Steam Gaming: Collecting Cats with Chonkers

Posted on August 19, 2025 by Aywren

Chonkers is an idle collection game where the goal is to collect and provide for adorable pixel cats while making pixel money to buy more pixel cats. It’s similar to Chillquarium, which was is another idle collector that I’ve put a lot of time and enjoyment into. Except, it’s cats and not fish.

The good: There are a LOT of different breeds of cats to collect in this game. There are also more fanciful “space” cats you can collect (complete with a space-themed room, if you choose it).

While the name of this game is “chonkers,” not all cats in this game are chonkers. But chonkers are rarer and worth more money should one of your kittens grow into one.

Like other idle collectors, there are cats of different rarities, and these cats are worth more the higher level they achieve. All of this takes real world time, which pauses after a time of not logging in to check on the cats.

This game does nudge you to put time into it - in an idle way. In fact, one of the “daily quests” is to remain in game for an hour, and this comes up often. Note, you don’t actually have to be doing anything in game, you just need to leave it running for an hour.

This game is also a bit more slow going than other idle collection games I’ve tried, especially in the first few days. It takes time to ramp up the cash to buy rarer types of cats, which then finally gets the cash flow going in a sustainable way.

The time factor is really why I haven’t achieved as much as I probably should have in this game so far, even after owning it since last December. With a game like Chillquarium, real time leveling and aging up for fish happen whether you’ve logged in or not. That game does throttle the amount of money you make to a 24-hour period, but not the aging of baby fish to adult.

It feels like Chonkers stops everything after being off the game for an amount of time, meaning even experience gain. Given the fact that you probably don’t want to sell a cat until it levels, so that you can earn the biggest return on investment, time is a major factor. I know there are ways to extend the amount of time you can be away up to 7 days, which is nice, but just know, that’s something you’ll have to work towards.

This may be a positive or negative point for you depending on how you enjoy playing an idle game. For me, it’s neither here nor there, just something to be aware of.

You can interact with aspects of the game – such as playing with the cats to earn more experience, filling up the food bowl for higher chances at chonkers, and cleaning the litter box for extra money. There are mini-games associated with the food bowl and litter box, but you can opt out of those if they don’t appeal to you.

Over time, you can add decorations to rooms that provide bonuses, purchase additional rooms for more cat storage, and upgrade your toys, bowls and litter boxes as well.

The one sad part of this game is that the cats sleep all the time unless you’re interacting with them directly with a toy. I wish the cats did more than just sleep, even if it was just sitting awake, grooming, or stretching from time to time.

Overall, it’s a fun cat collector game that gives back what you put into it, and can be as idle or interactive as you let it be. It’s got a low cost of entry and with a good sale, is a cheap option for a cute idle collector. There’s also a demo if you want to try it out first!

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