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 tech.
• Your run keeps score in two bars: saved and killed. The district remembers both.
• There is no mercy button. Only your weapon and your aim.

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 — transforms into something armored and wrong. Hit the tower and the dome shrinks. Destroy it and the block comes back. Get sloppy and it takes the district.

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, the water and the landmarks stay where they are, so you learn each district the way you'd learn a real neighbourhood. Everything in between is rebuilt each time. Reach the checkpoint and that run becomes a permanent district on your city map, with its own corruption level and its own scars. Fall short, and it's gone.

Manage the city, not just the run

• Districts settle into Stable, Strained or Critical — and each one changes what "playing well" means.
• Push escalation and trigger a Surge: more towers, faster spread, a bigger payoff if you hold.
• Permanent scars: lose a district badly and some species never come back.
• Between runs, the Sanctuary fills with the animals you freed — and a memorial for the ones you didn't.

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

• More playable residents of the neighbourhood, each with their own way of fighting.
• More weapons, more animals, 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.