Review: Neko Atsume Purrfect Kitty Collector Recreates the App in VR

After a lengthy development cycle, Neko Atsume VR is finally around as Neko Atsume Purrfect Kitty Collector for Meta Quest 2, 3, and Pro headsets. While it is cute and quite relaxing, it feels like it sticks a bit too closely to the mobile balancing and doesn’t take into account that someone might only play it once or twice each day.

Like the mobile game, Neko Atsume Purrfect Kitty Collector is about making your virtual home inviting to stray cats. You set out food and place objects and toys for the cats to use. Then, you take some time away and come back to see what animals were lured in by your treats. You then get to take photos of them being adorable, which you catalog in a journal, collect fish as gifts from them or mementos if they like you enough, and put out more food and items to repeat the process. Here, the new gimmicks involve handheld items to feed treats or shake toys, the opportunity to pet or pick up cats after calling them over, and taking advantage of mixed reality features to see the cats in the “real world.”

To its credit, Neko Atsume Purrfect Kitty Collector does completely recreate the experience in VR on the Quest. You’re in the exact home and yard as in the mobile game. (Though there is a sliding door to “your room,” aka the real world, that is new.) The spots to place different toys are the same. Many of the cats return, though some of the more elaborate and fanciful ones and their trigger toys are absent. So it is still a very similar experience.

It also works very well as a “break” between games. This is still an idle simulator, which largely means you set out the food, leave, come back to see which cats appeared, then take photos of and possibly play with them with the newly added tools while collecting the gifts they left you. I’ve been popping into Neko Atsume Purrfect Kitty Collector between playing other VR games on my Quest 3, like Beat Saberand Asgard’s Wrath 2. So I load up the headset, pop in to feed and catalog kitties, go kill some stuff or attack boxes, then see what happened back at the cat house after an hour or two.

I did find I didn’t use the mixed reality much. It’s fine and a neat option. Maybe if someone has more open room in their space and aren’t in an apartment, or if they have actual animals, it could be fun. But I spent almost all my time in the virtual home.

However, in my time playing Neko Atsume Purrfect Kitty Collector, I feel like the balancing is way off in this VR game or that it probably isn’t best suited for anything beyond a mobile experience. The pacing is incredibly slow. Given items are at a few hundred fish, not even to mention gold fish, it can take days to earn a new item to place or use to play with cats. I’d have appreciated different pacing to make it easier to start acquiring items since you aren’t going to be checking it upwards of five to six times a day like you would the app.

There’s also an issue I found with turning. The way it handles it made me feel uncomfortable and a bit motion sick, to the point that I would make sure I was in a spot where I could turn around and move a little bit so I could shift to the two different positions in the home and yard and look at the cats by turning myself in reality, rather than with the joystick on the controller. However, a developer response to a review on the Meta Store says that snap turns will be implemented at a later date.

Neko Atsume Purrfect Kitty Collector is a slow burn game. You’ll be playing for probably a week or so before you accumulate a good number of items. Which some people might love! Neko Atsume Purrfect Kitty Collector is quite cute and a good wind-down game after more strenuous Meta Quest 2 or 3 VR games. However, it keeps the same sort of pacing as the mobile game, without providing much incentive to keep playing beyond petting and shaking a toy at virtual cats.

Neko Atsume Purrfect Kitty Collector is available on the Meta Quest 2, 3, and Pro VR headsets.