Pusheen's Place Turns the Internet's Favourite Tubby Cat Into an Apple Arcade Game

Pusheen's Place arrives on Apple Arcade today, marking the first officially licensed standalone game starring the famously round internet cat. Developed by Lively, the game wisely avoids attempting to transform Pusheen into a heavily armed open-world protagonist. Instead, players build and decorate a cosy Pusheen paradise while collecting more than 100 kitty variants, including characters such as Pusheenicorn and Pancake Pusheen.

Mini-games including Snack Stack, Parfait Pop and Batch Match provide activities between bouts of interior decoration. The launch is interesting beyond the obvious gravitational pull of an extremely marketable cat. Apple Arcade has steadily developed a useful niche around family-friendly and cosy games that work particularly well on iPhone and iPad without advertising or in-app purchases. Pusheen fits that strategy almost suspiciously well.

There are already enough mobile games asking you to save kingdoms, optimise factories and prevent civilisation from collapsing before breakfast. Sometimes it is perfectly reasonable to spend twenty minutes deciding where a cartoon cat's sofa should go. As part of Apple Arcade, the game arrives without separate microtransactions, so at least Pusheen cannot unexpectedly develop a taste for £89.99 gem bundles.