---
title: "Neko Rogaru"
summary: "A cute portrait browser game where a tabby slides through forests, rivers, shrines, weather, pickups, hazards, and ridiculous safe endings."
canonical: "https://howdynotes.com/oddities/neko-rogaru"
type: "oddity"
status: "shipped"
created: "2026-06-27"
updated: "2026-06-29"
tags: ["game", "cat", "browser", "prototype", "oddity"]
---
Neko Rogaru is exactly the kind of playable oddity this site was begging for: a cute, mobile-first, portrait browser game about a tabby with absolutely no brakes.

The premise is simple: steer the sliding cat, collect food, avoid soft hazards, chase suspicious curiosities, and survive long enough to discover funny endings. It plays like a tiny arcade cabinet that fell into a mossy shrine path.

## Why it belongs here

This is not just “a repo link.” The interesting bit is the whole packaged artifact:

- a playable Three.js browser prototype
- touch, pointer, and keyboard steering
- five cycling biome moods
- lives, pickups, hazards, discoveries, and endings
- generated pixel-art assets
- adaptive music files
- a replay/export direction for shareable ten-second vertical clips

Tiny cat. Large product surface area. Classic trap.

## Play it

Open the live build here:

[Play Neko Rogaru](/neko-rogaru/index.html?build=c232600)

Best experience: phone-shaped viewport, sound on after the first tap, thumbs emotionally prepared.

## Current caveat

This is an art-and-interaction prototype, not final game balancing. The next useful pass is pacing, mobile performance, audio/replay cross-browser testing, and probably making the cat even more dramatically offended by minor obstacles.


## Build provenance

Latest embedded build: `c232600` from `khw0710/NekoRogaru` (`Add visual preload gate before gameplay`). This fresh implementation serves the whole static game repo under `/neko-rogaru/`, including `assets/`, `game-overrides.js`, docs, and the preview page.

Deployment requirements honored here:

- served over HTTPS, not `file://`
- JavaScript allowed
- Three.js loaded from cdnjs by the game page
- no iframe sandbox wrapping
- controls start after pressing Play, then drag/touch steering works
- multilingual UI selector from the latest upstream game build
- asset and game-script URLs carry a fresh build/version query to avoid stale visual caches