House Pest Review
Yeah, I know why I was assigned House Pest starring Fiasco the Cat. Everyone knows I love cats. I have cats, I volunteer with cats, so if you’ve got a cat game, you give it to Fred, right? It’s okay, I can speak to the authentic cat qualities and this sort of mini-game compilation is up my alley anyway, felines or not.
Fiasco is an animated housecat who gets into trouble in any room in the house. Each item he breaks, scratches, spills, etc., creates a new mini-game for you to play. Using the touch screen, reassemble the shards of a broken statue, sew up Fiasco’s scratch marks, put out his fires and clean up his messes.
I like mini-games because I’m always impressed by how much variety they can achieve with simple touchscreen controls, and they’re easy to pick up and play, or put down for later. House Pest is basically all about tapping the screen or rubbing the screen with your finger, but you’re likely to rub your fingers raw obsessing over some of the games.
The House Pest levels are mostly about timing. It’s simple to figure out how to touch the right spots or swipe your finger between two points that have to connect. It’s quite another thing to do it fast. If you play House Pest in public, people are going to think you’re weird rubbing and tapping your phone this much. And you know you’re going to obsess over getting three stars on every level. It’ll kill you to pass with only two stars.
We do have to warn you that House Pest is not actually a free game. The first six levels are free, and then you have to buy the game for $2.99. But, the six levels in the free game already give you a good sense of how different the challenges can be. Try sewing up Fiasco’s scratches by swiping across all the open seams to sew them shut. Tap the pieces of broken glass in order from smallest to largest. Wipe off Fiasco’s paw tracks by scrubbing the brush with your finger. If you’re not sold, then it’s not for you, but if you like it you can pay up and move onto games with shoes, fire, pillows and more.
Each level begins with an animated scene of Fiasco getting into trouble. The animation is really good and Fiasco is adorable. You can buy other feline characters in the game as well. I can attest that cats really do get into this kind of trouble, and cleaning up after them is rarely as fun as it is in House Pest.
House Pest is kind of an easy game but I don’t think the point is for it to be brain bustingly difficult. It’s to have fun performing some mini-game tasks on your portable device. Personally, I could watch the animated videos of Fiasco all day long. I just wish I could fix the scratch marks on my couch as easily as I can fix them in this game.
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