While late to the party, Catch the Princess is a fantastically thought out game, with devious puzzles, and a dark and mysterious atmosphere. But while playing I couldn’t help but feel I’ve played this before. There’s nothing wrong with making similar games, the App Store is rife with duplicates and copycats. Catch The Princess straddles a fine line between homage and copycat with the popular game, Cut the Rope.
Utilizing the iPhone and iPad for what it’s meant to be used for, touch and multi-touch operations is ideal and it is worked to great effect with accurate swipe detection and responsiveness. It’s perfectly competent in every area you’d want it to be – responsive, colorful, beautiful, and loads fast. It uses Game Center for its achievements. The main drawback is that every level is a new coat of paint on a successful, existing framework. Even each of the three areas are not that distinct from each other, taking place in dank, dark dungeons lit only by a few torches – which ever increases the ominous mood.
In Cut the Rope you cut candy down from puzzles to feed the green monster. Now there is this pink/purple monster who is catching the princess from falling to her doom. Is he a savior or a villain?
There’s 3 areas to explore with 60 crystals each and a bonus level if you get 100% crystals for that area bringing the new total to 63. The game lasts for a good couple of hours which is more than you can ask for out of a $0.99 purchase. Having nearly completed the entire game, I saw only a few new mechanics that Cut the Rope doesn’t employ in it’s puzzling. There are chains (ropes) that the princess is tied to from a cage, the cage can swing if cut from its source, there’s pixie dust (bubbles) to lift you up to higher areas, chains appear in a circular area once she drops into them. Playing the game requires quick and nimble reflexes to maximize the score and earn 3 crystals per level. A unique tag for this game is the “Surprise Unending” which I assume you get with 100% – which I am very close to. There’s minimal story, but the infatuation that the monster experiences only comes through as pink hearts appear once she’s caught, and viewing them you can swipe a photograph of the princess to express your affection – but nothing else.
For a debut of a Canadian developer, Robots & Pencils – they’ve crafted a wonderful game full of mystery and deception, but all that is cloaked here is a variation on another famous iOS game. I can’t say I don’t recommend it. If you’ve never played Cut the Rope because of the art style and the cutesy graphics you’ll find a lot to enjoy with Catch the Princess. Though if through the years of free updates and devious levels of Cut the Rope – you’ll be easily burned out and get the “been there, done that” feel that I got while playing.
An iOS code for the game was provided by PR for Review purposes
