2019-02-26 20:12:32 (edited by Dark 2019-02-26 20:44:04)

the game is a deceptively strategic one to say it has an amazingly cutesy atmosphere.
You begin as a kitten and can gather catnip. Gathering catnip lets you buy catnip fields to strat producing catnip for you, and also refine catnip into catnip wood with which you  build huts where Kittens will come and live. This is where things get complicated, because kittens need catnip to eat (no they don't do anything as nasty as eat mice), and if you run out of catnip they starve to death.

The complicated thing, is that the game has actual seasons, and while your catnip fields will produce %50 more in summer, they'll produce %75 less in winter, so you need to  plan carefully. ON the plus side, your  can have jobs assign to them such as woodcutter, and when you've build the library scholar. Scholars start getting you science with which you can research other sorts of jobs including hunter, farmer  and miner.

what is clever particularly is the way different things interact, for example your  earn cat power per tick, at 100 cat power  your hunters will go off to get luxury goods like firs and ivory, which will decrease over time, but will add to your cat's happiness thus increasing over all production, so a handy thing to do just before winter sets in.

Other mechanics in the game include seasons with different climates, and apparently trading and energy consumption but I've not got that far as yet.

One thing to bare in mind is that to get the description of the use of any building requires a mouseover.

I initially thought this was unreadable hence why I posted a topic in general game discussion, but  I admit I was wrong about this, once I reset my NvdA settings and maximised the page I could read the mouseovers by using NvdA Numbpad divide, and then reading the top of the screen, this shows production costs, and all sorts of other useful info, as well as some funny quotes about cats, so is highly worth reading for flavour text if nothing else.

There is also an Ios version which I've tried (it was only two quid. On the plus side there are no mouseovers, as well as having generally more helpful text, however on the down side, it seems %100 impossible in the Ios version to actually assign workers.

its actually mildly frustrating, everything in the Ios version is text, but no matter how I try clicking on the link to assign jobs, they just don't work.

the Ios version can be found on the ap store under kittens game, the web version can be found here

I've dropped the developer  email explaining the issue, and hopefully they'll get back to me about it.

Actually it'd be really cool to have this accessible on Ios.

I'd highly recommend the browser version, now I've worked out the mouseover thing its a lot of fun with some quirky and amusing text,  as well as compelling gameplay, particularly since there are lots of different tools, upgrades, and other things to work on, plus of course you always have to balance your production out properly.

I also gather from the wiki that there are extra challenges once you've reset the game, which is a pretty cool idea to keep things interesting.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-02-27 05:12:43

This sounds way too adorable... I'm looking.

"You know nothing of death... allow me to teach you!" Dreadlich Tamsin
Download the latest version of my Bokura no Daibouken 3 guide here.

2019-02-27 08:17:10

What is odd is that despite the atmosphere being pretty cute,, (I just found my first unicorn), the strategy certainly is not.
I mistakenly clicked a button to convert all my catnip to wood in one go, and because it was winter all my kittens starved in seconds.

Luckily that didn't spell game over, but it shows just how harsh the game can be.

Also  resource producing is interesting  in terms of how different things interact, since your often better concentrating all your cats on one job as workers, rather than trying to just make an even spread of production and go with it.

The game also has a really interesting offline mechanic, since while production stats don't increase while your offline (well with the changes in climate that'd be a pain), you accumulate time flux, which are ticks where you get 5x resources in one go, meaning everything can be produced faster.

I'm interested to see how complex this thing gets.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-02-27 09:11:59

oh dear, so, the next clicker game? Why does everyone is in a craze about these currently.

Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2019-02-27 10:17:42

@Simba, it depends upon the game.

Something like Swarm sim or invisible dragons is pretty dull since its just click and increase, then watch timers go up.
With games like space company civ clicker and shark game however, your talking real strategy, need to watch production over time, prepare what your doing and make decisions.

that's very much the case  here, indeed while you begin by just clicking stuff, from the second your first kittens are created, its a matter of preparation and survival and careful planning, and as I said it can get pretty brutal if you make a mistake.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-02-27 17:33:54 (edited by david_solomon1 2019-02-27 17:35:18)

I haven't played with this one much, but from what I've read Swarm Sim gets more complex than this in the endgame. Over at the idle games reddit it constantly comes up as one of the best idle games of all time, so while the atmosphere might be disgusting rather than cute it could be worth another look.
I personally haven't played much with either because they don't interact well in safari and I have no regular access to a PC to play games on.

2019-02-27 17:58:46

Its not the atmosphere with Swarmsim that bothered me, just that basically the game is all based on simple increases. There are only four or five resources which go up exponentially, and no need to alter  according to different conditions or fulfilling different goals, you just essentially wait, get an upgrade or two, make a new unit and then wait some more, while the numbers get increasingly stupider. I have heard allocation of ascention bonuses can get complex, but the game just didn't have enough new to see to keep my interest even over one ascension, particularly when some units just started to get morphed into version ii forms.

I'll also admit though I am less keen on those incremental games where the numbers get ridiculously high,  I rather lose touch when they get to the trillions and quadrillions and such, I also tend to prefer those games with a constant need to strategise, plan and react to circumstnaces like kittens game anyway, though I do intend to give Swarmsim a db page as it is very accessible.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-02-27 21:20:57 (edited by keithwipf1 2019-02-27 21:21:27)

I've been playing with this, and went fine enough until I ran out of food and well, one sad little fluffy bundle... sad

Anyway, I think if you visit this link link, you can download a zip file and play this offline.
Edit: Unzip it, and open index.html

2019-02-27 22:24:40

Remember that there is a pause link in the log.
You should always take note of the season, and when it hits winter check you don't have a negative amount of catnip per tick.

to begin with, you will need about 40 or 50 catnip fields at the start to support two kittens, the sooner you can build the library, research agriculture and recruit farmers the better. After that point, always check your catnip supply in winter and if it goes negative, reassign your kittens as farmers AS SOON AS YOU CAN.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-02-28 07:31:44

Dark,
How many fields would you recommend per kitten?
I have 55, and six kittens, and I'm still going into the negative numbers during winter. Luckily, I have a lot of storage, so it doesn't affect them, but it did make me wonder if there is a kittnes to catnip fields ratio.

2019-02-28 10:17:48

As a baseline I believe each catnip field produces 0.125  catnip per tick, and each kitten consumes four catnip, which is why you need over 40 fields for just the two of them, however its not quite as simple as that, because as soon as you research Calendar you can start to make pastures which reduce catnip consumption, and whe you research agriculture assign kittens as farmers which gives a massive increase.

With no bonuses, 6 kittens is waaaay too many for 55 fields, especially when you start  to hit colder seasons

What I've been tending to do is recruit kittens when my production looks to be high, then shuffle them around according to the weather, indeed I'd recommend pausing the game when you get to the end of autumn and start of winter to check your not going negative.

Bare in mind Kittens game isn't one of those incremental games where you have a population in the hundreds of thousands.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-02-01 19:09:43

Does anyone know where the mouseovers show up in the new version I can't find them anywhere

Who am I? Simply me!

2021-02-01 20:12:23

A quick poke around suggests the mouseovrs show up under the log, just above the link for redit, with the amount of resources shown.
this could actually be slightly more convenient, since you can hit the "pause" next to the log while you check mouseover things, and can also find the text by going to the redit link and going up from there, but I'll need to play a bit longer to see for sure.

It'd be nice if it was a little less clunky though, since a combination of the mouseovers and some of the more complex mechanics like your kittens actually gaining individual skills and experience is why I didn't pursue this one as far as I might have done otherwise, that and the fact that the developer went dead silent after initial responses about accessibility.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-02-06 15:43:28

So I tried this game ages ago and gave up on it after I found out about the mouseovers. Now they seem more accessible, which is great! I like being able to read things and know how much stuff I need.

However, I have eight kittens in my little village, and even when they're all farming, getting enough catnip for more than 60 fields or so is taking absolutely forever, especially since I have to move the kittens around to make wood for barns, mine things, get science for upgrades, etc... I'm in Year 10 and things are still crawling.

2021-02-06 17:24:26

As I remember, it's all about research, research, research, since a lot of the early research projects have to do with increasing the yield from catnip fields, and once you get to things like irrigation, food becomes far less of a problem and you can concentrate on other projects.

Also, make sure to send out hunters when you can, since luxury goods raise happiness, and happiness increases productivity.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-02-07 10:51:00 (edited by The Imaginatrix 2021-02-07 10:52:22)

Well, I've now researched everything up to Writing, but that requires Culture, and I can't get any Culture yet. I can't even buy any buildings that could get me some culture (I checked the wiki, so I know what I have to unlock, but they're just not available to buy yet). What am I missing? Do I have to focus on mining now? I have Unicorns so hunting is slightly less of a priority...

A lot of this is taking ages. sad

2021-02-07 13:20:07

Culture is hard to get, you get it from amphitheatres I think, btw check out This walkthru, for several handy details on certain resources.


I probably need to give the game a try myself if mouseovers are a bit more friendly now, since previously it was the complexity of the interface, with various tabs, crafting options and such, combined with the complexity of the game that put me off, but I do gather there is a lot to do in this one, especially when you get tto remorting.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-02-10 17:33:16

There is actually offline progress! You can turn it on and off in the Options dropdown screen, and although I would recommend you have things set up so your catnip won't run out (I have eight barns and ten kittens farming, so catnip isn't a problem for me and my 29-kitten village), you can have stuff accumulate while you're offline. Learned this from the Discord! big_smile