Catdoku
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About Catdoku
Catdoku takes the familiar idea of a logic puzzle and gives it a cat-shaped problem to solve. Instead of filling empty squares with numbers, you need to work out where the cats belong on a board divided into colored regions. There is exactly one cat for each region, but finding the right spots means paying attention to the whole board.
Four Rules Keep the Cats Apart
Every puzzle follows four rules, and breaking even one of them makes a placement wrong. First, each colored region must contain exactly one cat. Cats also cannot share a row or a column.
Then comes the rule that makes Catdoku different: cats do not like company. A cat claims all eight squares around itself, including the diagonal corners. This means another cat cannot be placed directly beside it or even diagonally next to it.
The colored regions have unusual shapes, so you cannot always solve a puzzle by looking at one small area. A possible spot in one region might rule out several spaces somewhere else.
Mark the Squares as You Think
You can mark a square with a white X when your deductions show that a cat cannot go there. These marks are useful for keeping track of possibilities without having to remember everything in your head.
When a spot becomes certain, double-tapping places a cat there. From that point, its row, column, region, and surrounding eight squares can all be crossed off as possibilities.
Three Hearts, Three Chances
Catdoku gives you three hearts at the beginning of each level. Placing a cat in the wrong square costs one heart immediately, so guessing can become expensive. Lose all three and the puzzle has to be started again.
That makes careful deduction more important than rushing. A good move can eliminate several possibilities at once, while an incorrect guess can leave the board in a much worse position.
Catdoku is easy to understand but asks you to think several moves ahead. Once the cats start limiting each other's space, every empty square becomes part of the puzzle.