My good friend Leroy has another crazy PC game to review. You’ve gotta read it with a name like Poof vs. the Cursed Kitty!

Poöf vs the Cursed Kitty is a strange, but compelling mix of arcade platforming action and tower defense from one a great little French developer, Arkedo.

You are a dog protecting a kitty on a 2D field. Waves of monsters will appear from the top areas and slowly make their way down towards the kitty, if any monster reaches the kitty, you lose. You also have your own health meter and have to pay attention to that. So how do you combat these waves of enemies? At first, your only means of combat are jumping on top of the monsters. Once you complete a set of goals, you’ll earn upgrades which give you many more increasing options from golden poop (which slows down monsters) to actual towers which can be placed in set spots on the level (which completes the game’s adherence to the tower defense genre).

The game plays much more like an arcade game than a tower defense game. Each time is essentially endless, although you can opt to quit once you have completed the current goals to take in your next upgrade. The ultimate goal is simply to get a high score. In addition to the combat upgrades you receive for completing goals, you will receive randomizers based on how well you have played each game. These simply decorate the game in various ways visually and audibly to spice things up each time you play. Outside of that, you’re basically playing on the same level setup each time (however it appears additional levels unlock further down the upgrade path), although monster patterns are randomized (and seem to become more varied and aggressive as you continue down your upgrade paths).

I found the game to be extremely fun, but I’m a junkie for arcade style games where you’re chasing your high score. The upgrades and randomizers give you a little bit of additional drive to replay over and over and there are plenty of achievements to hunt down if that’s your thing, but ultimately it IS a score attack game. Fans of traditional tower defense games may be put off by the game’s repetitious nature and with the lack of pure strategy (since your attacks and towers are randomized through the level, you do best with you are given as opposed to trying to decide the best options for the situation).

Kid Factor:

Poof is a fairly kid-friendly game, cute visuals with no violence (enemies simply “pop” when defeated). There are a few references to poo (since it’s one of your primary weapons) and there is one instance of innuendo regarding an alternate word for kitty. The game’s difficulty ramps up pretty quickly though, and the action is often extremely hectic, so it may not be friendly for new gamers. –Leroy Capasso

Tags: Reader Reviews!