Leonardo's Cat

Title: Leonardo’s Cat

Bibliographic information:

Creator: StoryToys Entertainment Limited

• Language: English, French, Spanish and German

Reader's Annotation:  Logic puzzles   

Interest Level: Ages 7-9+

Awards, if applicable: N/A

Play summary: Leonardo DaVinci is justifiably proud of his inventions; when his automaton and his notebook is stolen, he sends out the player and his cat to retrieve the missing pieces.  But the pieces are unreachable - you need to place different inventions at various points along a maze to help DaVinci’s cat traverse the space.  If you make a mistake - the cat pays for it, being comically electrocuted, drowned, burned...There are some animations depicting an ongoing conversation between the cat and DaVinci (voiced by Patrick Stewart), and DaVinci encourages you throughout the puzzles.

Critical review:

The quality of this app lies in the way it tells a story.  Yes, it is a series of logic puzzles, and for many game creators, that is enough (see Take it Easy, reviewed elsewhere in this blog!)  But Leonardo’s cat introduces two main characters, and uses the player as a member of a story telling team, with each element of play working towards creating an ending to the story.  To augment this, the game creators introduced several animated sequences which reveal more of the story.

Why include it?

Logic puzzles are amazing; they help to develop the brain, encourage mental resiliency, and develop creative solutions.  It’s good to have more than one in a collection - and this one is beautiful and quite fun. This game elevates the simple logic puzzle with a playful storyline and gorgeous animation.