I have found myself playing this little game mode for a while now. In fact, one of the first things I do if I reprovision my system is getting the battle.net client installed to install StarCraft 2. If you know anything about Starcraft and Starcraft 2 - people love making their own custom game modes for it. The fact gaming companies allow this kind of customization into their games is a huge deal for me. It is something that I feel companies in general have tried to get away from in recent years. Regardless, A few examples of this are Garry's Mod, DOTA 2 , Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Killing Floor, even Tower Unite which funnily enough started as a game mode inside Garry's Mod and eventually ventured out on their own.
So what is Cute Defense?
The concept is actually quite simple and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a similar game out there. However, I think this is one of those fun things that has found its place within another game. Similar to how Garry’s Mod has a ton of different game modes that have done amazing and become synonymous with Garry's Mod, like Trouble in Terrorist Town.
For the sake of brevity and my deeper familiarity with the PVP mode I will be focusing this write up on that portion. In short, I would equate Cute Defense to a tower defense game against other players.
There are quite a few other modes too PvE Tower Defense, PvE: Rogue Crawl, PvE: Horde, PvE: Standard, PvP Duos Versus
The map is usually split between two teams of four on a variety of maps with some randomness built in. As note, many of these pictures were taken during a holiday event, I am not a huge fan of the colors during the holiday but nothing you can do about it unfortunately. It usually has a less bright ground which is a lot more pleasant on the eyes, I promise!
Your initial goal is to find a base that you believe you can secure with walls, heroes, or units. You play as a peon/builder that the “enemies” path towards and your entire goal is to defend it. Once you choose a location you start building an economy, walls, towers and find ways to defend your location. Depending on the spot you could team up with people or choose to try to defend a larger location yourself. However, typically a larger location equals more possible entrances to defend.
As the builder you have defensive and offensive abilities, most of the defense you won't need early game, but two of the most important abilities is spawners and sending waves. These are the core abilities used to increase your economy during the duration of the game and if ignored will probably end up with your builder dying.
Before moving to the next step you should understand income is very important and if you don't stay on top of it you will fall behind your enemy.
The largest factor is the economy-tick, which happens every ten seconds. You can see this in the image where it says, “Income in 8”, meaning two seconds have already gone by. You can also see that I am making +29 gold every one of these economy ticks the other colored numbers are my teammates income. The purple icon is a cute core which I will get into later.
I have split the menu that your builder has to show you what each option does. Some of it may not make sense, but thats okay.
| Button | Gold | Cooldown | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
 | +3 | 30 | Creates a spawner on the opponents side. The cost increases exponentially per spawner on their side. A maximum of 12 can be spawned, then a Mega Spawner can be created. |
 | +1 | 25 | Adds 4 Cutelings to the opponents' side per spawner for the next wave. The cost increases by 25 per spawner on their side. (Max of 300 on one side at any given time) |
 | +1 | 60 | Summons 7 Meteorites to fall in random locations on your opponents side. Meteorites hatch into Meteolings after 7 seconds. The cost will for each use will increase by 250 for 4 minutes, each stack is independent. |
 | +2 | 60 | Spawns the next wave instantly for both sides. Every time a wave spawns it will increase the cost of this ability by 15. |
 | +0 | 60 | Moves the selected friendly spawner to a new random location. The spawner must be above 90% health. |
 | varied | A menu to send bosses to attack your enemies and earn you permanent income. Purchasing Bosses reduces the cooldown of Upgrade Bosses. Charges are generated every 2 minutes, starting at 20 minutes. | |
 | +1 | 150 | Disables the enemies third build slot for 90 seconds. |
 | +2 | 300 | Boosts all currently living non-boss Cutelings on your enemy's side. Increases movement/attack Speed by 30%, health by 20% and grants detection for 45 seconds. |
 | +3 | 120 | Permanently attracts Cutelings to a specified target. Casting this on another target will remove it from the first. |
 | +5 | 60 | Upgrades cutelings for BOTH SIDES. 15/20/25/30 upgrade Elementalings abilities. For every minute this ability isn't used, the addition gold is increased by 1. Once anyone uses this ability on your team it will reset to back to 1. |
 | varied | A menu that allows switching regular cutelings into elementalings. More powerful with special abilities. | |
 | +0 | 60 | Places target Unit or Structure in stasis for 20 seconds, disabling the target for the duration of the effect. Targets in stasis cannot be attacked or affected by abilities. |
 | +0 | 50 | Throw a stone at an enemy Builder or Goblin Sapper, stunning them for 0.75 seconds and interrupting their current action. There is a 50% chance to hit. |
 | A menu with special upgrades that cost cute cores. |
All the gold increases are permanently added to each economy tick that happens. This is important because it allows you to grow your economy and not get starved of gold later in the game.
There are other ways to gain gold through buildings as well.
| Type | Gold | Description |
|---|---|---|
 | +0 | A wall that has a small chance to give you 1 gold each time it is attacked by a cuteling. |
 | +5 | A gold mine contains 500 gold that a miner or your builder can gather. |
 | +5 | A gold farm generates 5 gold every economy tick (10 seconds) with a chance of doubling. |
 | +5 | Increases your upgrades discount by 1 each tick and reduces build time by 15% for other buildings and units. |
However, these are not permanent, if they are destroyed you will lose the income/benefits they give you. There are also buildings that don't give you income but can increase your upgrade discount cost or increase the speed it takes to build.
| Building | Description |
|---|---|
 | A lumbermill is a building that reduces the time it takes to build other units and structures by 20%. This effect stacks for each Lumbermill you own with diminishing returns. |
 | A blacksmith is a building that increases your upgrades discount by 1 each tick. |
There are many more building types that can buff you or debuff the enemy. I would encourage if you plan to play to check out the buildings on a new wiki some players are putting together.
Random Building Options
There is a major caveat however, you can't just build anything you want. There is randomness where your builder has three abilities (which could be upgraded to four or five slots later in the game using cute cores) that never stay the same. These three empty slots in the image below change every time you build one of the three options or press the hotkey G which refreshes the three options. So all of the building icons I showed you above could appear in one of these empty squares. The 2 next to the empty slots (X and Z hotkeys) are basic towers and basic walls, free for you to use to start your base)
All the buttons I went over earlier were in the F hotkey displayed on this picture. The D hotkey is the upgrades for units, walls, and towers, and E is a blink to jump over walls or buildings if you have vision of it.
When you manually refresh the options the cost to refresh goes up. This means you can’t keep refreshing them to get what you want. If you do it too fast you can quickly end up paying 150 gold per refresh which can quickly drain your bank and can be very bad early game! Luckily if you stop manually skipping the cost will gradually go down. There are many buildings and sometimes you may never get a certain type, or end up having bad luck with gold mines or farms so your early game eco is tough to work with.
A default game setting which is usually set is the mirrored option, this makes your randomness mirrored with someone on the enemy's side. Meaning you are also in a process of optimizing your build to be better than your mirror or getting further in your rolls to get access to possible economy buildings quicker or increased rarity.
A faster and stronger early economy sets both you and your team up for an easier game.
Cute Cores
You will get cute cores throughout the game, that purple icon that came up previously. You will get one every 10 minutes, and it will start to increase how many you get past the 20 minutes mark. Using these cores you can buy things in the menu.
| Icon | Cost | Description |
|---|---|---|
 | 5 | The next building slot you select will be locked for the remainder of the match. After purchasing this, your slots will immediately be refreshed. |
 | 3 | Replace your basic walls with a 5th build slot. |
 | 1 | Replace your basic towers with a 4th build slot. |
 | 1, 3, 5 | Will force your first build slot to always be a hero until you build your first hero. This is similar for all 3 going vertical in the main image but the cost increases. The only difference is the hotkey E which is the only way to get a third hero. |
 | 1 | Instanly give 500 gold |
 | 3 | Doubles the income of castles, gold farms, keeps, and workshops. |
 | 2 | Alters space and time, freezing all cutelings on your teams' side for 8 seconds. Unlimited range and works on bosses. |
 | 2 | Increases time for your builder by 3x for 75 seconds |
These can be incredibly useful and even save you late game. For example, when the first 10 minute mark hits and you get your first cute core you could use the hot key of Z in this menu to replace your basic tower with a 4th slot. This gives you even more possibility of what you can build making it easier and higher chance for better eco buildings and rarer items.
Gameplay & Duration
Games themselves (at least for PVP) can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. The duration usually depends on how good people are in your team. It can last longer than an hour but typically from my experience a team is usually mostly dead by then. Since there are multiple people on a team the game isn't technically over until all people on your side, or the enemy side are dead.
If you do happen to find yourself being dead early on you can wait for one of your team mates to rescue you or use a moopy. A moopy is a slow moving bear that I believe uses the model of one of those Star Wars bears… It also plays chariots of fire as it comes to save you. Once the moopy gets to your body he picks up a flag off you and brings it back to the nearest other builder to revive you. Typically you won't be able to build another base, but hopefully you were able to get your economy high and you are earning enough money to continue to send bosses, send cutelings, upgrade cutelings to elemental, and if you have cores available freeze time if your teammate is about to die. There are many benefits to staying even after your dead and still very possible to win.
The whole goal is to outlive your enemy.
Want to join?
Yes! Love it! To join a game it is very simple, all you have to do is launch StarCraft 2 (which I believe is even free to play now!), click the “custom” menu button at the top then go to the search bar and type “cute” and any lobbies will show up in the list. If no lobbies exist, you can wait or create one yourself.
I personally would recommend you spin it up and give it a try if you enjoy these kinds of games! You might even find me! I usually go by the name “Insight” and if you see me, you should say hi! Most people are usually more than willing to help explain things throughout the game.
Although somewhat long I have included a video which shows a PVP game with no commentary. In case you wanted to take a closer look. I wouldn't be surprised if some of it doesn't make sense or if certain things in it are outdated.
[youtube-embed:Cute Defense Gameplay:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0FbDGXo6c]
The Creator
The game mode was created by AmethySlime, I don't know much about him but eventually want to potentially do a Q&A with him to learn more about the initial beginnings of the project and where he would like to take it.
Updates and changes happen pretty often, often depending on things going on in his life. This allows the game to be in a constant flux that allows you to explore different builds and figure out what may be the strongest.
These updates and notices are given in the Discord channel where the community is also surprisingly active for such a niche mod of now an older game. The channel is where most people who play the mod go to talk about potential meta changes, patch notes, offer suggestions, bug reports, and more. I personally have not seen any but apparently, they occasionally have tournaments.
If it sounds interesting and you're going to jump in and want some help you can join the discord.