Kittens Game

What it is

Kittens Game is credited on its own page to bloodrizer, and the browser tab carries a cheerful self-description: "a Dark Souls of incremental gaming". That joke is worth taking half seriously. There is no combat to speak of, but the game is dense, unhurried and does not explain much, and it expects you to work things out.

The Steam store page, published by Nuclear Unicorn, describes it as "a village simulation text game" designed to be played "over a long period of time, in a semi-idle manner". That is accurate. You are not building towards a finale but tending a settlement that grows more sophisticated over a very long campaign.

How a session goes

You begin on the Bonfire tab with two buttons: gather catnip and refine catnip. Catnip becomes wood, wood becomes a catnip field, and a field makes catnip without you. Huts attract kittens, and kittens can be given jobs: woodcutter, farmer, scholar and more as the game goes on. A calendar runs in the background, and the seasons matter, because some harvests depend on them.

Science is where the game opens out. Scholars produce it, libraries store and boost it, science pays for technologies, and technologies add buildings, resources and whole new tabs. A log at the bottom of the screen narrates events, sometimes with a dry line or two. The game asks you to balance storage limits, food for a growing population and the next expensive building, and the right answer changes as you go.

There is a reset mechanic further along, and with it permanent bonuses for the next run, but the first village alone can keep you occupied for a long time.

How much time it asks

Kittens Game moves at the speed of its calendar. Early on you will click a fair amount, but within the first session you will have fields and woodcutters doing most of the work. After that the natural rhythm is a short visit to spend resources, adjust jobs and queue the next goal, followed by a long gap. It suits people who can leave a tab open on a work computer, or who like checking in a few times a day over weeks.

The game autosaves, and the options include a text export and import. On a long campaign, copying your save somewhere safe from time to time is sensible.

How it is paid for

The browser version is free. The page links to the developer's Patreon, and we saw no shop or purchase prompts inside the web game; its help text mentions ad blockers only as something to check if the game fails to load. The page also links to mobile versions for Android and iOS, and to a Steam release, which is a paid Early Access purchase dated 10 February 2026. We did not check what the mobile apps charge for, so we make no claims about them here.

Who it suits

• Players who enjoy planning, optimising and reading wikis.
• Anyone happy with a text-only interface and a slow reveal.
• People who want one game to tend over a long stretch rather than many short ones.

Who might skip it

• Newcomers who want the game to explain itself; the community wiki and Discord exist for a reason.
• Players who prefer bright visuals or a story with an ending.
• Anyone who finds resource caps and job juggling stressful rather than soothing.

Fair winds

• Enormous depth from a simple start.
• Free in the browser with no shop on the web version.
• Seasons, science and jobs interact in satisfying ways.
• Useful options: themes, number notation, text export.

Headwinds

• Explains very little; expect to look things up.
• Long waits are part of the design.
• Wall-of-text interface can feel cramped on small screens.