I Hate Cuteness

The collars were supposed to be a gift.

Someone found an element nobody could explain, and the first thing it was good for was letting animals talk. Put it in a collar and a cat could say "hungry". A dog could say "home". Within a few years, most of the animals in the world were wearing one — as long as they were in range of a tower.
Pae has run the same noodle shop on the ground floor of the same Bangkok apartment block for thirty years. The strays at his door have said "hungry" every morning for the last five. Tonight the tower at the end of the soi is humming a different note, the collars are glowing, and the cat that just bit his regular's cat is not a cat anymore.
Nobody knows what's happening. Pae picks up the ladle.

Save them, or stop them

Almost every animal in the city is wearing a collar. Out of a tower's range, they're just cute. Inside it, they turn — and once they turn, there's no going back.
Break the collar before the corruption finishes and the animal walks free. The hitbox is small. Your swing is not.

Overkill, and you destroy the animal along with the collar.

Two counters at the top of the screen: SAVED and KILLED. The district remembers both.

Soft Heart, then SHOO!
Pae doesn't want to hurt anything. Soft Heart fills as you fight; spend it on SHOO! — one swing that knocks the whole horde back without hurting a single one of them. That's your window to reach the ones that haven't turned yet.

Towers change the world

The towers were built to carry the signal. Now each one projects a dome of corruption that keeps growing if you ignore it. Everything inside — buildings, streets, animals — turns into something armored and wrong, and the edge of the field burns so you always know which side of it you're standing on. Drain the core and bring it down, and the field drops with it. The ones that already turned are still standing there.

Dinner is a stat
Saving animals and breaking towers earns blue shards. The street-food carts outside Pae's shop take blue shards. Moo ping makes you hit harder. No saves, no dinner.

The same neighbourhood, never the same streets

Shophouse rows, noodle stalls, parks and side streets — the district is generated from a city map every run. The main roads and the water stay where they are, so you learn each district the way you'd learn a real neighbourhood. Everything in between is rebuilt each time.

Made by two brothers, one city at a time

We're a two-person studio from Thailand, working between Canada and Bangkok. Bangkok is district one because it's home. The districts after it will come from other countries we've lived and worked in — not copied, but reinterpreted through our own eyes and our own art style.

On the road to 1.0
Two more residents to play — a high-school student who'd rather stop a cat than hurt it, and an office worker who looks at a collar and sees hardware. Each one fights their own way.

More weapons — and two carried at once, with combos that cross from one to the other.

Deeper combos and more skills — longer chains, upgrades, and more moves like SHOO! for when you'd rather not hurt anyone.

A city map where every run you finish becomes a permanent district, with its own corruption level and its own scars.

Districts that settle into Stable, Strained or Critical, and Surges you trigger on purpose for a bigger payoff if you hold.

The Sanctuary — where the animals you freed end up, and a memorial for the ones you didn't.

More animals and more tower behaviours.

Planned after launch
Co-op defence — hold a district with a friend.

New cities as new districts, each with its own wildlife and tower behaviour.

Seasonal surges and community stabilization events.