If flying around as a kitten with a jetpack, a “butterfly” kitten, or even a kitten wrapped with bacon as techno music plays is your idea of a good time, then Techno Kitten Adventure (for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Facebook) is the app you’ve been waiting for. This music game mashes the popular lolcats internet meme with techno music, creating one of the most addictive tap-rhythm games for techno fans looking for something a little… different.
The premise of Techno Kitten Adventure is fairly simple: Try to fly as long as you can before hitting a starry obstacle. To keep your “kitteh” afloat and change its altitude, tap your finger on the screen. The app has various themed level “packs,” each of which comes with its own techno song, kittehs, and unusual visuals. The app only comes with one map pack; for the full experience, you’ll need to pony up a doller for each additional pack.
One of the strangest levels is the Meat Stage. Players soar to the song “Taste of Heaven” (listen here) past giant ham and bacon over a river of gravy. Hot dogs with wings and other meats fly past you as you traverse the stage. It becomes increasingly bizarre as the screen reacts to the song’s beat: As you fly, the screen shakes, reduces in size, and even flips backwards. Flashing lights, rainbows, or a beat visualizer would appear onscreen to distract you even more. If you have ever wondered what LSD (or ADHD for that matter) feels like, these kittehs might provide that fix.
Perhaps surprisingly, Techno Kitten Adventure is a challenging game with a competitive nature. It allows you to compete with friends through Apple’s Game centre, where you can monitor their high scores and check the top leaderboard. To unlock new kittehs, you must achieve a given score measured by how far you fly – no easy feat, thanks to all the superfluous visuals your eyes must sift through to avoid danger.
The music is fun, catchy, and does a fine job of immersing players with lyrics that relate to level’s theme. It’s a lot like the music in popular dancing arcade games. If you keep crashing your kitteh, the tunes might become your worse enemy, causing you to throw your device across the floor. Now that’s “immersive.”
Techno Kitten Adventure is a worthy addition to the bizarre collection of music games we’ve been following in the iTunes store (see also: pugs). It’s fun to play, has the right amount of difficulty, and is filled with more than enough strange imagery to share a spot in your device’s library. If it sounds like something you might enjoy, we recommend embracing these techno beats and loveable kittehs.