Sushi Cat Flash Game Review

Sushi Cat, a flash game developed for Armor Games, has a simple premise and fairly simple gameplay. The player's job is to help the titular hero eat enough sushi that he can achieve his goal of impressing the mysterious pink cat.

Sushi Cat's gameplay involves playing a game very similar to Plinko from The Price is Right and Peggle. The player's job is to position the flabby cat in a way that allows him to eat the most sushi as he falls down the screen. It's a simple premise, but each consecutive level becomes more difficult with the introduction of moving platforms, "power up" items like the Dragon Cannon, and inconveniently placed sushi.

The graphics for Sushi Cat are extremely cute and overtly influenced by Japanese animation. Although this may be a turn off to some, I found it to be endearing and definitely made playing the game a fun experience.

Unfortunately, the gameplay was fairly rudimentary. The only thing the player has to do is position where the cat is dropped and, when activated, aim the Dragon Cannon. I also found that, in the later levels involving multiple moving platforms, the game started to lag noticeably. There was also one moment while playing Sushi Cat where, having doubled in size because of the amount of sushi he'd eaten, the cat was so large that he got stuck and I had to restart the level. It would've been nice to see a "abandon drop" option (you get four drops per level) to address this issue or to have some way of ensuring that this incident wouldn't happen, but it's a minor quibble, as it only happened once to me and I can foresee many players not encountering this problem through a normal playthrough.

Sushi Cat itself also leaves a lot to be desired in terms of length. There are a paltry 15 levels, most of which will only take a couple minutes to complete. It provided a good 30-45 minutes of entertaining gaming, but, outside of trying to set a high score or watch the cute animation again, there's no compelling replay value to be found in Sushi Cat. There are no in-game achievements, and even though setting high scores is always fun, the unengaging gameplay made the prospect seem more like a chore than a delight.

In order for a flash game to be truly great, it has to do one of two things: Provide an amazing, in-depth experience that contains inventive game elements that go beyond what is normally expected of internet games or be so addictively entertaining that it makes up for lack of depth with amazing replay value. Although Sushi Cat is a well made flash game, it doesn't meet either of the previous requirements, and thus remains merely a "good" flash game.

Conclusion: Sushi Cat is an entertaining time waster, but doesn't provide enough depth or replay value to be a truly great flash game. Score: 6.5/10