The Towering Purrferno
The chairs have been pushed back, and my friends and I are standing a respectful distance from the table. We’re 13 floors up, and have no choice but to add another layer to the teetering structure in front of us. I gently place the first wall. It sways, but settles. I carefully position the second. I breathe out. I slowly lower the 14th floor, and attempt to balance it on the walls. The tower collapses in on itself, like an inverted firework of cardboard and wood. I’m still holding the 14th floor. The tension evaporates and we all burst into laughter, and we scoop the remains of the tower back into piles.
Sam bought ‘Cat and the Tower’ with their own money
Cat and the Tower is a co-operative, dexterity game designed by Masakazu Takizawa, with art by Namiki, published by Arclight Games and Arcane Wonders. Toto the cat, our protagonist, has been told his mother has left this world to become a star in the sky, and thus has chosen to climb the tower to see her again. It’s surprisingly blunt in its introduction of this story as a journey of empathy and healing, but it’s an effective narrative hook that connects with players. With the scene set, the game can begin. Collectively as a team of players working together, you will be building the tower and trying to achieve goals in order to move Toto up.
The tower itself is made of two main components – walls and floors. The floors are hexagons, typically with a hole in the centre. In a delightful artistic choice, the tower pieces come with differing levels of moss and ivy, so the lower floors are more overgrown than those in the upper reaches.
On your turn you have a choice of two actions cards that have been drawn from the deck. They are split into two types – building the tower or placing a feline friend. The action card chosen depicts which components you will be balancing on the tower. However, the action card you don’t pick sticks around, so leaving trickier cards can limit your options on future turns.
When building the tower, you are always given two walls, and one floor. However, there are four different walls in the game – and herein is one of the key dilemmas of the game – they are varied heights. This means, despite all of your best efforts and intentions, the tower will inevitably begin to tilt and lean in different directions. You quickly move between boldly reaching for the sky, and scrambling for damage control, as you tend to the wobbly construction.
The player aid has a handy reference showing the height differences between the walls. This means that by eyeballing the lean of the tower, you can position taller walls to level out the structure as you build. But watch out, you may be forced to place pillars, which are both thinner in width and twice as tall as a normal wall.
Instead of building the tower, you may be able to place a feline friend on the tower. There are four different feline friends, all different shapes and sizes. Do you place the chunky yellow cat to try and add ballast to the tower? Or do you place the tiny orange cat instead, avoiding adding too much weight to the wrong side? Again, there are complications – the action card might stipulate that you must play a certain colour cat, or make you pet all of the cats on the current floor!
This is further complicated by the goal cards. At the end of your turn, if you have met a goal, you are able to move Toto up the tower by a number of floors. These goals require you to place certain cats on the floor above Toto. It may need cats of a certain colour, maybe the cats need to be touching, or perhaps they need to be balanced on top of each other. This means you are constantly being nudged by the game to place cats nearer the top of the structure, in order to keep Toto moving. But you also need to keep building the tower as you don’t want to waste any of Toto’s valuable movement points.
The initial goal in Cat and the Tower is to help Toto reach the 10th floor of the tower. If you manage to achieve that feat, you must pause, and all players count to 5. If the tower is still standing – you win, and you get to read the next part of Toto’s story. But Toto’s quest is not over, you can choose to continue, with the next goal being the 13th floor. The ultimate challenge – can you guide Toto to the 20th floor of the tower?
Cat and the Tower is a difficult game. I have played this game a bunch, with a variety of friends and at board game meetups and conventions – and whilst it’s often possible to reach the 10th floor on your first attempt, especially with an experienced player at the table, we’ve yet to get Toto to the 13th floor successfully.
At 10 floors, your tower is likely about 50cm. That means to reach the 20th floor, you need to construct a tower approximately 1 metre tall. Cat and the Tower is a game of scale, the pieces are fairly large and other than the height difference there is not much variety in the shape of pieces. This means that your tower will quickly rise in height, giving the game a commanding table presence.
The game components themselves are excellent. The tower walls are sturdy and pre-creased allowing you to easily bend them into different positions, and the cat meeples are playful and large enough to not be fiddly. The game evokes feelings of mystery and peacefulness, the white stone tower is covered in vegetation – like the crawling vines on the tower walls, but also the wildflower fields on certain floors. In addition you’ll notice theming that wouldn’t feel out of place in a graveyard – like angel statues and gravestones.
As a co-operative game, Cat and the Tower truly shines. You find yourselves discussing and sharing ideas – and because the tower is a 3 dimensional object, having the player opposite you at the table sharing their perspective can be crucial – which way is the tower leaning, where do we need to add ballast etc. There is too much information for a single player to parse, which means that everyone can contribute.
Reaching the 10th floor is an achievable goal for most players, and is a satisfying way to “win” the game. 20 floors feels almost impossible for us right now, but I know we’re not going to give up just yet.
Without the encouragement of his feline friends, and them leading the way, Toto won’t climb the tower. Just as we are leading the way for each other, my floor is now being built upon by another player – literally supporting each other through the difficult journey ahead. The only question is, how far can we carry each other?
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