5 Cute, Chill & Passive Mobile Games to Help You Relax
Passive kawaii games to play when you’re tired from school/work/lockdown
In times where you would like to break free from school, work, or life amidst the pandemic, these kawaii and no-brain-cell-killing games could help with drawing you into a calming, peaceful world where there isn’t a need to rush things through, elevating you to a space where you’re allowed to do things at your own pace without any repercussions. But be warned — cuteness overload ahead!
Neko Atsume
Released in October 2014, Neko Atsume (translates literally to “cat gather” in Japanese) or Kitty Collector is my all-time favourite kitty collector game. From the art style, to the colours, the background music, and of course, the cats, everything about this game screams kawaii!
Basically to attract cats to your yard, you would need to fill up food bowls and buy toys. Leave the app and check in once in a while to spot new kitties!
Different food and toys attract different cats, so make sure to get a variety of them to attract more cats. You can also attract rare cats in this game! You would know a rare cat is visiting when you see one — they are generally themed and might interact with their object of interest in unique ways. For example, with the same glass vase object, on the left we have a rare cat whipping up a glass full of desserts, and on the right we have a non-rare cat but an insanely adorable one who decided to fit itself in the vase.
You can choose to explore and experiment the food and toys combination yourself to get all cats in the game to visit you eventually, or go meta and follow some fan-made guides so that you can plan and strategise your budget to meet your favourite cats asap.
Nothing like being surrounded with super adorable kitties in your (virtual) yard to dissolve your stress.
Platform: Available on both iOS and Android
Tsuki Adventure
As Tsuki the rabbit, you are a badass bunny that raged-quit your 9–5 corporate job to takeover your family carrot farm left behind by your grandfather.
Harvest carrots, fish, and meet new villagers in Mushroom Village, with shops in a seemingly retro Showa era theme. You can also explore new places out of the village once you have saved up enough carrots to purchase train tickets!
Also an interesting note, this game follows your real-time device clock. You might see different characters or events triggered according to different timings throughout the day. That being said, you do not need to be online the whole day, this is meant to be a passive game after all. Maybe check in once in the morning, afternoon, evening and night time when you have some time to spare.
Tsuki translates to “moon” in Japanese. Through optional In-App purchases, you can subscribe to a premium service called Club Moon, where you will be able to unlock new perks and items.
Visit Tsuki Adventure’s official website for more info about the game!
Platform: Available on both iOS and Android
Tsuki Odyssey
A new entry to the Tsuki series and an extension to Tsuki Adventure, continue your adventures in Mushroom Village with new maps to explore, more characters to meet and new functionalities to play with!
In Tsuki Odyssey, you can buy furnitures to decorate your house, use your in-game mobile phone to see where you are in a map and teleport to places you’d like to go! Talk about technology advancement in the Showa period!
Platform: Tsuki Odyssey is currently available in Early access on Google Play Store and is coming soon to App Store (est. 19 August 2021)
Adorable Home
Coincidentally the third game from HyperBeard that is introduced in this article (Papa notice me), Adorable Home should somewhat already be a household name among cute and aesthetic game enthusiasts.
Move in to your new place with your partner, decorate your new place with furnitures and prepare bento boxes for him/her. Feed your pets and give them affection! Enjoy the (somewhat stressful) interactions with your cats to collect love as in-game currency. Love can be used to buy more furnitures and even more cats (up to 12 cats to be brought home)! You can also unlock your Garden once you have gathered enough love.
In the event where your partner is (presumably) at work and not home most of the time (mine is a hard worker), you have your 12 cats to keep you occupied! Interacting with each of them does take up quite some time, hopefully you don’t feel too lonely with your cat companions.
Adorable Home is also very supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, allowing players to have the option of choosing partners of the same gender. The developers have recently introduced beautiful limited edition furnitures to celebrate the LGBT Pride Month and Pride Flags. The limited edition furnitures is no longer available for purchase now (only till July 15), but the Pride Flags can still be purchased.
Platform: Available on both iOS and Android
Cats are Cute
Yes, literally, Cats are Cute. Developed by a one-person indie studio, this simple line-art styled game could help you unwind from a long day. The general idea of the game is to collect cats and form your own town through introducing new buildings. Unlike Adorable Home where you get a fixed set of 3 mini-games per cat, here the interactions with the cats are much more varied!
Play with your cats, listen to occasional meows/rants, understand your cats better, and get your cat to learn new skills. Each cat has its own unique story, personality and skillsets! Kudos to the developer for being so detailed-oriented!
As you progress in the game, you would also be able to decorate the buildings and summon more cats, including rarer cats through Special summons! The rarer the cat, the more Fish (in-game currency) you would be able to rake in from the cat’s building.
Although Cats are Cute is also a passive game, when compared with the other four games mentioned above, there are more things going on in this game — cat interactions and collection of Fish and Hearts are triggered much more frequently. You also have a list of daily missions to complete each day. The list resets at 4am every day.
Platform: Available on both iOS and Android
I absolutely adore all these games and had spent hours on each of these (except for Tsuki Odyssey which I have only tried out for half an hour on my brother’s Android phone, waiting for the app to hit the App Store soon!) thus this article has been a fun one to write!
Let me know which one is your fav and if you have other similar kawaii passive games to recommend!
