dwelling mole? In normal life, almost nothing at all, but in Molecats by Vidroid, the two are combined to make one seriously weird and curious animal on a mission to free his brethren and collect as many mushrooms as possible (well, now it’s starting to make more sense).

In Molecats you play as a mole/cat hybrid on a quest to find your friends, mushrooms, and various oddities amongst the labyrinthine tunnels beneath a hill. Most of the levels end with you saving your molecat friends with additional bonuses granted for retrieving all the other items in the tunnels. As expected, the levels start off easy and gain a nice amount of difficulty pretty steadily as you make your way further and further down the maze.

Molecats is a puzzle game that has you trudging along the pathways that are laid across a bunch of tiles. Some of the tiles keep that section of tunnel stationary, while others allow you to rotate them so you can alter the course of your molecat. Since your molecat will continue walking forward until he bumps into an obstacle, you’ll need to be strategic about how you’ll change the tunnel directions so you can get him to the goal. The further you get in the game, the more traps and environmental game mechanics are introduced, like making the tunnels quake so your molecat runs quickly and avoiding pressure sensitive plates that will close doors. This adds to the challenge of the game, although I found most of the later levels to be more annoying than challenging. More often than not I found myself not being stumped by how to solve the level, just frustrated that if I missed my timing when avoiding a trap or switch, I would then have to suffer through watching my molecat saunter on all the way through the level again until the thing reached that point once more.

The animation style in Molecats is very cute and cartoony. It fits the theme of the game well although the way they chose to animate the molecat moving is really odd. He doesn’t look like he’s walking so much as his body is flattening and springing back to normal while his feet sway back and forth. Then again, maybe that’s how a mole/cat abomination moves. They are living underground and living off weird mushrooms after all.

There’s nothing really noteworthy in the sound department. There’s no voice acting (although I really want to know what a molecat sounds like), just a few sound effects that are simple and decent, as well as a very forgettable theme song. I played Molecats for a few hours and for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you how the music went about 5 minutes after playing.

Molecats is a mediocre puzzle game (or should I say mediopurr?) that it somewhat enjoyable in small doses if you’re just looking for a way to kill a little time. The game gets more and more frustrating as you progress, not necessarily because of the difficulty, but more so because of how mistiming certain obstacles will result in you needing to traverse through the entire level again.

 

Graphics: 6.0 Cute and cartoony art style, but with bizarre character animations.	Gameplay: 6.0 A tile rotating style of puzzle game with commonly used game mechanics.
Sound: 4.0 Fair sound effects as well as an unmemorable score.	Fun Factor: 4.0 Might be entertaining in small doses if you enjoy these types of games, but gets really annoying when you have to redo something.
Final Verdict: 5.0

Reviewed on PC.
Molecats is available now on PC.
A copy of Molecats was provided by the publisher.