English

The game that isn't a game

Written by Clover on the 4th of December 2015 at 17:31
This post is tagged as: neko atsume, iOS, android, mobile game

After hearing about Neko Atsume, my inner (slightly crazy) cat lady couldn't resist to grab it from the App Store straight away.

The basics seemed simple; in Neko Atsume you own a yard and have to lure cats to said yard. You can lure cats by putting down different foods, toys or pillows. And then...
Well, that's pretty much it. You lure cats to your yard, and you can watch them sitting there. You can not interact with the cats in any way - the only thing you can do is put down a different sort of toy or food to lure a different cat. But no actual gameplay. You can take pictures of the cats in your yard which get saved in your Cat Book, I guess there is that? Neko Atsume is basically a battery-draining screensaver with nothing else to do than looking at simplistic drawn cats.

Yet somehow Neko Atsume has gathered a cult following - lots of merchandise, a plethora of fan-blogs on tumblr, and even guides on how to attract the most cats to your yard. When the game was still only available in Japanese, there were even translations available for people who simply couldn't wait for the English version of the game.
I must admit that I too am under the Neko Atsume spell: I keep opening the app to see which felines I have in my yard and it is my mission to 'collect them all', as in have all their pictures in my Cat Book. Why? I have no idea.

Neko Atsume is a strangely addictive game that isn't a game. I highly recommend this app to anyone who has some battery to drain.