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The first joke is that Scram Kitty and His Buddy on Rails is an on-rails shooter that is, for once, literally on rails. As in Cardiff studio Dakko Dakko's debut, The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character, your wheeled character must hug the border of the environment, an unbroken rail along which he can scoot with crab-like velocity. You trace your path along the scenery, back against the wall at all times, as you fire inwards - sometimes leaping before landing back on the rail in a shower of sparks. There's a hump of acclimatisation to get over. At first, it feels frustrating to be tethered to the circumference when you want to fly unhindered through the air. But soon enough you begin to lap the game's levels with the grace and ease of a hurdler completing circuits of a track. In time, you leap obstacles with pixel-perfect timing and begin to use inertia to fling yourself around the scenery and flit between rails while firing a hail of scorching bullets at your foes.
The second joke is that you play as a blue-rinse soldier who must rescue 70 traumatised space cats from an army of weaponised rodents. The game is broken into 29 stages, each one accessed from a map screen that's laid out like the blueprints of a spaceship. Cats await rescue in each stage. The tabby sits by the exit door; to rescue him, you must simply make it to the end of the stage. The others must be lured out. The black cat appears only when you defeat an especially powerful mouse enemy who's invisible until you roll into his area. The flirty cat with the long eyelashes and azure eyes must be chased around the stage until she finally settles in one spot and can be herded towards the exit. The white cat will only come out to play when you've collected every single one of the coins that litter the environment.
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