I love to play board games, they are fun when playing with family and friends. But sometimes I just don’t want company. Sometimes I just want to sit down, relax with a cup of tea and play a game just by myself, one where you can put the old grey matter to use. And I’m sure that goes for children as much as it does the adults. I do have several single player games on my game shelves, mostly in the form of logic and puzzle games and one of these games is Cat Crimes from ThinkFun – a kitty crime mystery, a moggy whodunnit, a feline felony!
Cat Crimes is a challenging who’s to blame logic game. It is suitable for a single player, from age 8 to adult. The game features 6 cats, and one of them has done wrong, but which one of our feline friends has committed the crime? Can you use a clue card, logic and deduction to find the crafty cat criminal and solve their moggy misdemeanour?
Meet Ginger, Mr. Mittens, Pip Squeak, Duchess, Sassy and Tom Cat, the neighbours six cats. Your neighbour has asked you to look after them whilst they are away, but instead of a relaxing weekend of purrfect cat stroking and cat cuddles, you repeatedly find spilled coffee, ruined shoes, an eaten bird, a swallowed fish, a broken flowerpot and unravelled balls of yarn. Not the relaxing cat sitting that you had in mind. Now your job has changed from cat-sitter to detective. Your job is now to deduce what cat committed what dastardly crime using all available evidence on the clue card and the playing board.
In the box:
- Game Board
- 6 Cat Tokens with Token Stands
- 6 Crime Tokens
- 40 Challenge Cards with Solutions
- Instruction Manual
Cat Crimes features 40 challenge cards with crimes to solve. There is a different a crime on each card with all the clues you need to solve the crime. There are 10 beginner cards (green), 10 intermediate cards (yellow), 10 advanced cards (blue) and 10 expert cards (red), suitable for children and adults. Can you pull out your inner Sherlock Holmes and solve each one?
To play, you simply select a challenge card from the pack, they are numbered 1 to 40 and are colour coded for difficulty level, just make sure that you choose the correct level for your abilities. The card will explain what crime has been committed (has the crime token icon in top right corner). You then place the corresponding crime token on the game board (the game board looks like a table) and start making logical deductions to find the furry criminal.
The challenge card has a series of clues telling you if specific cats are upstairs asleep (and therefore not a suspect), who is sitting next to who at the table, who’s opposite who and even things like a certain cat can’t sit next to a cat with a bell or can’t be sat near a mouse. Once you decipher the clues and work out what cat is sitting where at the table (or not even at the table) you can place that cats corresponding cat token on the game board in the position that helps you to visualise the scene enabling you to slowly work out who the cat culprit is. Once you have gone through all the clues, sometimes several times, you should be able to work out what cat is in the wrong and you can check you answer on the rear of the challenge card.
Overall, I love this game of deduction. I love the idea of having physical cat tokens to place on the board to keep track of what cat is where, it is very helpful and allows you to visualise possible solutions (without having to take notes to keep track). It’s amazing how much this game allows you to test and develop critical thinking. The beginner levels start off really simple and are perfect for the younger age groups, but the skill level soon ramps up and requires a higher level of logical thinking, making the game an excellent challenge for kids and adults alike.
With 40 challenge cards and 10 cards for each difficulty / skill level, as you progress through the crimes, analytical thought becomes more prevalent and having the pieces to move around the game board is very useful in testing out your theories – you can move cats around to see how your answer would pan out.
Whilst Cat Crimes is a single player game, it is easily played as a team if one of the kids wanted to play, they could help by discussing possible solutions and working through the answers, explaining theories and reasoning for possible solutions. It is very interesting hearing how different people deduce different things from the same set of clues whilst giving a valid reason as to why they think that would work.
The beginner and intermediate levels are easy for adults but they ease you into the game nicely if you want to work your way through all the challenges. The harder advanced and expert levels are more of a challenge for adults and do get your brain working. The beginner and intermediate levels are great for children and slowly ramp up the difficulty as they work through the cards.
I think that Cat Crimes is an excellent logic game. Not only does it test deduction skills, but it puts visual perception, reasoning, logical thinking and problem solving skills to the test, whilst still being lots of fun to play (at times, frustrating fun). If you play it with the kids, it is also an excellent way to encourage and develop communication and language skills as well by discussing the why, what and who of possible solutions.
The solution to each cat crime are printed on the back of the challenge cards. This enables you to easily check that you have got the answer correct or not and confirm the guilty feline but also the full seating plan, so you can see where you went wrong if you do accuse the wrong cat!
I love playing Cat Crimes. It is a top-quality game and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Whilst I would have preferred a more grown up looking game with people instead of cats and relevant human crimes, the skills needed are the same and the cats do appeal to the younger audience – a good way to get children interested and engaging in this type of game. If you love logic and puzzle games, then it is an easy game to recommend for hours of fun.
And if cats really aren’t your thing, then there is a version with our canine friends instead in Dog Crimes.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £14.99
For more information, visit www.thinkfun.co.uk. Available to buy from Amazon here.
