TouchArcade Rating:

2016 has already been a great year for iOS games and January isn’t even over yet, and although it isn’t quite the normal time of the week for new games to hit we have an early arriver called Super Phantom Cat ($1.99) that platforming fans should be sure to check out. It was just last week I was getting all excited about cats and platformers coming together as one, and I was thrilled to wake up today and find Super Phantom Cat rising up our Hot Games list. I immediately grabbed it and have been having a fun time with it since.

Controls can be a problem for platformers on touchscreens, but Super Phantom Cat controls superbly, and you can even drag around and change the size of the virtual buttons to suit your needs. The jumping and “feel" of your character is spot-on as well, which is always a make-it-or-break-it thing with me and platformers. Graphics-wise Super Phantom Cat reminds me of if Ridiculous Fishing ($2.99) had a baby with FEZ, with lots of clean edges and a great use of colors. Here’s the trailer again in case you missed it last week.

As awesome as Super Phantom Cat is, there’s one thing I’m confused about. It’s a $1.99 purchase, which is criminally cheap for a game of this quality, but the App Store also clearly states that there are in-app purchases. Try as I might, I can’t seem to find this IAP. There are different playable characters that are unlocked as you play the game, and I thought perhaps the IAP was for unlocking them early but that doesn’t seem to be the case. There’s no in-game shop or anything to even spend virtual currency on, so I’m not sure what the deal is. Perhaps this was planned to be a free to play game and changed at the last minute to paid, but there’s still a checkbox ticked in iTunes Connect saying the game has IAP. Or something?

Whatever the case, even if there does turn out to be IAP, this is far from some free to play game and is well worth the couple of bucks if you enjoy platformers, cats, or both. Check out more impressions from folks in our forums but if this is how the week is already getting started off it looks like 2016 will continue being a great year for iOS games.