The iPad beta is on TestFlight. But today's post is about what happens when Fat Cat Cruz hits the App Store, because the answer is different depending on where you buy it — and I'd rather tell you that up front.
Two ways to buy, one honest difference
The itch.io browser version is the buy-it-once browser option: pay $14.99, play in a current WebGL2 browser, and get every update. The App Store release is free to download. Every map is free for every player — nobody gets locked out of a battlefield — and the machines arrive as in-game purchases: the planned $100 all-machines bundle, or one robot at a time.
The reason: online multiplayer, first on Apple
iOS gets online multiplayer first. Built on Game Center — sign-in, friend invites, and matchmaking without accounts or menus — so you can drop into a match against people you actually know. Co-op against the AI machines lands first, with the five-way free-for-all behind it on the roadmap. The iPad version also gets the touch controls the whole game was designed around first, and the performance work that comes from shipping on real iPads before anywhere else.
None of that is in the browser build today. If what you want is the cheapest full game, itch is your store. If what you want is to fight your friends from a couch in two different houses, Apple is where that arrives first.
The next machine: a pink pony
Yes, really. She's in the workshop right now: hooves, armor, attitude. First look when she hits the test devices.
What you can play right now
The free five-minute browser demo is live — no download, keyboard or touch: fatcatcruz.itch.io. The TestFlight beta is running on iPad. Steam is coming December 21.
One promise I won't make yet
I won't put a ship date on multiplayer until it's running on real iPads — the same rule I used for everything else on this page. The design is written, the Game Center route is chosen, and the beta pipeline is warm. When you can shoot your friend's Colossus from your own couch, you'll read it here first.