Alt+Escape: Sushi Cat

Welcome to Alt+Escape, our weekly pick of browser-based games to help you start your weekend a little early. Check back each Friday for a new game!

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Sushi Cat

Meet Sushi Cat. In a classic tale of boy-cat-meets-girl-cat, Sushi Cat dreams of finding his love. But the only problem? He’s not heavy enough to open the door to get into the building where the girl-cat of his dreams is waiting. The solution? Get heavier – get much, much heavier.

So begins Sushi Cat, a game where the objective is to help your roly-poly cat get even fatter by nom-nom-noming down sushi, kind of like Garfield if Garfield were an otaku. To do so, drop him (with chopsticks, natch) down into a little obstacle course and watch him bounce off the walls and the flippers and everything else, hoovering up Sushi like his life depends on it.

And that’s it. It’s very, very simple, and ends up feeling like a cross between a pachinko machine and Peggle, but there’s something just very … compelling about it. Maybe it’s the sounds that Sushi Cat makes every time he snacks on some sushi. Maybe it’s watching him bounce around the screen. Maybe it’s how the screen proudly displays “Full Belly Achieved!” when you clear a stage.

All I know is that I intended to play it for a little bit to gauge how suitable it would be for today’s Alt+Escape, and ended up playing it for almost an hour and a half. Whoops.