Jumping Jazz Cats

Purrfect parkour, jazzy soundtrack, real charm

Jumping Jazz Cats, released 20 May 2025 by developer Le Catnip Collective and publisher Team17, is an online party platformer built entirely around cats performing collaborative and competitive mini-games across a grandiose cartoon mansion. Players sprint, jump, bounce, swing, skid, and slide through obstacle-course challenges, all set to a jazz-inflected soundtrack and wrapped in deep feline customisation options. It's an unabashedly cute, small-scale party game clearly positioned somewhere between Fall Guys and Mario Party, filtered entirely through a cat-loving lens.

That specific, focused charm lands consistently across the positive review sample. One reviewer opens simply, "Fun little party game with kitty meows and zoomies so instant win for me," specifically praising the customisation options and jazz-themed music and stages as reasons the game "easily clicked." Another reviewer frames the appeal in similarly warm terms, calling it "very adorable and pawsome," and highlighting "vibrant and catchy Jazz, detailed customisation, and even many unique party games just like Mario Party." A further reviewer distills their reaction to its simplest form: "cats! im a kitty cat and i dance dance dance."

Surprisingly high effort for its scope

Beyond the surface-level cuteness, several reviewers specifically credit the game with punching above its weight in terms of polish and presentation, a distinction that matters given its modest asking price. One detailed reviewer states "Very high effort for what it provides, great music and art," specifically praising the solo trials as "pretty cool" and "challenging at times but not really difficult," while acknowledging some mechanical quirks around throwing that they expect to be patched. Another reviewer echoes this assessment of underlying quality, describing the platforming controls as having been "smoothed out and easy to control," while praising the customisation depth as unusually thorough for a game at this price point.

That combination of genuine polish and focused charm produces real enthusiasm among reviewers who've managed to play it with a full group. One reviewer recounts using the game therapeutically after "a bad day," playing "with my friends for almost 2 hours," and specifically thanking the developers "for the laughs." Another reviewer, writing from a family perspective, notes they "got it mainly to play with my niece, but I ended up loving it myself," specifically praising the seamless Remote Play Together implementation for making that shared experience easy to set up.

A critically small player base undermines the entire premise

Despite that genuine quality, the review sample converges overwhelmingly on a single structural problem that undercuts the game's core value proposition: a party game with, by multiple accounts, no party to speak of. One reviewer states plainly, "The only problem comes from a very small player base. It's hard to have a party game without a party and currently not a lot of people are playing the game so it can sometimes be difficult to find players." A second reviewer corroborates the exact same issue in more emotional terms, writing "best game on earth but has absolutely no players it's absolutely heartbreaking," specifically appealing to a popular streamer by name to help revive interest.

This isn't a minor nitpick from a handful of unlucky players, it's the single most repeated complaint across both positive and negative reviews alike. Even reviewers who ultimately recommend the game hedge specifically on this point, with one writing "I love it very much, but I would say I do not recommend getting the game as it is now mainly because it is hard to get into lobbies as not many people play the game." Another reviewer sums up the resulting frustration succinctly: "game is cool ig but its so dead you need friends willing to drop $9 on some random game... Otherwise you're queuing alone feeling like some degen."

Thin content and local co-op failures compound the problem

Beyond population, a second corroborated complaint concerns genuinely limited content variety, a problem that becomes especially acute precisely because the small player base makes finding fresh opponents difficult in the first place. One reviewer reports "only 3-4 levels to play in," meaning that in longer sessions "you are going to play the same stage multiple times," a repetitive structure a separate reviewer independently confirms, describing the overall experience as getting "repetitive real quick."

A third significant complaint concerns broken or entirely missing local co-op support, undermining a feature specifically advertised as a selling point. One reviewer reports the advertised "local co-op... straight up does not work on a Steam Deck with two gamepads," specifically requesting a fix. A separate reviewer confirms an even more basic platform gap, stating flatly the game "does NOT support Local Multiplayer on Linux," a feature that "works exclusively on Windows." A further reviewer adds that disconnection during online play compounds these problems, noting "every time we have a lobby up, someone gets disconnected after the first game, and since there's no reconnect feature, we either have to start a new lobby or quit," concluding the experience has "hit that unplayable point" as a result.

Verdict

Jumping Jazz Cats is a genuinely charming, surprisingly high-effort cat-themed party platformer that reviewers consistently praise for its customisation depth, jazzy presentation, and real group-play fun when the stars align. But a critically small, dwindling player base makes finding that full lobby a real challenge for many buyers, and thin level variety, broken or missing local co-op support, and connection-drop bugs compound the problem for a meaningful share of its review sample. Groups of friends able to schedule dedicated sessions together should find real charm here; solo players hoping to find pickup games, or anyone relying on local co-op, should wait for further updates before buying.