Fact Sheet

The author

Kiefer Nemeth (they/them) is an independent game developer creating games and seeking the sweet, sweet validation of someone enjoying said games. They love collaborating with artists and designers to create emergent, unique works of art, and they hope to share those creations with everyone who might share that joy. Nemeth worked with several artists during 2020 to create Katja's Abyss: Tactics.

Description

Katja's Abyss: Tactics is a turn-based tactics game for Mac and PC with minesweeper-inspired mechanics and pixel art graphics. The player creates and controls units in a cave, mining for energy and defending against warped monsters that appear in the darkness. The game offers two modes: Campaign and Infinite. In Campaign Mode, the player follows a story across 8 authored levels with unique mechanics. Infinite Mode has multiple difficulties, and each time the player completes a level, they automatically move onto the next. The high score of consecutively completed levels is recorded on the title screen. In both modes, the player can find collectibles that hint at the lore of the game world.

Features

mining:

The player uses a toggleable overlay that shows the number of adjacent Nodes at each location to determine where it is safe to dig. They then build and move mining units to dig walls and collect energy from them. The amount of energy in a wall correlates to the number of adjacent Nodes.

Combat:

Each round rotates between a player turn and an enemy turn. Occasionally, monsters will appear in dark spots where the player's units can't see. The player can build multiple combat-centered units like the Fighter and Barrier to deal with these incoming threats. ​
Each unit has different stats and active/passive abilities, including enemies. Many units can be modified into variant units with different skills. For example, the Fighter unit can be modified into an Artillery, which has fewer hit points and attack power, but has a much higher attack range. The miner has a passive ability called Traction, which increases its movement by 1 whenever it successfully digs a wall. ​

Extras:

While mining and fighting, the player will come across Artifacts. Once collected, these can be viewed in the Extras menu, where the player finds an image and short description theorizing on the Artifact's origin. 
​
By completing in-game achievements, such as defeating 100 monsters, the player can unlock new color palettes for their units. These customization options can be used across both modes of play.

Katja's Abyss: Tactics Special Edition on Itch for USD 9.99 includes the full soundtrack as uncompressed WAV files, concept art from development, and wallpapers. 

Key aRt

Download key art as a .zip below
ka_keyart.zip
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Screenshots

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screenshots.zip
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Gifs

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ka_gifs.zip
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Logos

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ka_logos.zip
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Videos

Release Trailer
Gameplay, up through first Campaign level.

Music

Find the soundtrack to Katja's Abyss: Tactics for sale on Bandcamp. The soundtrack is also available as uncompressed WAV files in the Special Edition on Itch for USD 15.99.
onehundredthousand1.bandcamp.com/album/katjas-abyss-tactics-soundtrack

​Credits