CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars

In a just universe, all games would be about cats piloting rocket-fueled murder wagons. CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars gets us dangerously close to utopia, a place where felines don’t nap in sunbeams but instead weaponize buzzsaws, boosters, and bravado in bite-sized brawls of mayhem and miscalculation.

Built by Zeptolab, the minds behind Cut the Rope, this mechanical sandbox trades candy physics for scrapyard carnage. You’re not the driver here, you’re the mad cat scientist in the garage, duct-taping blades to beach buggies and asking questions later. Each match is a fire-and-forget experiment in chaos: you build, you deploy, and you pray your robo-kitty survives the inevitable slam-dance of turbo-charged absurdity.

Don’t expect real-time controls or precise combo meters. Battles in CATS play out automatically, short, savage scuffles where gravity and geometry duke it out harder than the cats themselves. You’ll watch your Franken-bot either heroically uppercut a rival into oblivion… or flip itself like a sad turtle before getting squashed by arena walls that close in like an anxious parent.

And that’s kind of the point.

What CATS lacks in agency it makes up for in tinkering. You’ll obsess over your loadout: should your chainsaw be front-mounted or side-facing? Are forklift arms funnier than rocket boosters? Is it morally wrong to strap a circular saw to a pink bathtub on wheels? (No.) There’s a quiet joy in discovering that a random chassis and a set of tiny wheels somehow make an unstoppable murderbox.

Progression’s a grab-bag of loot crates, upgrades, and that classic “What if I fused this to that?” loop. It’s not deep, but it’s sticky. Like a cat pawing at a laser pointer, you’ll keep watching, waiting, tweaking, repeating, hoping your latest monstrosity survives just long enough to earn another bolt, blade, or sticker.

CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars is the perfect low-stakes distraction for anyone who’s ever wanted to see a tabby pilot a death tricycle armed with a harpoon gun. It’s weird, whimsical, and weirdly hypnotic, just don’t expect to actually play much of it. You’re the engineer, not the pilot. And in this arena? That’s all part of the charm.