Bongo Cat is the next Banana

A new idle clicker game has overtaken Banana on the Steam charts. That’s Bongo Cat, published by Irox Games, which takes the general idea of Banana and the rest of the genre and tweaks it a little. You don’t really play Bongo Cat, necessarily; the cute little kitty lives as an overlay on your screen, tapping away as you press buttons on your keyboard. Every so often, you’ll unlock a treasure chest that’s got a surprise inside — a hat for your cat, perhaps.

Like with Banana, the unlockable items are sellable on the Steam marketplace; depending on rarity, the market sets value. Most of the items are selling for a few cents, but some hats have crept up into the tens of dollars. It’s not clearly as wild of a market as Banana was in its heyday, where bananas were selling for hundreds of dollars, but there is a market there. Banana was popular because, as Banana team member Hery told Polygon, it’s basically an “infinite money glitch.” You pay nothing, but unlock items that have some value. Bongo Cat certainly has the same appeal in that way, but it’s also just a cuter experience. Beyond unlocking items you can sell, the hats are cute. I want them to decorate the cat who sits at the bottom of my screen. As Marcel Zurawka, Irox Games’ managing director, told Polygon in an interview, “people like cats, people like cosmetics.”

“I get sent tons of screenshots of people customizing their cats to the things they are doing right now,” Zurawka said. “While the demo was running someone played a Construction Simulator with the construction helmet.” He continued: “Saw a lot of reviews of people who said ‘thought it’s like banana but it’s actually really nice’ which gives me hope in building something more meaningful.”

Zurawka said he was inspired by Banana and how the team was funding its game through the Steam marketplace. Cats were an obvious choice. Then someone else threw out using Bongo Cat. Bongo Cat is an internet icon created in 2018 that took off; it was created by a Twitter use named @StrayRogue, then edited to add bongos by another person called @DitzyFlama. There have been a ton of iterations on it since then. There are several claims to the Bongo Cat name that were issued before the internet meme, but Polygon was unable to locate any since.

“Complicated question, the law side of it especially internationally is super complex,” Zurawka said. “We discussed that internally a lot.” Zurawaka declined to comment further on copyright.

The other concern players have — not just with Bongo Cat, but with Banana and the like — is whether there could be some sort of scam element, akin to NFTs. Zurawka said that’s not the case. It’s just cats with hats. No one has to participate in the marketplace; it’s there if you want it, but easy to ignore if not. Regarding allegations that it’s a keylogger of some sort, Zurawka said he made sure the game did not require networking for “exactly this reason.”

“I also don’t obfuscate the code and everyone can just check it with a bit of coding knowledge,” he said. “The game tracks nothing and just counts the number up, that’s it. Modern antivirus btw would flag it in an instant if I would log or send the keys you type out. If anyone has still concerns I’m always open to answer any question regarding that.”

Bongo Cat stands out among the rest of idle clicker games — there’s a ton! — because it’s always on, able to sit on the screen without taking up too much space. While other idle clicker games have rushed to cash in on the craze, Bongo Cat goes a little bit further because it’s not just sitting in the background; you can see it tapping along with you. (When playing Banana, most people just keep it closed in the taskbar, for instance. You forget it’s there.) Zurawka said it can be used as a pomodoro timer of sorts, too: The treasures pop up every 30 minutes, so you can use that to stay on top of tasks.

“I think it was an explosive combination with a good idea (productivity tool/desktop companion), cute cats and item drops,” he added.