Recent reviews by Jxt09

I love the little extra things in this game. It's not all just clicking on hidden cats. There's snowmen that do something if you click on them, other objects that otherwise would just blend into the background are interactive. It's fun to find all those.

The main objective is to find cats. You are presented with a large hand-drawn Christmas themed screen. Zoom in or you'll never find some of the cats because size varies. Each time you click on a cat it meows. And there are different meows, not just one. Also a name pops up as an achievement.

Music is the same as in all their games. I really wish they would at least vary the tone a little because it's getting old after having many of their games.

A fun finding game, child-friendly. Travellin' Cats are one of the better devs that make cat finding games.

Travellin' Cats devs are good devs. They aren't like those copy cats that try to ride the coat-tails of other devs success.

This game gives you a giant black & white artwork screen where you are supposed to find 100 cats hidden within the art. You can zoom in and the image is still crisp and sharp. Some cats are just sitting there out in the open, easy to find while others camoflage themselves to try to blend in with the backdrop. Some cats are tiny and hard to see while others are large. Whenever you click on a cat it makes a mew sound and an achievement pops up indicating the name of the cat. Since this game is in China the cat's names are in Chinese (don't ask me which version, I don't know).

There are other objects that can be clicked on to trigger an effect. Like a monkey, which will make a sound. Click on various things, you'll be surprised sometimes at the outcome. This extra feature really makes it feel like a fully rounded game. It's not just find 100 cats and call it a day, no there's little extras there.

Background music is okay. It's the same or similar to the music used in their other games. I wish they would have made the theme more Chinese-like. It would have made the game that much more special.

Innovative idea ruined by lack of creativity and levels where you have to guess instead of using logic. Save your money.

I'll start with the bad stuff. There are several (I don't actually know how many because I didn't bother to complete the entire game) levels where there is no logical way to start, you have to guess. How can they call that a nonogram/picross puzzle if you have to guess? You can't get all the achievements. The developer never completed the game. The last size of levels just says "coming september something". Comments on the discussion board say it's been long time and no response from the developer. The game has been abandoned. Completed pictures are just geometric shapes: triangles, circles, etc. That gets boring. There are many different size puzzles to do but they are just bigger images than the smaller ones. I've never played a nonogram/picross game where the image is not an object or living thing of some kind: animals, flowers, people, telephones, etc. That's part of the fun of the puzzle, seeing what the finished image is. To just see more triangles in a different arrangement is disappointing and discouraging. One final negative: there is no music in the game at all!!!!! You do puzzles to complete silence. What, the dev couldn't find some free music out there to put in the game, are you kidding me?

Now some positive stuff. This is an innovative idea of now to do a nonogram/picross puzzle. Instead of blocks making a grid there is a hexagram and you have to work from all sides instead of just columns and rows. If the developer had done pictures of animals and things then this game would be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Unfortunately that not the game we got. One more positive thing, although each level has to be unlocked by completing the previous one the size of levels is not locked. So you can do some 4x4 puzzles, then try out some 5x5 puzzles and 6x6 puzzles. You're not completely locked in. That helps when you run into a puzzle that can only be completed by guessing and you've tried 5 times and are ready to punch your monitor/screen. Just skip it and go to the next size up. Oh, and yes there are achievements (but you can't get 100%).

Final words: I rarely do negative reviews so that should tell you something. Only buy this game if it is really really really really cheap and you're a die-hard nonogram/picross fan and want to check out hexagram puzzling. Otherwise, save your money. You have been warned.

A great game, and a good one for beginners because there are a lot of easy to medium size puzzles. But don't worry you hardcore nonogram players, there are some large ones as well. I'd say it has a nice balance of easy to hard.

The background music is pleasant to listen to and doesn't distract.

For those who have never played a nonogram/pixzel/griddler/whatever-they-are-calling-them-these-days puzzle I'll explain briefly. You are given a grid with numbers on the top and left side. Those numbers refer to how many of the squares in that row or column should be marked (the game uses a purplish-blue to indicate that). If the grid is 5 x 5 and one of the numbers is a 5 then you know that you can color in all the squares in that row or column. Those are the easy ones. The rest you have to use logic to figure things out. If there are two numbers on the top or side that means threre are two areas of that row/column that need to be marked, with a space between them. For instance, in a 5 x 5 grid there is on the side this: "1 3". Using logic and remebering the rule that each line of colored in squares has to have a space between it and another line, then the solution is to color the first square, right click on the mouse to get a space marker, then color in the remaining 3 squares. 1+1 spacer+ 3= 5. You have to do some counting in this game.

Once everything is filled in, the grid transforms into a color picture of an animal. It's amazing how they take one solid color seemingly scattered about the grid and turn it into a multi-color picture. The easy puzzles are sometimes a stretch to see what it's supposed to be because the pixels are so large (consider each square in the grid a pixel). Once you get to larger puzzles more details emerge in the finished picture. The larger the grid the more pixels there are to work with to make a picture.

I highly recommend this game, especially for newbies. But even those of us veteran puzzlers can play the larger grids. I picked it up on sale but I'd say even at normal price it's worth it. 58 levels going up to a grid size 25 x 25.

It does have a ton of solitaire variants but my problem is not the quantity but the quality...or lack thereof. My current favorite solitaire game is Spider. So I played a game of spider. The graphics are old looking, maybe they are trying for a retro feel, I dunno. And when I completed a stack, instead of gradually going away it just zip! disappeared. It was not fun to play the game like that with stacks just instantly gone. I checked settings and didn't see any way to change it. I tried a few other games and realized that I don't care how many games are in this game if they are no fun to play. So I refunded it. Buyer beware.

This game is unbalanced. Some levels they give you a ton of cards and you end up with 20 extra cards in your deck when you finish. Other levels give you only 20 cards and you need more. There are levels impossible to do with the given number of cards. Inexcusable. Not to mention the levels that look exactly like levels in other solitaire games these devs have made. Exact copy of levels, that's just lazy. Each game should have it's own unique levels.

Something else irks me about this game and it might appear superficial to you, I dunno. The title is "Restaurant" solitaire and yet the picture on the title screen shows a couple sitting on the floor of their house eating pizza. Wow, that's some restaurant there, someone call the ...er...whatever it's called guide for food people, like where they rate restaurants 5 stars. And as if that wasn't enough the images in the sections of levels do NOT show a restaurant at all. Instead we get a wet dog, a ghost-like dog going out the door, a pretty town, a house-for-sale advertisement. What does that have to do with a restaurant? Nothing! Call me pedantic but if you name your game something you'd think they'd have pictures that match. Oh and these are the exact same pictures as in another "Restaurant Solitaire" game I played. If they make more with that title I won't be buying them. Not even on sale.

That's my two cents. Oh, I should mention that I've played many, many of their solitaire games and enjoyed some of them. Even gave a positive review for one. I don't know when this game was made compared to others I've played but it seems like they are just phoning it in now instead of taking some time to do your darn job of making a decent game. I'm gonna stop now before I really get heated.

Do you like playing the same game over and over with randomness involved until you beat all the challenges? Then this game is for you, buy it now!
Are you a type of player who just likes to kick back, turn the brain on low and listen to some nice background music? Then this game is for you, buy it now!

So what is this game? Looks pretty cool, all the different shapes on the store page. Well we make those shapes one hex at a time. Oh, I need to mention before I go any further that you do not "win" this game. Every game you play, even if you end up with a "perfect" board will say "Game Over". It took me a bit to get used to that because I was used to winning games I played. I tried different things trying to win until a good friend of mine who is an expert at the game told me that there's no winning and that's not the point of the game anyway.

Gameplay. You start at a solid raised hex and given a starting hex. You can rotate it around and choose which path you want to take. Then that leads to another hex. Same deal, rotate, find a path, take it. But be on guard because there is a path leading from the starting hex that forms it's path while you are rotating and choosing yours. Later on you could choose a path on a whim and find it leads back to the starting hex and it's game over. Normally it's game over when you run out of heses to place down to keep extending your line. Each map has a set number of hexes you are given. You can get more hexes by completing a hex, that means going through all the lines on it. When you go down a long path in one turn then depending on how long it goes you could get a bronze, silver, or gold hex. Completing one of those will give you even more hexes (1 for bronze, 2 for silver, 3 for gold). You also get a score multiplyer if you go through a bronze, silver, or gold hex. So basic gameplay involves some strategy as you lay out your hexes. Sometimes the game tries to trick you into making loops that connect and cannot be travelled on, therefore you cannot complete the hexes that the loop intersects.

But enough about strategy. This is just a review, not a guide. There are some good guides if you find yourself frustrated (yex pyramids, I'm talking about YOU!).

The music is chill, a deep sound that goes well with the higher chimes that sound when you move. If you have a super long line, like 40 hexes, then the intensity increases and it really starts jamming. Your endorphins will kick in and you'll get this "Wow" feeling inside.

The Dev. Another reason to get this game, besides it's awesome gameplay, is the dev who helps out if you have a problem and wants to keep working on his game to make it better. And a little bird told me (this is dated the end of June 2024) that the dev is planning on expanding the game with even more levels! I don't know about you but I love to support developers like that rather than the ones who do the least amount of work to make a quick buck. I can't wait to see what he comes up with in the future.

Do not buy this, game 3, and get ripped off. The levels are the same as in game 2. Exact same card layouts in both games. Only the backgrounds are different. Buy this only if you want to pay to play the same game twice!

I'm addicted to these solitaire games by this dev, despite the bugs and sometimes downright laziness of the devs. They just keep churning out these games like they're on an assembly line, so you know they are just trying to make the most money from the least amount of effort. So if that bothers you, then don't buy the games. I get them when they are on sale, less than a (US) dollar so it doesn't bother me and I feel like I get more than my money's worth out of the game.

This is not klondike solitaire but up/down solitiare (there's probably an official name for it but I don't know). There's a tableau of cards across the screen in different designs for each level. WHen you draw a card, let's say it's a 6, you look for cards of a number above that or below. For instance, 5 or 7 will match with a 6. Aces match with a King or a 2. Color and suit do not matter, just number. Usually in this type of solitiare you have to clear the board, but in this game you don't have to clear every card but only get the gold cards that are hidden below a bunch of regular cards. Some of the levels can be very tricky but in this particular game I found the majority of levels to be easy to medium in difficulty.

There are 3 helps that you can buy with the gold you get when you make a match. Shuffle, which shuffles the tableau cards. Muligan, which is basically a go back one more. And my personal favorite the Joker card which will match with any card.

No story, despite the title of the game. Music is the same in all of the "Dectective Solitaire" games and a few others (that's what I mean about laziness, they just re-use the same music over and over again). Achievements are in-game only and took me 24 hours to get them all.

A couple of the bugs are actually in our favor. Once in a while when you click on a card to match suddenly you hear the winning game sound and all the gold cards fly out from under the stacks and off the screen and you get the pop-up box that says you won the level. I'm like, "Okay, I'll take it!" Another bug I have encountered in these games is an achievement that doesn't work right. There are achievements for earning money, like one for earning 50,000 gold, one for 100,000 gold. Well when I earn 50,000 it will suddenly say I earned the 100,000 achievement instead. But sometimes it's the ohter way round, I earn 50,000 and get no achievement, I earn 100,000 and get the 50,000 achievement. That totally sucks. Is it that hard to code a game to keep accurate track of how much gold you have? How do these wonky achievements happen?

In the laziness department, in some of this developer's games the, what I call, areas that contain 10 levels are not given a title like normal. Instead it will be something like "Location 1", "Location 2", etc. How lazy can you get that you don't take the time to come up with a name for the area? There was one game where the titles of the areas didnt seem to match the background picture. Stuff like that I just call lazy.

That should be enough info for you to decide if you want to give money to these guys or not. I say wait for a sale.

This is one of the best series of "finding" type of games. And the retro theme hits home for me since I''m old enough to remember going into the arcade, playing games, putting in those quarters in the slot. Though I don't recall seeing a cat pooping in a potty box at the arcades I went to!

For those who don't know what to do, you have to find all the cats in a hand-drawn scene. You can zoom in and out and pan in four directions, because the scene is larger than your computer screen. Oh, and some cats are hiding, so click on cabinets and boxes and anything you think a cat might be hiding behind. It sounds easy but it can be diabolically hard to find the final few that you are missing.

If you find a quarter you can play one of the games. The Devs changed the names of classic retro games into cat-themed ones.

This is a great intoduction to the Dev's style of game-making. So if you like this one be sure to pick up A Building Full of Cats, and A Castle Full of Cats, plus future games.