Shivering Kittens- I Can Has Defrost?

Released: December 22, 2008
Developer/Publisher: GiantCrayon Games
Verdict: Buy It (Lite version available)
Pros: Adorable graphics and sounds, ADDICTIVE!
Cons: Slightly sketchy controls.

Shivering Kittens is the most deceptively difficult, yet fun, game I’ve played since Sneezies. If you’ve played games like Tetris or Lumines, this game should be an easy transition.

In the game, blocks of ice and kittens slowly fall from the top of the screen. They’ll be in several different shapes, but always consist of three different cubes: kittens, frozen kittens, and ice. If you can line up five kittens, touching in any manner, they’ll meow cutely, blink and dance, then disappear. If you can line up ice and frozen kittens on a whole row from left to right, the ice will melt and vanish, and the kittens will be freed. Once they’re freed, they’ll meow and vanish if you have five or more touching, like before. Like Lumines, when a block is placed, it will separate, allowing no empty spots on the board. This helps a lot in lining up rows of ice to free your frigid felines.

The control scheme keeps things nice and simple. Slide your finger left to right to move the blocks across the screen. Slide your finger up to rotate a block 90 degrees. Slide your finger down to make the block fall faster, if you get impatient (like I tend to with these sorts of games). I found that if I was freaking out, the controls wouldn’t respond as fast as I would like, but this is very forgivable. Once you get settled in, the controls become quite natural.

The game has several different levels which end up translating to higher rates of speed on the dropping blocks. You can choose any to start with, so you don’t always need to start on the slowest settings if you’re a bit more advanced in this genre.

With this game having a Lite version, there’s no excuse to at least try this game. Just be warned, like the previous games in this genre (Lumines, Tetris, et al), this will be VERY hard to put down once you start– Especially if you find kittens adorable (who doesn’t?!)  ^_^