Neko Atsume (Cat Collector) is my life now. I downloaded it the other day from the Play Store, a recommendation from my friend, and now I, too, am trying to convert the masses into getting it. If you remember fondly the tamagotci games from the 1990s, then this game is for you! I’m still in the early stages of this game, but here’s what I’ve learned so far:

The game came out late 2014, and only recently became available in English. The graphics are simple, looks like flash animation that isn’t worried about shadows and shade nor keeping your lines completely straight, and it’s incredibly cute. The only time something is in motion is when the cats are interacting with something you’ve placed in the yard.

You set out toys, cushions, boxes, food, etc, in your yard, and let the cats come to you. So, they’re not even really your cats, per se, but rather you are enticing all the neighborhood cats to come to your yard. Different cats like different toys and food, and so the objective, of course, is to collect all the cats (cue “Can’t Hug Every Cat”).

As cats visit your yard, they are logged into the Catbook (think scrapbook + guestbook), which shows you their name, their personality, their power level (have NOT figured out what that means in this context, yet), the number of times they visited your yard, the type of cat, the top three goodies (toys, etc) used, and you can look at the album of photos you’ve taken of them. You can rename the cats by clicking on the name. So far, I’ve been keeping their default names.

After they’ve had their fun in your yard, they leave you with regular fish or gold fish, the currency for the game used to buy more goodies. After a while, they start giving you mementos (a friend recently was given a damp matchbox), and I’ve received a bug skin of some kind and a shiny acorn (thanks, cats! — so thoughtful). Of course, you can use real money to buy gold fish and expedite the process, but otherwise patience, cat goodies, and keeping the food bowl filled will eventually yield you fish funds.

It’s not like dollars and cents where you can simply buy something and have it take away the equivalent number of regular fish for gold fish, etc, so if you need the other kind of fish, you’ll have to do a currency exchange in the Shop. 500 regular fish for 10 gold fish, and 10 gold fish for 250 regular fish. You earn both kinds of fish at a decent enough pace as well.

Leave the app running in the background by pressing the home screen, and then check on it every once in a while to see which cats are visiting your yard. Refill the food bowl when empty, because without food there may not be any cats visiting!

When you take a picture of your cat, you have the option of pushing the photo to Twitter, so that you can let everyone know how the cats are doing. The Twitter text that comes up automatically is in Japanese, and according to Google Translate, it says “Cats Collected” but you can write your own text, of course.

So, check every once in a while, refill the food bowl, put some toys and cushions, etc, out for them to use, and collect all the cats! It’s a fun, passive game, super cute, and satisfies my cat lady needs, especially where no pets are allowed at my apartment. I really enjoy checking in to see which cats have visited the yard, and the little animations that come with using the goodies. I squee a lot. A great addition to your smartphone apps. 10/10 highly recommend.

Also, hi, this is my first post on this blog. I like video games, art, yoga, and electronic music. Nice to meet you. Commissar Taco is my fiance and he is wonderful.  :3