Conclusion
Herdin CatZ is a well-designed and very creative game. Unfortunately, I found the game lacking in excitement. Many of the levels just felt like work as I went through the motions required to complete a given task. This was mostly on the easier levels where I think the author made them deliberately easy so you could get a feel for how the game worked. As the game progresses, the contrary nature of cats is revealed, and they don't always do what you want them to. The author has done a great job of including this in the game, but I found it frustrating because it often meant I couldn't complete a level or move to the next world just because my cat was stubborn.

When I play a game and I'm manipulating a character on the screen, I expect that character to do what I tell it. When I push the "jump" button, the character should jump 100% of the time. The cats in this game don't jump, but if they did, I'm pretty sure they would only jump 75% of the time. The other 25% of the time they just ignore you. This is by design, and the author actually warns you about it. However, I still found it more frustrating than entertaining.

These complaints simply represent my preferences in game play and don't point out any actual problems with the game. In fact, I found the game to be very stable, and it performed exactly as I expected it to. I would encourage you to download the game and try it for yourself. My wife mostly agreed with my assessment of the game, but I still catch her playing it when she has nothing else to do. I have several games loaded on my Palm m505, but this is the one she ends up playing.

I do have two complaints of a more technical nature. The first is the size of this game. At 676K, Herdin CatZ is the second largest program on my Palm m505. The second is less of a complaint and more of a warning. I didn't notice this until I listened to my wife playing, but all the action is controlled with the stylus, and as you get frustrated and the action heats up, your tendency will be to "tap" the screen harder and harder. I got to the point where I would cringe when I listened to my wife play…tap, tap, TAP, TAP ,TAP, BANG, SCRAPE, SCRATCH, etc. I haven't seen any damage, but it still makes me nervous when I consider the cost of replacement.

Herdin CatZ is shareware and costs $10. You can order the program or download a demo version at http://www.notionssoftware.com. Herdin CatZ works on both color and grayscale devices. The minimum requirements are a PalmPilot Professional and Palm OS 2.0.

Michael Compeau is a Contributing Editor for PalmPower Magazine as well as the VP of Business Development and Planning for Cutting Edge Software (at http://www.cesinc.com), a subsidiary of Mobility Electronics.