Nekogumi is a cat cafe management game where you take on the role of Bruce, a tuxedo cat. You’ll help your owner run the cafe by assigning orders to the tables based on what kind of cat they’re looking to interact with. They’ll want aspects like “sociable”, “playful”, and “chilled”. Each of these traits directly correlates to other cats at the cafe.
You’ll start with cats that fit the ‘socialable’ and ‘chilled’ needs, but you’ll have to build up to a cat with the playful tag. To be honest, I’m not sure if you get one in the demo because my game had a critical failure that caused the game to close entirely on day three, and, unfortunately, even with turning the sensitivity down all the way, the movement of the camera caused my motion sickness to engage at a low grade.
Nekogumi has an incredibly interesting artstyle and unique camera movements that you can change the sensitivty of on both an X and Y axis. It creates a very wobbly sort of viewpoint that you’ll either love or hate. Add in the fact that the controls feel clunky and you’re working with an uphill battle.
What this game lacks is smoothness. Walking around feel wobbly, and engaging in the menus wasn’t entirely intuitve. And this is unfortunate because there seems to be a really charming game at the center of the issues. I adored the shops filled with cute items to adorn Bruce with and more options opened up after each day. Getting to pop a strawberry hood onto him was the highlight of my gameplay until trying to look at other options managed to kill the game entirely.
And, it’s not just Bruce that you could decorate, you can also change up the cafe itself, from furniture to walls and floors. This aspect also generates more options to decorate with after each day, meaning that you have new things to look forward to. The moment I was able to turn the overhead lights into dangling fish in the shape of the little soy bottles in Japan, I was tickled.
Unfortunately, the most enjoyment I got out of the game was decorating, and that’s not the core tenet of gameplay.
Even with the issues, I can see the diamond; it just needs a lot of polishing to get it to shine like I believe it can. If you want to try out Nekogumi for yourself, you can download the demo on Steam. While you’re there, go ahead and wishlist the game if you like what you see, as that really helps out the developers.
If you want to stick around for a while to see some other demos, you can check out Little Corners or A Storied Life: Tabitha.
