The world
A castle to wait in, a forest to fight in
Two places. One is a room full of other cats where nothing can hurt you. The other is three hundred and twenty metres of sunny woodland where quite a lot can.
The hub
The Castle
Warm sandstone walls, a cool grey flagstone floor, deep red banners and braziers that actually flicker. You arrive here, and so does everybody else — you can see them walk in.
Through the arch is the shop. Not a menu: a room, where every cat, hat, cape, pair of shades and weapon skin stands on its own plinth with its name and price floating above it. You browse it by walking up to things and looking at them.
There is a moat, and there is deliberately no bridge. Out in the arena, getting in means swimming.
The arena
The Forest
Permanently sunny, and big enough to get lost in. Around five hundred large climbable trees and nine hundred small ones, in three canopy species with a per-tree lean so no two look stamped from the same mould.
A river with bridges. Flowers, mushrooms and fallen logs on the floor. A castle across its moat on the skyline. And a mountain with a cave in it that holds the only Cat-Nine SMG in the match.
The pressure
Two dogs and a closing mist
Most battle royales shrink the map with a storm. KittyKlash does that too — but the thing you actually remember is the dogs.
They start bored
For the first stretch of a match they wander about ignoring everybody. Docile, then curious, then searching, then chasing, then biting — it escalates as the match runs on and as the field thins.
You can always outrun one
A chasing dog is deliberately held just slower than a sprinting cat. They exist to herd everybody together, not to execute you — losing to the scenery is the least satisfying way for a match to end.
The mist gives it a shape
It closes over about a hundred seconds: loot, then skirmish, then a showdown in a clearing. Without it, seventeen cats on a map this size simply never meet.
The healing
You heal by catching a mouse
There are no medkits. There are mice, which wander the forest floor and run away from you, and fish, which do the same thing in the river and the moat. Catch one and you get health back.
There used to be fourteen mice. A playtester said they were “running rampant”, and he was right — the map was more livestock than battle royale. There are six now.
