Neko Atsume (Ongoing)
There is a reason why this game has an active subreddit. It’s the best thing ever, and there is a cat in it that looks like R! Seriously, words cannot express how wonderful this game is. I have a sense I will enjoy this game for years to come, just to see which cats are gracing my little garden with their presence (and trying to take the best photos).
Hungry Hearts (Finished)
I played through this one within 48 hours, so it’s very short, and yet super memorable as the game that started. Cute design, Japanese comfort food and an astonishingly heart-warming and thoughtful storyline. The game gave me everything I could ever have wanted in a game before I knew I wanted it.
Oden Cart series (Finished)
Right after “Hungry Hearts”, it was difficult to live up to the expectations. I was a little bored at first because I didn’t get that the storylines in the game were going to go somewhere. After finishing series 1 however, I understood how nicely interconnected everything was, so playing part 2 was a delight. So much self-referencing humour in part 2, and the same heart-warming elements as “Hungry Hearts”. Takes longer than Hungry Hearts, but it’s worth sticking to the end.
Showa Candy Shop series (Finished)
1 – You can play through this one pretty fast, and it has the strongest story, with a very hopeful and sweet ending. The candies you collect were amusing but mostly not too interesting, the humour definitely improves throughout the series. (Nevertheless, I had never heard of melon ice cream in a melon cup and now I really want that.)
2 – Very similar to part 1, but the gachapons are a lovely addition in terms of gameplay. Overall the items to get are more interesting (and have better captions), but the storyline was a little infuriating (the main letter writer is a no-good kid and it’s hard to sympathize with him at all), much unlike what Gagex usually does.
3 – The darkness of the storyline surprised me a lot (girl being abused and abandoned by parents), especially when considering everything else Gagex has done. Splitting up the letters to different recipients and storylines is a nice gesture but the side-stories ended up better than the main story (which ended up even more infuriating than part 2). The best part of the game, however, is the cat element of it. The cat appears in all the letters you collect, and the main prize of the gachapon part of the game is a set of 12 beautiful cat figurines. They are so beautiful I want those cat figurines in real life. This part also has (by far) the largest amount of items to collect, including everything from parts 1 and 2. I also liked that the characters are changed up depending on the season.
Days of Meowogh (Dropped)
An astonishingly beautiful cat game with all the greatest artists of the olden times, but – yet again – with an infuriating storyline. The main character Meowogh is pretty dumb and everyone else around him actively take advantage of him, that makes it hard to enjoy any of those prettily designed characters. Sadly the puzzles get increasingly hard to solve (only by luck really, so it’s a money-making scheme); even though I am not too keen on reading the storyline I really like the cat-themed paintings you collect over time.
KleptoCats (Dropped)
Another game with strong incentives to put real money into it, but you can avoid that without going crazy. Similar to Neko Atsume, but more “American”-looking and very humorous. The cultural references and hidden design elements of the game are impressive, and there are some puzzles to solve for people who like to play detective and take a look at clues very closely. To me, the stand-out part of the game (besides collecting cats) is actually that you can dress them with fun outfits, but almost halfway through the item collection becomes a little bit of a chore. Maybe I was doing something wrong but at 60/165 items (or so), it seemed like I was only getting duplicate items, making the whole process of sending out your cat much less fun. I think I need more games with an actual storyline as opposed to cat/item collection.
Travel Frog (Ongoing)
Slowest game of all times (maybe? So far it is at least), and it took me some time to really “get” it, but now that I did and got 5 souvenir pictures total, I am enjoying the simplicity of this game. I don’t know why but there is something strangely satisfying about collecting postcards from the cute little froggy (mine is named “Bean”). The Neko Atsume people are so brilliant.
Tsuki Adventure (Dropped)
To be fair I played this game only for half a day or so before deciding that I found it too similar to Travel Frog or Neko Atsume in terms of gameplay and I didn’t want too many games of the same kind. Furthermore, it strangely throws me off how the game looks too much like it was made by weebs. It’s extremely cutely designed, yet it looks a little off – enough to make me like the game less. Nevertheless, the game itself is adorable. I would come back to it if I ever get to a kind of stopping point with Travel Frog or Neko Atsume or both.
(A Girl Adrift)