Ported from an old PC Flash game, Strike Force Kitty has some depth but only if you can suffer through the grueling opening hours of trial and error.  This 2D side-scrolling auto attacker is actually a pretty complex title and there are zero instructions and zero tutorials. Making matters worse, the few words that are displayed are written in Engrish with typos all over the place – text boxes even overlap other text boxes making some things impossible to read. Honestly, the game is one huge “WTF is happening” moment.

Fumbling through the game, the player controls four auto-running kitties; if you played Super Mario Run on your phone you will have a general idea of the basics of gameplay. However, if the player bumps into an enemy, an auto battle will start with the player activating special abilities if available. Once the battle is done, the kitties keep running until they reach the end of the stage. Along the way, fish icons and other items can be collected and spent to upgrade the abilities of each kitty. In-between levels, the kitties can pump themselves up in the gym, increasing certain stats, along as there are enough collectables. But figuring all this out requires patience and testing.

The only way to understand what is happening is to painstakingly make sense of the clumsy interface and broken text boxes by mindlessly pressing buttons and hope it does something. Also, many parts of even the beginning stages are unreachable and the boss battles are impossibly difficult. Since your kitties just auto fight with little to no input on your end, it becomes unfair and rage-quit annoying when you get totally smoked by the first Bowser-knockoff boss without even denting him. The controller also stupidly vibrates, even in the main menu, without any option to turn it off.

Unless you really like figuring out complex systems on your own by wasting a ton of time, Strike Force Kitty is one eShop game to put to sleep at the animal shelter.

Also available on PC.

Not As Good As: Sword and Soldiers 2: Shawarmageddon  

Just As Bad As: Scram Kitty and His Buddy on Rails

Play It Instead: MagiCat  

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com

Twitter: @ZackGaz