Sliding puzzles often appear in video games as interlude puzzles. Common in the adventure game genre with 3×3 or 4×4 grids, to some they can be welcome respite from difficult platforming; whereas to others they can be mind numbingly frustrating if you don’t know some of the basic logic on how to solve them.
Slide Stories: Neko and Friends is a new short-form title from publisher, Silesia Games who are well known for publishing simplistic ‘achievement and trophy games’ such as the Hidden Cats series, which we have reviewed many of. Slide Stories is exclusively a sliding puzzle title with an anime-inspired art style and low-key graphic novel storytelling.
Should you slide Neko and his friends into your playlist? Here’s our review.
Gameplay
Slide Stories: Neko and Friends gameplay is entirely sliding puzzles. You can choose from varying levels of difficulty depending on your ability (and patience levels) with them. The most basic level, which I played the game through entirely in are 3×3 puzzles, with increasing numbers of tiles as the difficulty increases. Bluntly, there is little more to say about the gameplay of a one-trick pony title where the formula remains the same from start to end.
For sliding puzzle newbies there are some very handy accessibility features including the ability to have numbers overlayed on the tiles. This was particularly useful when I had spent a little longer on a puzzle than I would have liked. Furthermore, players can shuffle the puzzles in moments of frustration for a complete restart.
Story
Split across three different short visual novels, there are three individual short-form stories told by Neko and his friends. There are tales of love and adventure featuring several animals including Neko the cat and Bucky, the Shibu Inu both of who you can see on the review header.
With 6-7 puzzles per story, there’s very subtle storytelling that certainly won’t stick with players. In fact, it was so uninteresting that I barely paid any attention at all.
Visuals and audio
There are 20 puzzles in Slide Stories, all with very attractive hand-drawn art across them. It is a very pretty game that draws heavily on influences from anime and Japanese pop-culture, including Neko and the animals themselves.
With three different stories, the colour palette changes distinctly and keeps each puzzle fresh. Outside of the puzzles, the level select and story focused images look straight out of a Japanese cartoon.
Slide Stories audio has a lo-fi soundtrack that adds to the relaxed ambience of the game. Designed as a peaceful cosy game, the simplistic music didn’t overstay it’s welcome in the 1-2 hours I spent shifting tiles in to place.
Conclusion
Sliding puzzles are fun to some, but a total frustrating nightmare to others. If you enjoy solving sliding puzzles, or anime art then Slide Stories is a budget priced title that you can complete in one sitting. Achievement hunters will know that Silesia Games publish simple completions, and you will be able to wrap up the 1,000G in little time.
Slide Stories: Neko and Friends is a simplistic title that achieves what it sets out to mechanically, though the storytelling doesn’t hit the mark. I can just about recommend it for what it is.
Slide Stories: Neko and Friends launches on to Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on November 19 2025. This review was played on Xbox Series X. Thank you to publisher, Silesia Games for the code provided for review.
