Pitch

What if you were a powerful robot commissioned by an insane AI thinking that to properly explore a world, you must first destroy everything in it?
Care to do some good exploration?
Good!

« Kritter » is a Cooperative Action Roguelite game that can be played by up to 4 players online. 

Fight against hordes of enemies, rebuild your ship piece by piece, explore a bizarre world, fight bosses, evolve, and unravel the truth death after death.

STORY

The « Mission Ark » spaceship has just crashed on a hostile planet. Damaged but not yet junk, M.Ark (the A.I of the ship) will use its last chance to defend himself against the enemies coming to wreck him for good. In a final effort, he manages to create a battle clone : A Kritter.

Weakened and unable to fight back, M.Ark puts all his hopes in this Kritter. It must protect the ship against hordes of enemies, gather materials to repair it and maybe even find a solution to get the hell out of here.

This Kritter, it’s you! A two-legged creature made of carbon, dirt, scrap metal… In short, everything that M.Ark could find. You are the last line of defense against a tragic end. And let’s face it: you’re not cut out for the job… Yet !

On your journey, you can count on M.Ark. 

M.Ark is no ordinary ship. Firstly, it’s a ship that speaks. A lot. Secondly, it’s equipped with a time convector capable of going back in time when things go wrong. It will be your home, your friend, and your armory throughout the adventure. The more you rebuild M.Ark, the stronger you will become. Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll be strong enough to get off this damn planet?

Influences

Kritter is at the crossroads between several games that have left their mark on us. Firstly, it’s a game that can be played cooperatively with  up to 4 players. We wanted the frantic feeling of games like Overcooked.  Defending M.Ark with multiple players promises to be a joyful mess.

 How  can you make a rogue-like game without mentioning Hades? We thought a  lot about this excellent game while developing the hack and slash combat mechanics, the deckbuilding aspect and the progression that unlocks as you die.

From a narrative point of view, we place great importance on voice acting and humor. In this sense, Portal 2 has also been a major inspiration.

In terms of gameplay, in Kritter we must defend M.Ark against repeated assaults of waves of monsters, impossible not to mention Hordes, They are Billions, and The Last Spell.

Finally, we will gradually have to repair our ship in order to be able to escape from this hell, which takes us directly back to our childhood, thinking about Pikmin.

FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE

In Kritter, you’ll have to protect M.Ark, your ship, at the risk of your life… And your life is fragile! You’ll face imposing waves of monsters and battle gigantic bosses. Let’s be honest : you are going to die. Many times.

Fortunately, M.Ark has a time converter that can rewind time and send you back just after the crash on that hostile planet. He’ll know how to use it when the situation seems hopeless… Allowing you to live this nightmare again, and again… and again! Yeeey! 

The good news is that the resources you find while fighting don’t disappear in the time leap. With them, you will be able to unlock many weapons, improve your skills, make M.Ark more resistant… Maybe at some point you’ll be strong enough to find a solution to end that deadly loop ?

ONLINE COOP

If you’re going to die in a loop… You might as well do it with  friends! Kritter is a game that can be played entirely solo but it has extra flavour when played in cooperation. You can choose your weapons and skills before each run to aim for the best possible synergies! 

In the team, it can be smart to  have one Kritter focused on close combat, another with long range attacks, another specialized in support skills… The strategic aspect of the  game takes on a whole new dimension when played with friends! Of course,  the monsters on this planet are not stupid and will adapt their  strength to the number of Kritters present in your team…

ReBUILD M.Ark AND EVOLVE

M.Ark is your ship, your safe space, your savior, and your friend. When the situation becomes desperate, M.Ark triggers a time leap to avoid a tragic end. Before each new attempt to escape, your Kritter finds itself INSIDE M.Ark. A place named « The POD »

A little time to catch your breath before going out to face, once again, the countless dangers of this planet.

This is your chance to inject some hard-earned power crystals into the heart of the machine to repair essential functions. A radar, a defensive turret, a shield, survival kits… The possibilities are numerous!

So… Yes. The goal will always be to go back out into the line of fire. But always a little better prepared.

Deckbuilding

Throughout your escape attempt, you will find things to help you. You  will find ways to upgrade your skills, boost your statistics, add effects to your weapons… You  may even find items to heal yourself if you’re lucky… It’s amazing  what you can find by searching the corpses of your enemies and defeating successive waves of monsters! 

Legend even says that you might loot construction materials to protect  M.Ark by building walls and other defenses to slow down the enemy invasion…

Unfortunately, all of these upgrades are not magical like the power crystals. The time jump will erase them between each attempt. Yes. Even if they sometimes are very very good. 

Explore AND GATHER

In Kritter, it’s better not to remain passive and wait for the next assault. That little time off between waves is the perfect opportunity to prepare for battle.

You can choose to explore the surroundings in search of valuable resources that can repair and upgrade your M.Ark ship. These will be crucial to avoid its destruction!

And you know… There’s more to life than just fighting! Exploration is also a great opportunity to bring back beautiful objects for yourself or for M.Ark.  A great warrior is a stylish warrior !

However, be careful not to wander too far. The monsters won’t wait for  you to finish your shopping before attempting to destroy M.Ark.

MAKE YOUR OWN Kritter

Each time you’re back in « The POD » (meaning every time you’re inside M.Ark), you can try out the cosmetic items you found during your exploration. This way, you can customize the appearance of your Kritter to make it truly unique and reflective of your tastes!

It seems that you can even find items to make the inside of M.Ark’s cockpit a little less gloomy. « The POD » clearly needs a makeover before being called « home sweet home! »

A STORY DRIVEN TALE

Beneath its frenzied action gameplay, the story of Kritter gradually reveals itself to be more tragic and profound than it seems. Soon enough, we will realize that the damage inflicted on M.Ark has also affected its memory. As we try to repair it, its memories will progressively return and the puzzle pieces will fall into place.

Each character in the game is voice-acted to enhance total immersion. The narrative is often funny, sometimes touching, and some other times frankly annoying because M.Ark is absolutely unable to shut up…!

MEET THE TEAM !

LJF Games is an army of two – two Frenchmen who have been creating video games for three years now. For a fun fact, LJF stands for « Les Joueurs Français » (meaning « The French Players »). These French players are Bastien and Tom.

Bastien is the brain of the group – the great mathematics guru. He writes his shopping list in C# and his cat is named Quaternion. Although he is primarily focused on the game’s code, he is a jack-of-all-trades who can oversee all aspects of the project.

Tom is the artist – the one who is never able to organize the assets into the right folders in Unity. But he is a professional musician, and his music is beautiful. He hasn’t limited himself to just music though; when you’re a two-man team…you need to be diverse. He also handles animations and some of the modeling.

Our first game, « Timo’s Adventures, » was released in 2021. It’s a 2D musical runner. Next, we went straight to working on Kritter : a 3D Rogue-Like game with online multiplayer…That escalated quickly ! Like any good professional, we started Kritter’s development by searching « How to make 3D? » on Google.

Two years and thousands of work hours later, we’ve answered some of these questions…but we still need your help with so many more!