Cats and Cash

Ah, game shows. The bread and butter of entertainment, they seem to have been around from the day we were toddlers, only dethroned by reality TV in the last twenty years or so, and even then, the genre still holds out. There are still people who love to tune in for a mixture of entertainment and knowledge that they provide and for the people who are willing to learn and compete, there’s also a cash prize involved in them, too. But Play’n Go clearly wanted to make sure their title did better than game shows did in real life, so they did the natural thing and added cats to the whole mixture. Cats and Cash offers gamblers a 5×3 playing field with 15 flexible paylines, allowing players to turn them on or off to their leisure. Despite the presence of Wilds and Scatters, however, you won’t find any special features tied to them, apart from a 2x multiplier on Wild. Instead, both the Bonus Wheel and the Pick-a-Gift features are locked behind a Bonus symbol of their own, so you’ll need to collect three of one sort and three of the other to unlock these two special features.

We can’t say we don’t appreciate what Play’n Go tried to do, but we just aren’t big fans of it. Anthropomorphic animals just reach that area of uncanny valley for us, and while the symbols quite easily relay the supposed personalities and successfully style the various cats, the graphics just don’t work for us. The backdrop does look quite like one from an actual gameshow and all the symbols have a relatively small animation tied to them. Keep in mind this was in 2013, and it still sits ahead of some titles made in 2018, five years afterwards.

Of course, visuals only go so far. When it comes to gameplay, Cats and Cash misses its mark with us. The title is aimed more towards people who don’t mind grinding their wins, which requires deep pockets and plenty of patience. While it doesn’t reach the status of high volatility, it certainly gets close to it. The title’s flashy wins are, naturally, geared towards the special features, which can be difficult to activate, and once you do, they are rather brief and simplistic. We can’t help but feel like the fun should be drawn out a bit more with how difficult it can be to reach the bonuses.

You can play Cats and Cash for as little as $0.01 up to $75, thanks to the fact you cannot only tweak your coin value and number of coins, but also the amount of active paylines at any given point. Now, we have to note that the RTP for this slot is 94.12%, which is below average for these sorts of games. And this is what we meant earlier. The biggest wins here are absolutely insane. The special features tempt you with 2,000x and 5,000x wins for their respective jackpots, but the theoretical biggest win you can get in this Play’n Go release is 750,000 coins, which is absolutely insane.

While we’ve already hinted on it in the graphics section, we’re going to go into more detail here. We don’t like anthropomorphic animals as characters. They look weird to us, especially once you see them clearly sexualized, like the female cat in the red dress is. This is a matter of personal taste, of course, but we felt like we had to address it, as it has brought the final rating slightly down as a result.

There are two special features, both of which are rather down to earth. Both have their own Bonus symbol, one of which being a wheel, and the other being a wrapped present. Both are activated in the same way – you need to collect three or more of that respective bonus symbol on a winning line left to right to trigger the special feature. The Wheel of Fortune simply spins the giant wheel, and awards a cash prize up to 5,000x your bet. The Pick-a-Gift feature simply has you choose a single box among 10 of them, rewarding a cash prize up to 2,000x your stake.