Confession: the closest thing I have to a party game on my Switch is Mario Kart. It should therefore come as no surprise that I’d had my eye on the highly-anticipated Catastronauts for a while. I love co-op tabletop games, and Catastronauts is a co-op video game: it seemed like it would be perfect for me. Of course, there’s also an unlockable cat-astronaut avatar. So, when I got the chance to review Catastronauts, I was over the moon. Unfortunately, however, while Catastronauts had potential, it just didn’t live up to the promise.

In Catastronauts, you and up to three friends are space cadets whose commander has been kidnapped by aliens. Together you must battle your way through a series of increasingly-hectic enemy encounters and deal enough damage to wipe them out before they do the same to you.

The game starts out with a pretty bare-bones tutorial in which you’re walked through the game’s basic actions. This includes extinguishing fires, repairing damage, and, naturally, going pew pew pew with enormous space guns. These are important skills for anyone, space cadet or not!

Of course, over the course of the game, new mechanics and challenges are introduced. These include time-sensitive missiles that can blow up in your hands, stronger guns, and flamethrower-esque tools to counteract the enemy’s deep freeze attacks. The steady flow of new challenges adds an increased layer of excitement and drama to the gameplay.

I’m a Space Cadet, and you can be, too!

At first, the game was really, really fun, and it was enjoyable to test out different strategies to see what worked best. Should everyone try to multitask, or should we each try to “specialise” and focus on doing one or two things well? We even managed to earn two out of a possible three “stars” for our time on the first few levels. This seemed like a cool achievement, even though we couldn’t work out if the stars did anything in-game.

However, before very long at all, successfully completing each stage became much, much harder… perhaps even too hard to be enjoyable any more. If it’s any indication of the challenge Catastronauts puts up, it took us a solid 75 minutes to complete the first five levels. This is not due to the length of the levels, but rather, the number of our unsuccessful attempts. In my second play session (with a different friend), we completed four levels in about as long. Of these, only one was a level that I had not completed in my first session. The reason for this? It’s simply too overwhelming to introduce new players to the game unless you’re starting from the very beginning, tutorial included.

Things are heating up somewhat.

And this is where my main issue with Catastronauts lies. For a game that bills itself as a party game, you’d expect it to be the type of thing you could bring out at a moment’s notice and enjoy with whichever friends happen to be around. Unfortunately, though, the game’s difficulty is linked to combining the various mechanics you’ve learnt in different, increasingly-overwhelming ways. Overall progression is therefore heavily dependent on players’ skill development and their familiarity with the mechanics introduced in previous levels. Of course, this means that you’re only ever going to be able to finish a game like Catastronauts if you have a friend or group of friends who can commit to playing through the whole campaign with you together. Otherwise, you’re going to be stuck replaying the same handful of four-minute levels on rotation.

If Mario Party is the quintessential party game, Catastronauts is pretty much the opposite.

Seeing these screens was a rare treat.

If that were my only criticism of Catastronauts, I could probably still have a good time with the game. Unfortunately, though, even considering it as an extended co-op campaign, I feel as though the game is a bit of a missed opportunity.

For starters, you can’t adjust the difficulty (what?!). And yet, despite the game’s difficulty, there is a surprising lack of mechanical complexity to the gameplay. Indeed, it’s simply the combination of the mechanics in various, overwhelming ways which drives the difficulty up. After having played the game for more than three hours, it’s hard for me to describe basic gameplay as much more than putting out spot fires. Lots of spot fires. Different types of spot fires, perhaps, but nothing more interesting than that. Given that Catastronauts is an extended co-op campaign masquerading as a party game, there is surprisingly little mechanical depth to it.

This issue is not without a solution. A relatively simple fix, which might also address the insane difficulty, would be to use the star achievements as in-game currency to purchase upgrades for your tools or unlock new skills. Not only would this provide a real incentive to go back and beat your previous high scores, having the ability to tailor your playstyle to your strengths and weaknesses would make the game a lot more enjoyable.

On the contrary, I saw far too many of these…

I didn’t hate Catastronauts; it has some redeeming features. However, the fixed difficulty and lack of true mechanical complexity are significant roadblocks to my full enjoyment of this game. Catastronauts might be good if you and your partner, housemates, or kids enjoy long, extended, and frustratingly-difficult co-op campaigns; anything other than that and you might be disappointed.

Catastronauts has been described as “Overcooked, but space”. In case you missed it, you should check out Josh’s analysis of Overcooked’s difficulty. Otherwise, if you’re looking for a mischievous multiplayer adventure, check out Light Fingers. It’s certain not to disappoint! And, finally, don’t forget to keep up with us on social media. You can follow Nindie Nexus on Twitter, or find me here!