Red dot duty
How to play Red dot duty
A cat is asleep on the rug in a living room seen from above, and you are the red dot. Your job is to wear it out until it goes back to sleep. Move your mouse over the room or keep a finger on the screen and the dot follows; leave the room or lift your finger and it switches off. Arrow keys move it too and Space turns it off and on, and with a mouse a right-click does the same. The moment the dot moves, the cat wakes up and locks on. A slow dot gets stalked, low and careful. A dot that stops gets a bottom wiggle and a pounce. A fast dot gets chased flat out, and a sharp turn on the floorboards ends in a skid. Put the dot on the sofa and the cat scrambles up after it, run it up a wall and the cat stands up to leap at it. A bar under every cat shows how much energy it has left. Running drains it a little, a pounce more and a pounce that lands on the dot the most, so the best players hand out a catch now and then. A cat that keeps missing gets fed up, and one left with a still dot or no dot at all sulks off for a wash and gets its energy back. Every shift has a card with three tricks, like a wall leap, a catch on the sofa, a catch right after a skid or two cats pouncing at once, and each trick takes a big chunk out of the cat. When the bar is empty the cat flops down, walks off to bed and sleeps for good: a big basket in the corner with room for a pile of cats, a cat house where all you see is the snoring, or the sofa for the bigger cats. The daily minute gives everyone the same cat, room and tricks, and the score is how fast you got it to sleep, or how tired it was when the minute ran out. Free play has no timer and no score: pick up to four of your cats and a room, and play as long as you like with treats, a mouse and yarn that never run out. Try a kitten that is faster but aims terribly, a heavyweight who commits to exactly one pounce and then needs a lie down, or a pair who always go for the same spot and bump into each other, and wake them all up again once they are asleep. Unlimited mode never runs out of cats and keeps getting busier: the first ones come in half a minute apart, then quicker and quicker down to one every 15 seconds, later on sometimes two at once, and straight away when everyone is asleep. Tuck two in within twenty seconds of each other and the next one waits a little longer. The room holds eight at most, so when it is full the cat that has slept longest gets up and goes out through the flap to make room. Tuck in as many as you can, because with five cats awake at once the shift is over. Every cat you tuck in also fills a toy box: laser colours in green, blue, violet, gold and a disco one that runs through them all, which you can switch between while you play, a quick wind-up mouse that runs about the floor on its own and darts under the sofa, the armchair and the coffee table so a cat near it chases that instead of the dot, treats, and a ball of yarn that sits still until a cat bumps or bats it, then rolls off with the cats after it and gets smaller as it unrolls until there is nothing left. Put a treat down and the nearest cat that is still up walks over to eat it, which keeps it busy, and with a full belly it tires faster for a while. The colours work everywhere; the mouse, the treats and the yarn are for free play and unlimited, so the daily stays the same for everyone. The button next to the cast turns the room upright or wide, and the game remembers your choice.
Tips
- Stop the dot just ahead of a cat so it lands on the dot: a catch tires a cat out far more than a miss
- Do the tricks on the card first, each one takes a big chunk out of the cat
- Do not leave the dot still for long, a bored cat sulks and gets its energy back
- Sharp turns on the floorboards make cats skid, the rug has more grip
- A cat that misses four times in a row loses interest, so give it an easy one
- The heavyweight tires quickly but needs a rest after every pounce, so work on the others while he lies flat
- In unlimited, tire out each new cat before the next one comes in, or the awake ones pile up
- Pounces in every mode add up and unlock new cats for the gallery
- Let the wind-up mouse go by one cat and work on another with the dot, roll the yarn towards a third, then save the treats for the cats with the most energy left
About Red dot duty
Red dot duty is a toy about the oldest game in the living room. The room, the furniture and every cat are drawn in code in a flat cartoon style made for this game, each cat has its own personality and its own way of getting it wrong, and the paws, the thuds and the odd small mew are synthesised in your browser. Only unlimited mode can be lost. The daily asks how quickly you can send a cat back to sleep, and free play asks nothing at all.
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