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Come with me now to a town where it isn't safe for a cat to walk the streets, where killer dachshunds pad the pavements and families of kittens are scattered to the four corners of a hostile environment. Really breaks your heart, doesn't it? Well it shouldn't, because the cat involved looks like a polar bear and fires fluff-balls that would knock the spots off a dalmatian

You take the role of Selwyn the cat who has to get together his family of ten kittens at their dustbin home. A pack of dogs, led by Bulldog Billy, are out to kill you and the kittens - obviously they don't like your dustbin decor. The town is a large rectangular map made up of streets running through woodland, brick walls, houses, shops and scrapyards. Scattered somewhere about are your home, the dogs den, ten kittens and stacks of cat goodies.

Selwyn appears at a random point in the town but can access a map on which appear all the relevant features except food. He has one of two aims, either to get all ten kittens home before 24 dogs congregate at the den or to kill so many dogs that there aren't 24 left to get to the den. The kittens have to be picked up one at a time and carried to the den, which makes for very long trips in the large town.

There are three basic types of dogs that wander about yellow, blue and green in order of increasing intelligence and strength. When these come together they combine to form another stronger dog. Once they have arrived at the den, there is nothing you can do about it but while they roam the town there are several ways of putting paid to them.

Fluff balls are the most powerful and knock the stuffing out of any sausage dog. You can also take the dashing dachshunds on in paw-to-paw combat but this saps your strength and stamina gauges even more than fluff balls. Your other weapon is little piles of 'catoplexic' energy that stun dogs for a while and which can be left tastefully behind Selwyn (at least he doesn't squat).

There are five levels of difficulty and as they increase the number and strength of the dogs does as well. The game isn't that difficult on the easy level but will still take some time to complete since this is a fat, muscular cat and not a fast one. All the scenery is very attractive although turning into roads can be difficult sometimes as you have to be correctly positioned.

Bits of this game looked very impressive, with their Ultimate-ish graphics. Other bits looked pretty dull. But it's quite large, so you'll always find something interesting Dogs merging is a very humorous sight, but doesn't so much for Selwyn's life span. The sound, though, is rather disappointing.

P. Good graphics for town and characters.
P. Interesting game scenario, if a little bloodthirsty.
P. Compulsive, kitten-caring gameplay.

N. Fairly simple 'collect and drop' game at heart.
N. Not too much skill involved.
N. Control and action is rather slow.