Kritter: Defend Together drops you onto an unknown planet as a small defense robot with one job: keep your crashed spaceship alive long enough to get off this rock. Between waves of hostile creatures, you explore the surrounding terrain for minerals and artifacts, build fortifications around the hull, and grow steadily more dangerous across repeated runs. It sits in the gap between tower defense and action roguelite, borrowing from both without fully committing to either.
The core rhythm splits into two phases. During exploration, you venture out on a timer to scavenge resources, stumbling into arena fights, enemy patrols that drop gold, and bases hiding upgrade chests. When the timer expires you rush back to the ship to face incoming waves, deploying the ramparts, turrets, and traps you've crafted from gathered materials. Waves escalate in both number and strength, eventually throwing mini-bosses into the mix, so distributing your attention across multiple fronts matters as much as raw combat ability. Between waves you pick from varied rewards that can dramatically shift your power level, and a merchant offers upgrades for coin. Four distinct Kritter models shape how you approach all of this. The Defender is a melee specialist built to wade into crowds with a sword. The Engineer runs a flamethrower and deployable turret for area coverage. The Tracker works at range with explosives, mines, and precision shots. The Ninja trades durability for speed, dashing through enemies and throwing kunais from a distance, with more models planned.
What keeps the loop from going stale is the time reversal system. When the ship takes too much damage, it rewinds to the beginning, but you carry forward your memories and your most important resources. Temporary upgrades earned during a run vanish, but permanent improvements to both the ship and your Kritters persist across attempts, making each cycle feel meaningfully stronger than the last. The split between temporary and permanent progression gives every run a double purpose: survive as long as you can while also banking the materials that will make the next attempt more viable.
The whole thing is framed through M.ark, the ship itself, a self-aware vessel with a personality somewhere between exasperated drill sergeant and unreliable narrator. M.ark claims the crash was definitely not caused by consuming ethanol-kerosene, briefs you with theatrical impatience, and reads aloud from a Survival Manual that offers its "most sincere condolences" and promises to report your loss to your families. The tone is light and self-deprecating, treating the apocalyptic scenario as an inconvenience narrated by a machine with more ego than common sense. Your Kritters, described as looking like "a bunch of goofballs," are disposable defense robots built inside M.ark's own systems, giving the time reversal mechanic a narrative reason to exist rather than just a mechanical one.
Up to four players can tackle this together through online or local split-screen co-op, with cross-platform multiplayer support.