Kittey Defense An exquisite game of strategy and wits in which you must defend yonder castle from a veritable onslaught of kitte

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Kittey Defense
An exquisite game of strategy and wits in which you must defend yonder castle from a veritable onslaught of kitteys.

Author: 
sylvie
Made For: 
An event

Comments

Excellent Puzzle

Had a lot of fun figuring this one out. The "Limit" trait is surprisingly powerful.

(Potential spoiler hidden with ROT13)
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Kate B's picture

I love this. It reminds me a

I love this. It reminds me a lot of the old tower defence games we used to play on break in school. (that's a high compliment) It's also addictive.

It took me a few tries to try and figure out what was going on, like unravelling its mysteries.... I didn't realise I couldn't control my character, only up their stats. On my first few playthroughs I upgraded mostly fire rate and speed, but I ended up hitting limit all the time and couldn't figure out why I was firing so slowly.

As I got going I started to upgrade limit about twice straight out the gate. Then number. That got me further.

Then it was, get limit to about 2 or 3, speed to about 2 or 3, then just mash num for a while to just make the screen chaotic.

I lasted til about wave 8 before my castle succumbed. I eventually started to spend all my money on heals and by then you know it's all over.

I tried a balanced build most of the time and I think it might actually be better to specialise in two attributes than try and upgrade everything. Further attempts are all but guaranteed.

this has all the joys of something that deserves to be a small gaming sensation among people looking to fill their breaktimes.. the joy of watching numbers go up, and making the screen fill up with bubbles. Yes!!

Kate B's picture

Did it!

Did it!

Yay! Thanks for the nice and

Yay! Thanks for the nice and detailed comment about your playing experience.

everythingstaken's picture

Dang and also wowza

I keep playing this every so often since it's come out for like a long stretch of time each while listening to political debates on youtube. This is a good game for that sort of a thing. I like trying to find the optimal skill tree, as it were, of this game. I like how minimal the mechanics are and how you could apply these sorts of stats to a lot of styles of things. I at first was irritated that it felt like you had to click something as soon as it popped up, but I also like how it is, especially later in the game where you get upgrades more frequently and may not want to immediately upgrade constantly. I also really enjoy the difficulty ramp in this. There is sort of a 'it gets easier as it goes on' and 'your early decisions matter more than the later ones' and it puts sort of like a relaxing zen vibe over the last level and such if you've done pretty well. I also like that you want to make it so the cats just barely touch the tower at that last level, it feels super good just seeing them just touch it.

V good game, my high score was 980-something. I'll try to get over 1000 soon!

Thanks! It's nice to hear

Thanks! It's nice to hear that you've been playing it a lot :-)

everythingstaken's picture

!!!!

1125 Money! Heck Yeah!

That is my current record as

That is my current record as well! I've been trying to beat it to no avail. I found a pretty good strategy for most of the game but I always lose in the final wave....

everythingstaken's picture

Hmm

I wonder if you are doing something different than I am. One way I pace myself is to see how much the next upgrade should cost. I think at that score it was 40 something. Low 40s is pretty risky for the end but closer to 50 and you won't make enough money.

Yeah, I do that too - I

Yeah, I do that too - I think the cost number for 1125 is 46. I haven't won with 45 yet.

spiral's picture

This is such an interesting

This is such an interesting puzzle! I won the game on my third attempt, but the "better ending with more than 1000 money" was a challenge I couldn't ignore! I had to get a lot better at it though- everythingstaken's comments on how the beginning choices matter the most drove my approach.

If I understand the math correctly, a value of 2 for a stat doubles the effect, a value of 3 is a 50% increase, etc- a sort of multiplier on the base value, rather than a fixed, incremental rate of gain. As such, getting each value to 2 is imo the most important beginning. But, which order to pick things in?

Obviously, picking Rate first off is terrible. Whenever you cannot fire because the limit is reached (which I thinking of as "waiting time"), the game is telling you "your build is not effective!". Speed and Limit are appealing choices, because they effectively, immediately halve the waiting time. Number is also an interesting first choice, counter-intuitively:

At first I thought that Limit meant that whenever you fired bubbles, the number that would be fired would be capped by it. ie. if there are 3 bubbles on screen, Limit is 4, and Number is 2, what I expected is one bubble would be fired. However, it's not so- 2 bubbles are fired, but I cannot fire again until there are 4 or fewer bubbles on the screen! So the relation Number and Limit have wrt the waiting time is very interesting!

So it seems that an optimal first path could be something like Speed, Number, Limit, Limit, Rate. However, there is one more significant detail on Number that makes it the most important stat to think about. Number directly corresponds to your income per bubble launch. to get the next upgrade, it will take (upgrade cost - current money)/Number rounded up launches. the more launches it takes to get an upgrade, the slower your rate of improvement will be, which will quickly become disastrous!

with all of this in mind, and after a handful of attempts, I came upon this general approach (barring the first ~6 upgrades, which I don't have an optimal order for yet):
1) if the waiting time is ever more than a few frames, increase Speed
2) Limit should always be 1 higher than Number, so that two launches can be done in rapid succession
3) Number needs to increase a lot early on, to keep up a high rate of income
4) if there is consistently _no_ waiting time, increase Rate
5) never, ever, heal. it's a waste of money, and if you need to do it, it means your build order was not optimal

I found that I could sit comfortably on a Rate of 6 (which is a bit overkill, but I lost with 5 once!), Speed of ~18-20, Number 10, Limit 11. I deliberately sat on my money so that I would just barely get over 1000 at the end, which is enough of a goal for me :)

Danni's picture

Eventually got my first win

Eventually got my first win with rate 4, speed 24, number 18, limit 5, and... 18 heals. I made a couple unnecessary heals at the end and ended up with just 15 monies. I'll have to try this some more and see if I can get a more optimal outcome.

My opening move tends to be limit then speed, then number shortly after. I initially tried an approach where I mainly focused on increasing number, so that more would fire at once and I'd get more money quickly, but I'd usually get overwhelmed and lose around round 8-12. Then I tried increasing speed along with number to increase the number of volleys, since speed makes the bubbles leave the screen more quickly. I increased rate a bit as needed. Limit I decided to keep relatively low, but still more than 2 or 3, since I only needed "just enough" bubbles to leave the screen before being able to fire again, but more bubbles means more potentially lingering ones, so I did have to scale this one a bit. This let me win the game but I might tinker with the strategy some more.