For a while, I've been meaning to write about how Catherine is an absolutely amazing game. The raw mechanics of it give me a sense of intellectual delight comparable to Go (the game, not the language) and the core ideas of Lisp or Scheme. All of them share a relatively small ruleset that results in surprising power or complexity. But what sets Catherine apart is that is has a metaphor (a human traversing and manipulating large blocks) that totally works! (There's also a storyline that is pretty good but irrelevant to the primary metaphor.)<p>If we ever meet intelligent aliens, I won't be surprised if they have their own Lisp-like language or Go-like game, but they probably won't have Catherine. But to me, Catherine feels just as fundamental as Lisp or Go. And I call that very impressive game design.