CatDoku (No Ads)

Cycle Start Studios

About this game

Two cat logic puzzles on one neon grid — the ones those fake mobile ads keep promising, except these are real, the puzzles are honest, and it's 100% free. No ads. No in-app purchases. No timers. Ever.

🐾 CATDOKU
The grid is cut into irregular coloured regions. Put exactly one cat in every row, every column and every region. No numbers, no counting — that is the entire rule, and everything else is deduction.

Tap a square to put a cat on it and tap again to take it off; hold a square to block one you have ruled out, and a tap clears that too. Pips along the top and the left edge light up as columns and rows get their cat, region outlines brighten as regions get theirs, and a cat forced to share with another gets a pink ring. That ring is the only thing you can do wrong.

The move that cracks these: if a region sits entirely inside one row, that row's cat has to be in the region — so every other square in the row is out. It works the other way round too, and once you see it you will see it everywhere.

🔢 CATSWEEPER
The second game. Numbered tiles count the cats in the eight tiles touching them, diagonals included, and a numbered tile never hides a cat itself. Minesweeper's counting without the mine: nothing is hidden from you, and nothing explodes.

🧠 NEVER A GUESS — IN EITHER GAME
Not one puzzle in this app needs luck. Catsweeper grids are stripped down for as long as a solver limited to human reasoning can still finish them. Catdoku grids are built the other way: the solution is laid down first, then the regions are reshaped, one square at a time, until exactly one arrangement fits. Every one of the 120 puzzles is checked twice before it ships — once by the game's own solver, and once by an independent exhaustive search. If you are stuck, there is something left to work out.

🌆 TEN ZONES, 120 GRIDS
Catdoku climbs from a 5×5 litter to a 9×9 cathedral. Catsweeper climbs from a 5×6 alley to a 9×12 city block. Levels are fixed, so level 37 is the same puzzle for everyone and your time on it means something. The two campaigns unlock and are scored separately.

⭐ CLEAN SOLVES
Beat par with no hints for three stars. There is no fail state, no life meter and no countdown — take as long as you like. Undo anything.

☀ HINTS THAT TEACH
Never sure where to start? On an untouched Catdoku grid the hint is free and fills nothing in — it dims everything else, outlines the region or row the opening deduction rests on, and tells you what it is. You still make the move.

After that, a hint looks for a cat you have put somewhere it cannot be before it tells you anything — usually that IS the problem. Otherwise it reveals a square the rules already prove. Those cost a hint and a star; the opener never does, because it hands you nothing.

✕ AUTO X
Place a cat and every square it rules out gets a faint cross, so you can see what is left before committing. Your own marks stay separate, and you can switch it off.

🐈 THE DAILY CAT
One grid a day, seeded from the date, the same for everybody, worth double coins.

🎨 THE CATTERY
Spend coins on seven original pixel cats — Neon Tabby, Noir, Cream Soda, Ghost, Calico, Glitch (whose fur cycles through the whole palette) and solid Golden — or on hint packs. Cosmetic, earnable, and never for sale in real money.

🎵 PURE SYNTHWAVE
A striped sunset, scrolling ranges, a neon floor grid, CRT scanlines and an original chiptune synthesized live in the app — no audio files, no loops, at a tempo you can think over. Sound effects and music have separate switches, so you can keep one and drop the other.

📱 MADE FOR ONE THUMB
Portrait, tap-only, no dragging, no timers to fight.

🔒 PRIVATE BY DESIGN
No accounts. No analytics. No network needed. Your stars, times, coins and cats never leave your phone, because we never collect them.

A Cycle Start Studios game.