Enter Swordtail and build your cat kingdom. Cut trees, defeat wolves, collect resources, recruit cats, and construct towers to protect your growing territory.
The first step in the Swordtail game is taking control of your cat hero and exploring the forest. The environment is both your source of resources and the location of your main threats. Trees provide wood, while wolves provide meat. You need both resources to develop your kingdom.
Wood is one of the most important resources in the game. Move your cat hero through the forest and cut down as many trees as possible. Every tree you harvest contributes to the supply you can eventually use for construction. At the beginning, you should focus on collecting enough wood to establish your basic infrastructure. Don't think of cutting trees as a repetitive chore. It is the foundation of your economy. Without wood, you cannot build the towers that provide automated production. That means your early gathering efforts can make later stages much easier.
Wolves serve a different purpose. When you defeat them, you collect meat. Unlike wood, meat isn't primarily used for construction. Instead, it allows you to recruit additional cats. This gives combat a direct connection to your kingdom's growth. The more effectively you deal with wolves, the more meat you can obtain. More meat means more opportunities to hire cats, and additional cats can then help you gather resources and fight enemies. The forest therefore has a useful risk-and-reward structure: you need to enter dangerous areas to obtain the resources that make your kingdom stronger.
Once you've gathered enough wood, you can begin developing your kingdom. Towers are especially important because they introduce an element of automated production into the Swordtail gameplay loop. Your towers can automatically generate sausages and pieces of wood. This means you don't always have to personally gather every resource required for your kingdom. Once your infrastructure is established, your attention can shift toward other tasks such as recruiting cats, exploring the forest, and dealing with wolves. The more effectively you use your available wood, the more useful your kingdom's infrastructure becomes.
Your cat hero doesn't have to handle the entire kingdom alone. You can use the meat collected from defeated wolves to hire additional cats. These recruits can assist with both major activities: cutting trees and fighting wolves. Recruiting more cats changes the scale of the game. At first, you're personally responsible for much of the work. As your team grows, more tasks can be handled by your cat companions. That gives you greater freedom to concentrate on the parts of the map that need your attention. The system also creates a useful relationship between combat and resource gathering. You fight wolves to get meat. You spend meat to recruit cats. Those cats help you gather more resources and defeat more wolves. Your kingdom can therefore become progressively more self-sufficient as it expands.
How to control: Arrow keys or WASD keys = Control the cat to move around.
Collect a healthy amount of wood before spending it. Having enough resources available gives you more flexibility when deciding what to construct.
Additional cats are valuable, but recruitment should fit into your overall progression. Use your meat strategically and think about how each new recruit can contribute to gathering and defense.
Don't allow combat to become an afterthought. Wolves are both enemies and a source of meat, so dealing with them efficiently supports your larger strategy.
Once you've built towers, make use of their ability to generate sausages and wood. Your goal is to gradually reduce the amount of work that must be done manually.
Don't grow your kingdom simply for the sake of making it bigger. Every new development should contribute to resource production, workforce growth, or defense.
