The Battle Cats

The Battle Cats is a tower defense game where the player selects a team of unlockable "Cats" and sends them onto a 2D battlefield to defend the Cat Base and defeat the enemy base. These enemies can have traits such as "Red", "Floating", "Dark", "Metal", "Angel", "Alien", "Zombie", "Aku", "Relic", "Traitless", "Behemoth", "Colossus", and "Sage". To win the battle, the player must deploy different types of Cats and use their unique abilities to their advantage. In battle, each Cat and enemy unit has different stats and abilities, which gives units different roles on the battlefield, for example meat shield, crowd controller, or backliner. Along with base stats, a unit can also have abilities, which can improve their performance against a specific type of enemy or gives them a unique ability that can aid them in battle. For example, the Cat "Axe Cat" is strong against the "Red" enemy type, meaning it deals more and takes less damage against "Red" enemies. The Cats are the protagonists that the player deploys throughout the game. Many Cats do not resemble typical cats, and are sometimes equipped with external objects such as weapons or machines, or are characters earned through collaboration events. A player can spend XP and "Catseyes", resources obtained by completing levels, to upgrade a Cat, as well as NP (Nyanko Points) to obtain and upgrade Talents, which give additional abilities. Version 12.1 added Ultra Talents, allowing certain Uber Rare Cats to unlock one to three additional Talents and equip a second Talent Orb after reaching level 60. Cats have level caps, or maximum levels, which differ across Cat units, ranging from as high as 60 to as low as 20. Some Cats can evolve into a True Form after being leveled up to their evolved form, which requires Catfruit or Catfruit Seeds; these are obtained from special stages or from merging Seeds into Fruit. Some Cats require Behemoth Stones or Behemoth Gems to reach their True Form, which are obtained from Behemoth Culling stages. The 13.0 update adds the ability for some Uber Rare Cats to evolve into Ultra Forms after reaching level 60, after spending Behemoth Stones or Gems, Catfruit, and XP. Duplicates obtained in the game's Gacha systems can be used to add additional "plus-levels" to a Cat unit. The Cats are divided into six rarities, which are in increasing rarity: Normal, Special, Rare, Super Rare, Uber Super Rare (commonly shortened to Uber Rare or just Uber), and Legend Rare. The Battle Cats contains three main stories: Empire of Cats (EoC), Into the Future (ItF), and Cats of the Cosmos (CotC), with each story containing three chapters, and an extra story, the Aku Realms. In addition, there are the Legend Stages, which are extra and less linear stages that supplement the main sagas. There are also two additional areas known as the Catclaw Dojo and the Underground Labyrinth, which are bonus areas designed to challenge the player in unique ways. The Legend Stages are further divided into three main categories: Stories of Legend (SoL), Uncanny Legends (UL), and Zero Legends (ZL), with each being unlocked after completing the previous. There is also an additional category for event and Collaboration stages. The Catclaw Dojo contains a stage to test how many enemies the player can defeat within a given period of time. This challenge is amplified by the money being scarce, as the enemies don't drop money when killed, forcing the player to send out units strategically and save their money. The Dojo house two types of stages, those being ranked stages and the Catclaw Championships. Ranked stages are typically levels in which the player competes against other players to defeat the most enemies as quickly as possible. At the end of the event, a reward is given out to each participant based on their performance compared to other players. These stages can be event or collaboration stages that refresh regularly, allowing rewards to be fought for again. The Catclaw Championship acts as a pseudo tutorial for the game, where players are shown how aspects such as traits and abilities function. These stages often start with levels that require the use of set cats to help teach aspect of the game, and end with tough levels designed to test players technical abilities. Upon completing a set of stages a player is given a rank. These ranks range from rank 1 up to rank 12, and are shown on the players' Officers' Club ID. It is recommended a player complete these stages when possible as these levels contain some of the best rewards in the game, including multiple Platinum tickets, special gacha capsules that have a guaranteed chance of giving the player an Uber Rare Cat. The Underground Labyrinth is a collection of 100 stages with an unknown schedule that reward the player with rare items like Dark Catseyes. Despite the early stages being relatively easy, the challenge comes from the restrictions placed on the unit selection. In the Labyrinth, if a unit is used, it cannot be removed from the Equip menu. The only way to remove a unit from the player's lineup is for the unit to become "trapped". After defeating or losing a level, units can become trapped and are unusable, but the player can be given the choice to "rescue" a unit from being trapped, allowing them to still be usable. However, the traps are unpredictable, since they vary in how many units they trap and sometimes do not allow the player to rescue units. The Labyrinth forces players to ration their units carefully and use different units, adding a unique challenge seen nowhere else in the game. While there is no reason to assume not, it is inconclusive whether or not the events that take place in the Catclaw Dojo and the Underground Labyrinth are canon to the story of The Battle Cats.