Cats & Dice

Balatro, reimagined with cats and dice instead of cards

Cats & Dice takes the escalating-score-target roguelike loop that Balatro popularized and rebuilds it around dice rather than a poker-hand card system, with cats serving as the game's central resource: each cat you recruit determines both which dice you gain access to and what special effect those dice carry when rolled. Based on the available English-language review sample of 37 reviews — 30 positive, 7 negative, landing at an overall Positive rating — that dual-purpose cat mechanic draws specific, enthusiastic praise for genuinely differentiating the game from its obvious inspiration rather than simply reskinning it. "Some of the cat and item descriptions are a bit janky but you'll soon figure out what they do. I was basically expecting balatro with cats (which this definitely is) but it's also very much its own game and has way more interesting and original mechanics than I thought would be the case," one reviewer writes.

A separate reviewer articulates precisely why the cat-and-dice pairing creates more interesting decisions than a simpler synergy system might: "Balatro is the easy comparison, but Cats and Dice stands out in that your 'deck' of dice is determined by the cats which also provide your different effects. It provides a nice extra level of challenge since sometimes you might want the effect a cat offers but not the dice it comes with or vice-versa." That's a specific, well-articulated account of genuine mechanical depth — a build-crafting tension that forces meaningful tradeoffs rather than pure power accumulation.

A demo that already earned real trust before launch

Several reviewers specifically credit the pre-release demo for building real confidence in the final product, a notable pattern for an Early Access title. "Been thoroughly looking forward to this, don't let the 0.1 hours deceive you, I put about 14 hrs into the demo and considering it's very comparable to Balatro... and having played both, I would honestly say I'd sometimes rather play the demo of this game over Balatro itself. It's got a lot of fun builds to experiment with, and not to mention full of cats, so many cats," one reviewer writes, offering a genuinely strong endorsement grounded in substantial actual playtime with the pre-release build. A separate reviewer echoes the same pre-launch enthusiasm: "Played the demo and was itching for more playtime, bought the early access on day one."

A hard mode that reviewers say simply isn't fair yet

The most substantive, most specific criticism in this review sample concerns the game's harder difficulty tiers, and it's raised in detailed, mechanically precise terms by multiple reviewers. "I thought I'd love this game coming from Balatro and I did beat normal mode after 4ish tries. Hard mode is near impossible for me. You get 8 dollars on first shop and some cats cost 9 or 12. No way to lock things in the shop (as far as I can tell) and banes will often destroy your run in the first 5 mins. Overall it has good systems and game play, but a lot of QoL stuff is missing," one detailed reviewer writes, laying out a specific, reproducible economic problem: starting funds that don't reliably cover even a single desirable purchase, with no mechanism to hold onto a good shop offer for a later round.

A separate, more frustrated reviewer describes a related mid-run mechanic they found similarly punishing: on hard mode, the shop reliably fails to offer anything useful, and a forced "boon" choice can actively wreck an already-struggling run — the same reviewer cites a specific example of a reroll penalty compounding from -1 to -100 multiplier across just three rerolls in one particularly bad round. Setting aside the raw, unedited framing of that account, the underlying complaint is clear and corroborated by the other detailed review: hard mode's economy and mid-run choice systems can spiral a run into an unrecoverable state through structural bad luck rather than player error.

The achievement data confirms this is a real, verified difficulty cliff rather than a subjective overreaction. Win_Hard_mode sits at just 9.9% completion, and Win_Brutal_mode falls to 5.8% — a genuinely steep drop from the far more approachable normal-mode experience most positive reviews describe, and directly consistent with the specific economic and mechanical complaints raised above.

Rough edges acknowledged as fair for Early Access

It's worth noting that a meaningful share of this review sample explicitly frames the game's shortcomings as reasonable for its current development stage rather than fundamental flaws. "The Balatro-likes continue. Not a bad start at all, it has the chaos down correctly. Needs a bit more stewing but it is Early Access so that's not surprising. But it's totally playable in its current state - just don't expect it to be properly tuned," one reviewer writes, offering a fair, calibrated expectation for anyone considering buying in during this development phase. A separate, especially thorough reviewer who reached full achievement completion offers a similarly balanced long-view assessment: "Fantastic game, good balance of RNG vs control... Little rough around the edges UI wise, but you've got a base 8.75 game here that will become a 9.8 in time. Loved every second of it."

Where this leaves it

Cats & Dice takes the Balatro formula somewhere genuinely its own by tying dice access directly to cat recruitment, creating real build tension that reviewers consistently credit as more than a simple reskin. Its most serious problem, independently corroborated by both detailed reviewer accounts and Steam's own achievement data, is a hard-mode economy and mid-run choice system that currently feels closer to unfair than difficult. Recommended for Balatro fans willing to embrace an Early Access title with real, acknowledged rough edges on its harder difficulties; stick to normal mode for now if a fair, well-balanced challenge matters more to you than pushing into the game's current hardest content.