Kith, Like Us

Claws, venom, too many eyes. Swarm the Grid.

Reverse tower defense: lead the Kith against the turrets built to stop them.

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Kith, Like Us is a reverse tower defense game. You lead the Kith that swarm the maze: pick your beasts, spend your tickets, and break through automated turret lines to reach the hub. The editor that builds the official maps runs free in your browser, and a simulator shows you where any map kills you.

You are human. The Kith are not. The plan was simple. Send the automated terraforming fleet first to tame the planet, then dispatch the colonisation ship to a world already prepared.

The colonisation ship arrived first. Centuries early. The colonists survived the only way the planet allowed: bonding with the local fauna, generation by generation, on a world that had no place for them. By the time the terraforming fleet arrived, the colonists walked with the wild, and the wild walked with them. Its machines ran their protocol without hesitation: clear hostile wildlife, prepare for human habitation.

Both sides are human in origin. Neither knows it. You lead the Kith: claws, venom, and too many eyes. They are not pets. They are not cute. They follow you anyway. And every turret you take apart was sent here to save you.

How it plays

The gauntlet is the level, and you are the wave.

  • You don't build. You spend. A ticket budget ticks in on a steady beat, and every beast costs tickets to field, from a 1-ticket swarmer to a 4-ticket sapper. Run out with nothing alive and the run is over.
  • Take the vents. Every steam vent is a flag. Destroy the Grid hub powering it, raise a tendril gateway on it, and it pays you for as long as you hold it. Leave one neutral and the Grid takes it back.
  • Swarm. Don't march. Switch which team is on the field: the old one resorbs at no cost, the new one spawns next pulse. The Kith take priorities, not orders.
  • Get in, and get the hub. The central hub falling ends the encounter. Between you and it: walls, blast doors, keycards, and turrets that were never built to fight what you bring.

🛠️ The Workshop

Every encounter is a maze of turrets, walls and zones, and the tool the official maps are built with is free in your browser.

Draw the maze or auto-generate one. Place the turret line, the locked doors, the keycards, the caches. Then hit Simulate: a bot fights its way through your map and hands back a scrubbable replay, plus a diagnostic showing where the attack died and which entries it never touched. Tune it, re-simulate, and when it's right, download the JSON. The most-loved community encounters will inspire official content at release.

Maps authored in the editor: full turret lines, locked doors, alarm sweeps, the works.

An authored encounter map: six blast doors chained to a single keycard, with two levers wired to airlock pairs.
The Locksmith's Round: doors matter more than walls.
A dense authored map with sweep alarms, mementos and turret nests arranged in concentric rings around the central hub.
The Vigil: they are still watching a post that stopped answering.
A frontal turret line down a two-lane avenue, attack ranges shown as dotted circles.
The Boulevard: the Grid invites you in.

Open-format JSON. No account required to design.

Open the editor →