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The Adorable Japanese Cat Game Everyone Was Obsessed With Is Now in English

"Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector" is going global.
Image: Hit-Point

Remember Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector? It's that Japanese mobile game where you buy fish, toys, and other treats to lure cats into your garden and grow your kitty kingdom. I wanted to play it because it looked totes adorbs and cats are cool, but it was only available in Japanese, and I'm a little obsessive compulsive about playing games perfectly. The thought of missing something or disappointing one of my cats was too much to bear.

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Luckily, a new update to Neko Atsume adds an English translation to the game on Android, with an English translation coming to the iPhone "very soon." This is according to 8-4, a company that specializes in localizing Japanese games for the West, which was hired to translate Neku Atsume.

Yutaka Takazaki, project manager at Neko Atsume developer Hit-Point, told The Verge that the company decided to translate the game to English because it became such a surprise hit outside of Japan.

"When we made the game we weren't thinking about foreign users—we were only thinking about the Japanese audience," he said. "It's very helpful that the community is helping each other out."

Indeed, a couple of Motherboard contributors were so obsessed with it as well, to the point where they used Japanese translation apps to figure out exactly what their cats wanted, and how to get more cats.

Thanks to this new translation, that's not going to be such a mystery to people who don't speak Japanese. Cats, however, remain a mystery.

You can download the English version of Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector from Google Play.