Earlier this month, I reviewed the games I played this year. One of the games I talked about was Magical Kitties Save the Day published by Atlas Games.

Basic Information

• Authors: Matthew J. Hanson, Justin Alexander (of The Alexandrian), Michelle Nephew
• Publisher: Atlas Games

A first edition of Magical Kitties was released in 2016. I have the Second Edition Boxed Set that was released in 2020.

Box Contents

• Introductory Solo Adventure Comic (Magical Kitties and the Big Adventure, available separately for free on DriveThruRPG)
• Softcover Core Rulebook
• Softcover River City Setting Book, with fold out map and adventure
• Dice (six blue d6s)
• Kitty Treat tokens
• Pad of character sheets

Game Mechanics

Each player in Magical Kitties Save the Day plays a Kitty with magical powers. Yeah, yeah, it’s in the name.

Your Kitty has three main stats: Cute, Cunning, and Fierce.

Cute plays the role Charisma might in another game.

Cunning is both Intelligence and also a sort of sneaky thing.

Fierce is your main combat stat, as well as a general athletics and physical task stat.

Once you pick a stat, you roll a number of d6s equal to the stat. You also add one die if your Kitty’s mundane talent fits the task and two dice if their magical power is applicable.

Once you roll your pool of dice, you look for dice which meet or beat a target number, which defaults to 4. Even one makes the roll a success. Based on how many dice clear the difficulty, there are tiers to success and failure:

• 0 – Failure, and a complication
• 1 – Success, but with a complication
• 2 – Success
• 3 – Success with a bonus
• 4 or more – Success with a bigger bonus

You can also use Kitty Treats from your character sheet to reroll dice.

I actually really enjoyed the mechanics, the three stats were simple enough for my seven-year-old to understand, but gave enough tactical depth to keep the attention of one of the players from my normal group.

Impression on Reading

I love the box set form factor. Everything my daughter and I needed is in the box. Character sheets? Box. Tokens I can hand her so she knows she has kitty treats? Box. Dice? Box and also the giant chain mail bag on the desk.

The Core Rulebook and the River City book are both chock full of art that gets you in the right headspace. The comic book is laid out in a fun choose your own adventure format.

The Core book is split between how to make and play your Kitty and also how to GM the system, including giving you some ideas for antagonists. My favorite antagonist is the hyper-intelligent raccoons. Because hyper-intelligent mad scientist raccoons building the most unhinged things to steal all the shinies.

The River City hometown includes a lot of locations as well as an adventure that takes place in the library. There’s also a fold out map with all the places from the book labeled.

The books are great.

How’d It Play

I’ve run The Big Adventure choose your own comic a couple time for both my daughter and I.

The big test of Magical Kitties came when my usual game night got canceled and my daughter decided to join me and one of the other players in the group for a special game night.

We ran the adventure from the River City book, the Kitties’ humans were missing. And it was dinner time. In no way was that an acceptable thing to happen. So they go around looking and end up at the library. Where the front door is locked.

Cue two players, one genre savvy and one seven doing the old “how we getting past this door” routine. The fat tuxedo cat tried squeezing through the book return and got stuck. So Super Kitty decides to jump up and shove with all she’s got to get them inside. There were a couple more scenes like this where random things got tried and the dice gave me hints on complications or bonuses and it was actually pretty easy to GM.

One thing I will say is that the Adventure from River City isn’t the easiest to run on the fly from the book, or at least it wasn’t for me that night. An advanced read through to know how things connect is probably advisable.

The Verdict

Gamers with kids at home they want to introduce to gaming, but don’t necessarily want to jump into something Combat heavy like D&D will probably enjoy this one. Unless I as GM forced a combat, pretty much any opposition could be faced without a fight, and it felt like the Cunning and Cute stats almost incentivized a look for non-combat solutions (since the players went Cunning and Cute instead of fierce). Enemies actually get statted with Difficulties for each stat, like 4e D&D did with defenses, so like a Cute Difficulty of 5 on something stoic might pair with a Cunning Difficulty with 3 to represent logic working better than adorableness.

Honestly, for an off-night, I think the adult player had just as much fun as the kid with it though. Those changing difficulties and the game loop of solving problems for your human and your town really seemed to resonate with both players.

I will definitely think about bringing this one back for at least a one shot for my full table. It will also absolutely be back on the table for the seven year old. Between Amazing Tales, No Thank You Evil, and Magical Kitties, I feel like the Kitties are winning out as current kid-friendly favorite game.

Bundle of Holding

Through December 30, 2025, Bundle of Holding is running a Magical Kitties Bundle which includes digital versions of the entire current Magical Kitties line, core book and various Hometowns, for $14.95. If you’re looking for a fun game to play with your kid, this is a great Bundle, it includes a bunch of different genres to throw your Kitties into, aliens, fantasy, superheroes, noir.