CATO: Buttered Cat is a truly charming puzzle platformer based on the buttered-cat paradox

Memes, jokes and games don't always blend together well or age well in video games, but CATO: Buttered Cat does it very playfully with the right idea and it's just wonderful. Note: key provided to our Steam Curator.

It's based on the "Buttered cat paradox", which is the question of: will a cat will land on their feet or back when strapped with buttered toast that's butter-side up? Clearly, it's vital research that must be done.

Few games make me chuckle and smile away from the first few minutes but CATO: Buttered Cat really did. From the way CATO looks like a stretched-ferret when travelling through pipes, to the dedicated button to Meow that doubles up as a restart button if you're stuck when you hold it down. Just so many small touches make it a rewarding experience to play through.

And who doesn't like a game where there's talking toast, that when combined with a cat allows you to spin up in the air? No it doesn't make even the tiniest bit of sense, but it's visually charming as heck. This sentient talking buttered toast that's afraid of being burnt can also hop off your back, which is often required to pass various sections of the game, where you end up controlling both toast and CATO.

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The levels are small but very cleverly designed to use the space well thanks to the game mechanics. A lot of the game is really just planning out your route through these little puzzles. While the toast gives you floating powers, it cannot be used with CATO all the time, and having it attached often blocks your path. Toast is also used to power various devices, as is CATO, so you need to separate them often. Don't worry though, no butter gets stuck in your fur. At least that's what toast tells me.

So you need to work out how to get both CATO and toast through various annoyances to bring them back together. CATO cannot jump (I told you it doesn't make sense), but can climb up scratching posts and go through pipes. While toast can fire itself off like a projectile either left or right and momentarily stick to walls when not attached to CATO. So there's lots of running, climbing and toast throwing to be done to figure out how to get to the end.

Platforming in this isn't even difficult, not even remotely so. It is primarily a puzzle game, wearing the skin of a retro-platformer. There's also a few fun little mini-games! A couple of the levels are definitely head-scratchers though, the design really is great.

Genuinely great fun that will make you really think and probably laugh a fair bit too.

You can buy it on Steam. It has Native Linux support and should work just fine on Steam Deck.