AFTERPAD

Review: Ninja Hero Cats

Ninja Hero Cats, a top-down adventure game where you control a swarm of cats in an effort to traverse levels and take down bosses, now supports game controllers. Even before controller support, this was already a fun game with a really nice art style, almost reminiscent of Bastion – a classic iOS game, also with support for game controllers.

The biggest issue with this game is the aggressiveness of the ads: the entire top of the screen is covered in a banner, the game starts with a giant ad splash screen for the developer’s other apps, there are “rate this app” dialog boxes, “watch this video for currency” – all that stuff. Some of this can be removed with an in-app purchase, and doing so improves the game greatly. The splash-screen ad at the beginning doesn’t go away, though, even after purchase. All of this is unfortunate – the ads leave a bad impression of an otherwise beautifully presented game, and ads after paying to disable ads are inexcusable.

Otherwise, there would be a lot to recommend here. It’s still worth downloading and trying – no harm in that – but it’s hard to recommend paying to get an ad-free experience when that isn’t what you get.