Game Introduction:

"Attogato" is an RPG Tower Defense Anime Simulation game.In the game, players play the role of a witch who can enter other people's inner world. During the day, she runs her own coffee shop (coffee-making simulation), meeting a variety of customers. At night, she enters their inner world to break the demon's tricks (reverse tower defense gameplay).

As introduced in the game description, the core mechanics of the game are divided into three points:

1. Reverse tower defense level design and gameplay mechanics combined with a card system

2. Daily gameplay of coffee-making simulation

3. Anime-style character development elements

Since it's a reverse tower defense gameplay combined with a card system, its game mechanics naturally oppose the general tower defense mode. In a typical tower defense game, players set up towers and other scene facilities to resist enemy attacks. However, in the reverse tower defense design, the player is the one attacking, which is consistent with the game's setting of invading others' minds. Players need to destroy local towers and other facilities on the map while reasonably planning the attack route, rather than just changing the route to evade the tower's attacks.

Incorporating a card system into the reverse tower defense mode has also enhanced the strategic depth of the game. Players can use character cards to arrange the composition of their current lineup and attack methods rationally. The characters and cards in the game correspond to a variety of professions, which diversifies the combat mode.

Game Analysis:

Innovative design in the reverse tower defense mechanic

• Real-time route planning system allows players to control the pace of the level

In "Attogato," the reverse tower defense elements are not just a simple reversal of the traditional tower defense model. The game introduces a real-time route planning system while having the player as the invading attacker. Players can freely navigate through the tower defense and use the advantage of route planning for precise strikes against enemies.

In general tower defense games, invaders often are not directly controlled by the player (they automatically walk according to the set route, and attack automatically according to the fixed CD), but will continue along the preset invasion route. In "Attogato," players can change the direction of the yellow tiles to alter the route of the protagonist group. This setup successfully avoids the problem of single invasion routes and poor control in tower defense games. Players can even set two opposing direction route tiles (yellow in the picture), allowing the protagonist group to pace back and forth within an area for adjustment and breathing, further optimizing the game's battle rhythm.

The reverse tower defense design (route planning) in "Attogato" does not encourage players to evade enemy towers blindly and find the optimal route to sneak into the enemy base (like the enemy's goal in "Arknights" and "Carrot Fantasy," where safely reaching the opponent's base means victory). Instead, it hopes that players will confront local towers directly in a reverse tower defense invasion style, shifting the game's core goal from sneaking to confrontation. Characters in the protagonist group are equivalent to our moving towers, automatically striking local towers within range at a fixed CD. Most of the game's pass and challenge objectives also require players to eliminate corresponding enemies, not just sneak past them.

• The card and profession systems enhance the strategic depth of the game

In the game "Attogato," the player's protagonist group is not all present at the start, but players can place them in the midst of battle using cards. Each card corresponds to a character of a different profession, and players can choose the appropriate spacetime point to place it during the invasion. The specific timing and location of placement depend on the player's strategic judgment. For example, when the squad passes through areas with more enemy towers, players can play character cards from the tank profession to withstand large-area damage. Or, in places with fewer enemy towers, they can play character cards from the healer profession to recover health and adjust their state.

The introduction of the card system not only adds more randomness to the game but also enhances the strategic test for players. Players need to constantly optimize their protagonist group lineup based on the game's progress to cope with the repeated attacks from local towers.

Since the card system involves a profession system, there must inevitably be some strength structures within different professions. As the difficulty of the levels increases, the abilities of the characters in the player's hand must also be further enhanced to deal with stronger enemies.

The game has designed five professions with significant functional differences, corresponding to the five output methods of tank, healing, operation, physical attack, and magical attack. The diversity of professions brings more level playability and strategic depth to "Attogato," and also broadens the scope of game clearance strategies. It's not that every level has the only optimal solution, which would deprive players of the fun of replaying levels.

• Outstanding enemy and BOSS battle design enhances game playability

In addition to the highly strategic and diverse character lineup and mechanic design in the game, the enemy design in the game is also outstanding. The enemies in the game have various attack methods. Not only are there enemies that strike precisely with a fixed CD as players do, but there are also enemies with area-of-effect (AOE) attacks, and even monsters that can charm (turn) characters.

How to defeat these monsters one by one through route planning and card profession construction is the core goal of the game. Players often need to arrange the route and lineup of the protagonist group reasonably to defeat different types of attacking enemies with the least loss. This diverse enemy design and the combination of the above two mechanisms have greatly enhanced the game's playability.

In addition, the game not only designs a variety of enemies to enrich the player's gaming experience, but also sets a reverse tower defense style BOSS battle at the end of each series of levels. The BOSS in the level possesses all kinds of attack methods of the enemies in this series of levels, and players can save their companions in the game by using all the skills and characters they have learned before to fight against it. This design not only enhances the confrontation concept in the game's reverse tower defense design but also further tests the player's strategic thinking and game understanding through the BOSS battle.

Player Research:

• Caters to players' demand for a satisfying experience in reverse tower defense games

The core reason for the innovative reverse tower defense design in "Attogato" is that the previous reverse tower defense mode lacked excitement. Many players enjoy playing tower defense games because they offer a high level of strategic depth while allowing players to experience the joy of continuously defeating monsters with their own constructed towers, eliminating enemies in a unilateral confrontation.

However, applying the original enemy settings to the player would have the opposite effect, as AI enemies in tower defense games have a low desire to attack. They are more focused on evading our towers to sneak into the base, rather than confronting our towers as the attacker.

There are many reverse tower defense games, not only "Attogato," and "Attogato" is not the pioneer of reverse tower defense game mechanics. However, most of these games have not made corresponding innovations; instead, they have players continuously improve their characters' defense capabilities and follow predetermined route planning to pass (pass ≠ eliminate) levels with enemy towers. They do not emphasize optimizing our lineup and setting combat strength to confront enemy towers head-on, as "Attogato" does.

"Attogato" compensates for the lack of excitement in the previous reverse tower defense mechanics with innovative designs such as real-time route planning and the card profession system, while also ensuring the strategic depth and playability for the player.

• Responds to players' expectations for reverse gameplay mechanics

Reverse gameplay has always been an important aspect of game innovation, whether it's the reverse mode of game mechanics like tower defense, or the reverse switch between the protagonist and antagonist settings in traditional games. There are countless games on the market that employ such reverse gameplay, but if the settings and gameplay are simply reversed without innovation, it's easy for the game to underperform. This is because the original gameplay and settings of these games are primarily focused on the player experience. Pure reverse gameplay may seem fresh to players at first, but it does not have long-term playability.

The recently released game "Dashpong" is a good example. The game changes the original pinball combat mode (both sides control platforms to hit pinballs) into a mode where players control the pinball to hit platforms that appear in the game. This setting undoubtedly completely reverses the previous pinball mode, but the manufacturer did not make more innovations to adapt to the current players' gaming preferences. As a result, although the game looks very novel and interesting, it loses interest in continuing to play after a period of time, which ultimately leads to the game's failure at launch.

However, there are still a large number of players, especially those who like gameplay innovation, who are looking forward to the novel experience and fun brought by reverse gameplay. The success of "Attogato" is precisely because of its mechanism design for reverse gameplay. While ensuring a high-quality game experience and excitement, it also caters to the needs of a broad range of players on the market for game innovation.

Design Analysis:

• The numerical design in the game is overly biased

Due to the game's emphasis on confronting the enemy, a large number of enemy and card character strength constructions have been set up within the game. This has led to the game becoming somewhat of a numbers game to a certain extent, as the actual gameplay does not involve direct player control, but rather the game characters automatically attack along a path planned in real-time. While this mode increases the strategic requirements for players, just like in traditional tower defense games, numerical values play a very important role in the game's offensive and defensive experience, which is an intrinsic characteristic of this type of game.

However, "Attogato" clearly did not do a good job in balancing the bias in numerical values, as the game's intense confrontations have resulted in the superiority of attack attribute values far exceeding that of other characteristic values. Often, to pass levels, the game forces players to stack the character's attack values, neglecting the construction of other attribute styles. This has led to the game shifting from a diverse card character build to a unidirectional, single-style character build, significantly reducing the game's playability and diverse experience.

Improving this aspect is quite straightforward. First, identify the corresponding value and style issues through playtesting. What follows is the continuous optimization of the game's numerical system, where a balance needs to be found between the player experience, level pressure (enemy interaction), and style strength. All of these require ongoing testing to pinpoint issues for accurate adjustments, thereby allowing players to find a balance between the diversity of styles and level difficulty, achieving a state of flow in gameplay.

• The reverse tower defense mechanics in the game are relatively complex and the guidance is too weak

After experiencing "Attogato," the most common feedback from players pertained to issues with the game mechanics and system priority within levels. This is because the game has made many innovations on the basis of reverse tower defense, and the card profession system brings great selectivity to the game levels. This can be overwhelming for many new players, leading to a series of questions such as enemy targeting priority, path planning and route choices, as well as detailed explanations of specific game mechanics.

Since many settings and mechanics in the game are interrelated, and players do not fully understand the synergy between different mechanics at the beginning of the game, coupled with the fact that this type of reverse tower defense game is not directly controlled by the player, players often encounter bewildering situations. For example, questions like "Why can that monster hit me?", "Why do monsters target my more vulnerable characters instead of the 'tank'?", and "Why is this route chosen this way?" arise.

Of course, a significant reason for this is that the game is still in the testing phase, so the introduction of mechanics is not yet comprehensive, lacking the corresponding guidance content. At the same time, there is no clear visualization window for enemy targeting priorities and character movement priorities, which is one of the reasons why many players find the game puzzling.

Therefore, there are mainly two ways to optimize this issue. Firstly, in terms of guidance, instead of simply increasing the variety and difficulty of enemies, it would be better to design more beginner levels in the early stage to guide players through learning and utilizing the game mechanics. "Attogato" has many innovative points in reverse tower defense that require some time to learn and get used to.

Secondly, regarding priority issues, it would be best to set up a priority visualization window at the bottom left or bottom right of the game screen. This can significantly reduce the confusion for players. Since the priorities would be displayed in the window, if there are special circumstances that cause a change in priority, players would be able to know immediately.

Summary & Outlooks:

• Innovative design of reverse gameplay

As previously stated, the most successful aspect of "Attogato" is not its reverse gameplay design per se, but how it innovates on this concept by taking into account the current playing habits and preferences of gamers. The reverse gameplay mechanics provide a more novel gaming experience, and innovations based on these mechanics offer higher playability while aligning with the habits of today's gamers.

The same logic applies to hardcore games. Both game settings and gameplay mechanics can be reversed. This means putting players in the roles of enemies or opposing characters from previous games, allowing them to play from their perspectives, which often brings an entirely new gaming experience. However, it is crucial to cater to the playing preferences and habits of the majority of players in reverse gameplay, as pure reverse gameplay may not align with the demands of most mainstream gamers. Developers need to innovate and improve upon the original reverse gameplay based on the preferences of mainstream gamers to balance the freshness and playability of the game, thus creating the next big hit.

Let me give a specific example to illustrate this point. If one were to design a game based on reverse shooting gameplay (which actually originates from a game project I worked on previously), unlike traditional firearm shooting games, the guns in this game would have extremely powerful recoil, but the bullets fired would have minimal impact and follow erratic trajectories. If players were to shoot directly, not only would the bullets fail to damage the enemy, but the recoil would also cause the player to lose health. Thus, the core gameplay encourages players to reverse their guns after picking them up, by pressing a reversal key to aim the gun at themselves and fire. While the player takes minimal bullet damage, the significant recoil propels the gun itself at high speed, using the impact of the gun to damage opponents—this is the principle of reverse shooting in the game.

However, this forced setting might feel too contrived, as if reversing for the sake of reversing. Therefore, we made changes and innovations to the reverse shooting concept to suit today's players. We combined the game with the current multiplayer party game mode, defining the main gameplay as multiplayer on the same screen rather than PvE. Since the firearms in the game are used as projectiles, players are not initially equipped with guns. Instead, firearms are randomly refreshed in the air and fall onto the field, so competing for guns becomes the first party-style fun in the game.

After obtaining a firearm, how to attack becomes the second element of fun. We specifically set up a reversal key that allows players to reverse their guns at the push of a button, deciding for themselves whether to shoot in reverse rather than being forced by the game. This setup may seem pointless, but it actually enhances the interaction and suspicion among players offline. Players can intimidate opponents by constantly reversing their guns, and they may even get so excited about picking up a gun that they forget to reverse it before shooting, resulting in self-injury, which significantly enhances the game's joyfulness and unpredictability.