I honestly would have recommended this to anyone who was interested prior to today (1st of September, 2026). The game has undergone an update to dramatically change the UI and they have added a new system that I am not a fan of.
As of today, the devs have added a battle pass system (called the Paw Pass) with both a free lane and a paid lane. They state that both tiers earn Bongo Coins, which are used for purchasing rewards and can be used to purchase the paid tier of the pass. They are also stating that the rewards "do not expire" on either tier. These both sound good, but when you look a little deeper, they are not all of what they seem.
Both tiers of the pass earn 100 coins a month, and it either costs $4.99 or 500 coins to redeem the paid tier of the pass for a month. If you wanted to stay a f2p user, then every 5 months you would earn enough coins to purchase the paid tier for ONE MONTH. That is also assuming you do not use the coins to purchase any cosmetics or anything in the meantime. This is not sustainable to the free users as within a few months, you are so far behind on cosmetics that it does not matter if the things never expire, they are not even remotely all attainable for you anymore as a f2p user.
This Paw Pass is an additional thing added to the game, which already had built in FOMO in the form of the events, and already had a paid market for rare items. Injecting paid FOMO into a free game that already has free FOMO is simply not acceptable to me. Even accepting items on the free tier of the pass requires you to see the items you will not be getting because you are not paying for them.
You may say that you do not have to interact with this new system, and you are correct, you do not *have* to. But this game is about collecting things just as much as it is about hanging with friends or randoms, so you have to be willing to accept that there will be no hope of collecting everything without paying, where as previously there was a chance to. Sure, there were seasonal and event items you would not be able to get retroactively, but that was acceptable as it was. Adding more missable (and paid) items to that is sadly not the right way to move forward IMO.
I understand that this is a good revenue stream for the devs, and on spreadsheets this probably looks like a solid plan. Unfortunately, this system is not friendly to the users, nor does it respect their wallets. In a game that already does not respect the user's time, this is unnacceptable to me.
If the devs reverse this decision, I may come back, but maybe not. This is disrespectful to user's time and money, and is not a good sign for the future of Bongo Cat. In a world where everything is demanding you to open your wallet wider and pay more attention to it, it is sad to see a silly little typing companion game following suit.
Do not recommend to anyone currently.
