Cute Cats

This is a game for unwinding, not for pressure. You compare two versions of a painting, tap the differences, and move on to the next picture when you are done. There is no story to follow and nothing to manage: just you, a pair of drawings and a soft soundtrack. The pace is entirely yours, and the rules take about ten seconds to learn. If your head is full after a long day, staring at a fluffy cat illustration until the details start to sort themselves out works surprisingly well. It is the kind of game you finish in about an hour and feel pleasantly rested by the end.

Every one of the ten levels is a hand-drawn illustration of a cat, made by a young artist specifically for this game. The colors are bright and cheerful, the cats look genuinely cat-like, and each picture is its own little scene: differences can hide in the furniture and corners of the room just as easily as in the cat itself. After you finish the game, a gallery room opens where both versions of every painting sit side by side, so you can go back and see exactly what you missed when you found a difference by luck rather than by eye. It is a small touch, but it suits the game.

Each level asks you to find a handful of differences between two nearly identical images, sometimes as few as seven, sometimes as many as fourteen. A timer runs along the bottom of the screen, and a wrong click costs one of three hearts; lose them all and the level restarts. Clicking either image works, which saves you from guessing which side the game wants. Some differences are obvious, others are tucked away well enough to make you feel briefly blind.