'Neko Atsume' for PlayStation VR lets you live out your wildest cat hoarding dreams
It's a simple game: You leave food out for stray cats, which then show their appreciation by leaving you dumb gifts. Someone looked at that and said: "This needs to be remade in virtual reality."
Give that programmer a god damn cookie.
Neko Atsume is coming to PlayStation VR in 2018. There isn't any video to show you, nor any sense of how the game might change in its leap from mobile to head-mounted video game machine. But it's coming, as Sony confirmed at the 2017 Tokyo Game Show, and it's enough knowing just that for now.
Neko Atsume became something of a cultural phenomenon after it launched in 2014. It really is as simple as the description above suggests. There's nothing particularly challenging or surprising about it; you simply collect a bunch of cats.
My wife, who got really into the game for a while, says it was the assortment of virtual felines that kept her coming back. She wanted to see every cat, read every punny name, and chuckle at each animal's weird behaviors.
I expect it'll be a similar situation with the PSVR game. Except instead of looking at all of it on a small, 2D screen, you'll effectively immerse yourself in a cat colony of your own design every time you put on your headset.
Ever since it launched in late 2016, PlayStation VR early adopters have sought the hardware's first, true "killer app," a game that's so good it's worth buying a new machine to play.
Mark my words: Neko Atsume VR will be that killer app.
Topics Gaming Virtual Reality
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
