Games Like Kittens Game: Slow Idle Games You Manage
What are the best games like Kittens Game?
The closest game to Kittens Game is Trimps: you put your population to work as farmers, lumberjacks, miners and scientists, build barns and sheds when the stores fill up, and never have to spam a button. If you want a story with a clear ending, and a team of wizards to do the work, play Magic Research 2. If planning was your favourite part, play Increlution. All six picks below are on Steam. Evolve, a free browser game with the same long research climb to space, has no Steam page, so it is covered after the list.
Updated October 2026.
What makes a game feel like Kittens Game?
Kittens Game is an incremental game, which means a game built around numbers that grow faster than you can spend them: you buy something that makes more of the resource, which buys more of that thing, until the scale changes and new systems appear. Our explainer on what an incremental game is covers the label in more detail.
Kittens Game plays like a slow city builder written in text. Its Steam page lists over 30 buildings and 50+ resources, promises you can “Manage jobs, skills and happiness of your population”, and says it is designed to be played “over a long period of time, in a semi-idle manner”. Three systems carry most of that:
- Jobs. Every kitten is a worker you assign. The Kittens Game wiki’s resource list names farmers for catnip, woodcutters for wood, miners, hunters, scholars for science, priests and geologists.
- A science tree. The technology page shows the chain: Calendar costs 30 science, Agriculture costs 100 and unlocks the Barn and the farmer job, and the tree keeps branching from there.
- Storage caps. Every resource has a ceiling. On the Bonfire page, a Barn adds 5,000 to the catnip cap and 200 to wood, and a Library adds 250 to the science cap, so a lot of the game is building room for what you already make.
On top of that sits the calendar. The game mechanics page says each season lasts 3 minutes 20 seconds of real time, and an average winter cuts catnip from fields by 75%. That is why a Kittens player thinks about farmers before winter.
Of the six picks, only Trimps keeps all three systems. Idling to Rule the Gods keeps the job split, Magic Research 2 and Idle Research keep the research, and Increlution keeps the planning. Swarm Simulator: Evolution keeps none of the three; I put it last, as the loosest fit, for a population that grows while you are away. All six play well without constant clicking and are on Steam today.
Which Steam games are most like Kittens Game?
The table says which piece of Kittens Game each one keeps. Two of the six, Trimps and Magic Research 2, are Windows only on Steam, and Trimps also runs free in a browser.
| Game | What you manage | The Kittens Game piece it keeps | Where it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trimps | A colony of small creatures you breed and send to fight | Jobs, science, and Barns, Sheds and Forges that raise caps | Combat is the main way forward |
| Increlution | One life at a time, planned in a queue | Planning a queue of tasks, with skills like Farming that carry over | Your character dies, and each life starts stronger |
| Magic Research 2 | A wizard, then a team of wizards | Research, and delegating the work to others | A story with bosses and a clear ending |
| Idling to Rule the Gods | An army of shadow clones | A population you split between tasks | Fights against gods; harder to learn, by its own admission |
| Idle Research | A lab of Flasks and Tubes | Research as the main screen | Abstract: energy and items, no village |
| Swarm Simulator: Evolution | A bug swarm, larvae up to hive Overminds | A population that keeps growing while you are away | Grows by hatching units and sacrificing smaller ones |
How much do they cost, and which run on Mac?
Prices are the regular US Steam price, review counts are Steam’s all-language totals, the positive share is Steam’s own count divided by the total, and release years are Steam’s release dates, all as of October 2026.
| Game | Released on Steam | Steam price (as of October 2026) | Steam reviews (as of October 2026) | Positive | Mac |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trimps | 2022 | Free, with in-app purchases | 1,499 | 90.3% | No |
| Increlution | 2021, Early Access | $3.99 | 1,257 | 85.0% | Yes |
| Magic Research 2 | 2024 | $5.99 | 617 | 92.7% | No |
| Idling to Rule the Gods | 2016 | Free, with in-app purchases | 2,137 | 84.7% | Yes |
| Idle Research | 2022, Early Access | Free, with in-app purchases | 1,909 | 83.9% | Yes |
| Swarm Simulator: Evolution | 2019 | Free, with in-app purchases | 559 | 77.6% | Yes |
Magic Research 2 was 20% off on the check date (as of October 2026), so its price may be lower when you look. Increlution, Idle Research and Idling to Rule the Gods also list Linux. Our guide to idle games for Mac checks more Mac picks. If you want a game with no in-game store at all, Kittens Game itself passed that test in our list of idle games on Steam without microtransactions.
Which games make you assign workers?
Trimps
Trimps is the closest thing to Kittens Game on Steam, and if you only try one, I would start here. Its store page opens with you waking “on a hostile planet with no memory”: you trap a Trimp, breed more, set them to work and house them. The game’s code, which is open on GitHub, starts the jobs with Farmer, Lumberjack, Miner and Scientist and adds more later, such as Trainer, Explorer and Geneticist. The Barn, Shed and Forge each double the cap on food, wood or metal. That is the Kittens loop of filling a store and building a bigger one.
Where it parts ways is combat. Your Trimps fight through zones, and the Portal, its prestige reset, leads to over 50 Challenges and a second Universe. The Steam version sells a premium currency, Bones, but the page says normal play earns more than enough. The browser version has been free since 2015, with no cash shop.
Idling to Rule the Gods
If the part you liked was splitting the village between jobs, try Idling to Rule the Gods. You are the last survivor of a ruined humanity, and you create shadow clones that train, learn skills and fight monsters while you take their strength, according to its Steam page. Deciding how many clones go where is the same call as deciding how many kittens farm and how many study.
It keeps growing while you are offline, has a Rebirth reset, and also has pets to collect and monuments to build. The store page warns that it is mostly text and “might also not be as easy to understand as some other games”, which a Kittens player will read as a feature. It is the oldest pick here, on Steam since 2016, and has the most reviews: 2,137, 84.7% positive (as of October 2026).
Which games put research first?
Magic Research 2
Magic Research 2 builds its progress on study. You start as one rookie wizard looking for the Philosopher’s Stone, study the Elements to learn new ways to use magic, and end up running a team of wizards who cast spells and transmute items for you, as its Steam page describes. That second half is the point in Kittens Game where the village runs itself. The page lists more than 120 spells, over 250 items to transmute and over 40 bosses.
Each Element changes how you play: Fire strengthens your attacks, Water improves your Mana regeneration. Retiring restarts the game with bonuses, so a second run goes faster. Unlike Kittens Game, it ends: the store page promises “Over 60 hours of addictive gameplay” with “a clear ending”. It has the best positive share here, 92.7% of 617 reviews (as of October 2026).
Idle Research
Idle Research turns the Kittens science tab into the whole game. You research items, starting with Flasks, then craft them to earn three types of Energy, and the store page says research can unlock up to 18 items. Prestige comes in several kinds, and later you get zones to fight through, skills and potions.
There is no village and no story yet, so it is the most abstract pick here. It is also unfinished: the developer says on the page that it is in Early Access with two of three planned content layers. It runs without an internet connection and is free with in-app purchases.
Which game is all about planning?
Increlution
For a Kittens player who liked planning more than watching, I would pick Increlution. You plan one life in a queue of jobs, constructions and explorations, and the game follows the queue while your health declines until you die, per its Steam page. Skills such as Farming and Woodcutting keep Instinct levels through death, so each generation starts stronger. The page calls it “a game about planning and strategizing, not a game about micro-management or clicking”, and the game pauses itself when the queue runs empty.
It has a story told in chapters, which Kittens Game, a sandbox, does not, but the story is not finished. The developer counts about 220 hours of unpaused content in the 11 chapters written so far, with 20 to 25 planned, and it is still in Early Access. A free demo holds the first chapter.
Which pick is the loosest fit?
Swarm Simulator: Evolution
Swarm Simulator: Evolution is the least like Kittens Game here, and I would only pick it if what you liked was a population that keeps growing while you are away. You hatch larvae and drones and work up through stronger units to hive Overminds, using Stingers and Locusts to take territory. Its Steam page says it keeps progressing “whether it’s open or not”, and Ascend restarts you on a new world with Mutations.
It came from a text-based web game, and the Steam version moves it into 3D. The store page sells it as idle clicker gameplay: you grow by hatching more units and sacrificing smaller ones for the colony. It has the lowest positive share here, 77.6% of 559 reviews (as of October 2026), so read the recent reviews before you settle in.
What about Evolve and the other browser games?
Evolve is a free, open-source browser game where you take a species from primordial ooze to a space-faring empire. It has no Steam page, which is why it is not in the tables, but it is the closest browser match for the village-to-space arc and the long research tree.
Kittens Game also sits in the same family as Universal Paperclips, A Dark Room and Candy Box 2, the text-first games where a new tab or button is the reward. Our list of games like Universal Paperclips follows the “the game turns into another game” thread, and games like A Dark Room follows the story-led one. If you came from a bigger, faster game, games like Cell to Singularity covers the science climb with more on screen.
Quick answers
Is Kittens Game on Steam? Yes. Nuclear Unicorn released it on Steam on 10 February 2026, in Early Access, for Windows, macOS and Linux. Its regular price is $7.99, and it has 80 reviews, 95% positive (as of October 2026).
Is Kittens Game free? Yes, in a browser. The web version is free to play. The Steam version is paid, and its page carries no In-App Purchases label.
Is Kittens Game on Android and iPhone? Yes, as paid apps. Google Play and the App Store both list it at $2.99 (as of October 2026), and the App Store listing says it has no ads or micro-transactions.
Are there browser games like Kittens Game? Yes. Evolve is free in a browser and covers the same ground from ooze to space. Trimps, the closest pick on Steam, has also been free in a browser since 2015, at trimps.github.io.
Where our game fits
Our own game, Sam, We Talked About This, is an idle incremental game, and it sits beside this list rather than on it. You scrape sites for data, train text, image and video models on it, rack the models to win subscribers, and spend the cash on more disks, bigger machines and a bigger crew. Its feature list includes growing your storage and building a crew, which is the nearest it gets to Kittens Game’s barns and jobs, except that what you make room for is data. It is unreleased, due on Steam in Q1 2027, so there is nothing to play or score yet. Its Steam page lists Windows and macOS, if you want to follow it.
