Art by u/ReconScoutTeemo. Original post here.
Hey everyone! Welcome to this week's blog with the NK team!
What's been going on this week?
BTD6+ has launched on Apple Arcade. You can find it on the Apple Arcade here!
The App Store and Arcade versions are the same from a content perspective - there is no exclusive content in the Arcade version. You cannot move progress back and forth between App Store and Arcade because of privacy issues, but all platforms can match with and play co-op with Arcade players! If you already have the App Store version but want to play on Arcade, we’ve been joking that it’s a bit like prestiging the game - it’s actually been super fun to start over (even though we also have hundreds of hours and hundreds of days played on many of our accounts). Up to you!
We have also hit 200k over on the BTD6 Reddit! We are so excited about this and want to thank all of the awesome people who have joined up and who make contributions to the community. We are proud and humbled to have hit this amazing mark! To celebrate we are running a map design competition, make sure to get your submissions in! You can find it here.
30 Speed Race Results:
1st: MaksymHEX - 2 minutes and 24.10 seconds
2nd: YT: Colt BTD6 - 2 minutes and 24.13 seconds
3rd: KLTD1234 - 2 minutes and 24.36 seconds
4th: YtseJam - 2 minutes and 25 seconds
5th: Alpowk - 2 minutes and 27 seconds
This weekend's focus:
- BTD6 -
Pile O' Monkey Money and T3 Insta Monkeys on sale.
Ongoing "Sticks and Stones" Odyssey ending Tuesday.
"Second too late" Race this weekend.
Bloonarius will be appearing on Spillway this week, starting Saturday and ending Thursday.
- Bloons Pop -
Friday: Level Smasher
Saturday: Bloon Popper
Sunday: Black Bloon Popper
Great Pack, 3rd Canister and Vault of Monkey Money on sale.
- BTD Battles -
Professor Evil appearing on Patch this weekend. With a second tougher one on Snowy Castle starting Tuesday and ending Thursday.
Friday: MOAB - BFB, BFB Boosts Only, BFB Card
Saturday: MOAB, MOAB Card, MOAB Card Club - BFB, BFB Club
Sunday: MOAB, MOAB R3 Speed, MOAB Card - BFB Random 15, BFB Boosts Only
Monday: MOAB, MOAB Boosts Only
2x Medallions with Bag of Medallions and Chest of Medallions on sale.
- BATTD -
Ongoing Martian games: Shuffle, more camo and no allies.
No items, more regrow and level 10 towers starting on Saturday.
Finn Adventure Pack, Max Adventure Pack and Character Bundle pack on sale.
- SAS4 Mobile -
VS on Friday, LMS on Saturday and Apoc with black box as rewards on Sunday.
Sales on nantos, NV vet pack, epic pack and 10th premium gun set: T189, CM Starfury and Banshee
- BTD5 -
Ongoing Totem event, ending Monday.
Blue counting for the leaderboards. Wizard skin and Monkey Money on sale.
Questions from the comments:
Are the bloons known to be friendly to any non-bloon race?
Not that we know of. That said from an outsider's perspective, the Bloons aren’t necessarily unfriendly to the BTD Monkeys, but rather are very persistent, distracting, and require inordinate focus of time and resource on producing and deploying projectiles, buildings, equipment, and farms. The BTD Monkeys generally seem happy or at least content with these activities, so still unclear whether the Bloons as a catalyst for this is unfriendly. The Bloons Pop Monkeys, however, are clearly put out, and would much rather be hanging about town, having fun near the beach, camping, or generally exploring yumtasticness. As such it’s entirely possible that the Bloons would be pranking other civilizations, but not clearly known.
Hmmmm, would Etienne be more about Flying types, Steel types, or Electric types? And would Quincy be Normal?
Etienne would be Flying/Steel and Quincy is Normal with the occasional ground type! He just thinks they are neat.
Would hugging a Bloon feel extremely agonizing or would it feel just like hugging a balloon?
The main difference with Bloons is their stalwart progress along prescribed routes. Even when pushed back or away, they move quickly back to that pattern. Dr. Monkey has ideas but there is not clear physics principle behind the movement of the Bloons, so the amount of force represented there is unknown. As such hugging a Bloon could potentially send you in motion and through the nearest exit, and we have no idea what is on the other side of those things. Also, the static electricity could be terminal.
Are the Hero skins the same monkey in a costume, the same monkey from an alternate timeline/reality, or another monkey completely like a relative or brother/sister?
Alternate universe or alternate upbringing are the best analogs, as the Monkeyverse is simply different to our reality. What’s strange about most of the skins is that they have some of the same vocal signatures even though they come from worlds or universes apart.
Have you guys ever considered adding a “custom RBE” setting to the Challenge Editor like some of the BTD5 challenges? Essentially giving us the ability to change all of one type of bloon to something else (E.G. turning all rainbow Bloons into MOABs)
We’ve considered it but are looking at other things at the moment for the Editor/Browser.
What does Quincy eat for breakfast?
Banana Porridge
Which heroes are the most likely to break spaghetti before cooking it?
Gwen - she doesn’t cook often and does not enjoy clean up, so long noodles getting stuck in the stainer really fries her. You might think it would be Pat but he is incredibly careful and talented in the kitchen.
Has Gwen ever accidentally set a forest on fire before like in dark castle
Obyn tends to supervise her visits to the forests. Can’t imagine why.
Has Dr. Monkey ever tried to make a fully robotic and bloon popping monkey?
He did make the Tech Terror.
if everything burns with enough fire and air, how much fire and air does it take to burn a purple bloon?
More than the game can handle…
will the NK team ever update btd5 or add any more bloons games?
We do continue to update BTD5 with new maps! We’re spending most of both studio teams’ time on updates to BTD6, Battles 2, and Bloons Pop, so no other Bloons games in production right now. We have heaps of ideas for more. What’s yours?
i think it would be really cool if you added a trophy store item to btd6 that makes the bloon's and blimps look like the old models from 2018, what do you think?
We think the 3d models just look so much cooler, but appreciate the idea and we’ll add it to our suggestions list.
do bloons have their own language filled with high pitched air sounds?
It's a mix between that and squeaking.
Will there be a 4th crosspath for towers in btd7?
We aren’t even thinking about BTD7 at this point!
Whats 9 + 10
Why does this feel like a trick?
What are bloons filled with? Blops? Bloontonium?
We can’t say for sure, but it is powerful enough to float lead and ceramic shells. Clearly we’ve seen from Bloons Supermonkey, Monkey City, and Bloons Pop that Blops and Bloontonium can be harvested but we don’t think that fills them, as it’s not consistently present.
Was it bloons that landed on the moon first or monkeys?
Monkeys, for sure.
Why can monkey farmers not be overclocked/ultraboosted in BTD6?
I’m not sure they could pick bananas up any faster!
Does Dr. Monkey ever plan to introduce us to the robo-farmer from BTDB?
Not at this stage!
Will there be a Benjamin or Sauda plush soon?
Maybe… ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Where do all the farms go that the monkeyopolis sacrifices
Well all the banana plants are harvested and the workers are employed at the Monkeyopolis after a well-earned social featuring all you can slurp banana smoothies - and that’s about it really!
Can you make a Boombot Bomb Shooter skin?
Props for the nostalgia - that’s a fantastic idea. Unfortunately tower skins in BTD6 are even more complicated with all of the cross-pathing and more complex animation, which is why we haven’t done any full Monkey Tower skins. Pedantically, we could say “yes” we could make such a skin, but realistically it’s not likely to happen.
More of a technical question. But why are updates usually over 200MB big? Even when its a small update.
We have improved our asset handling and try to only update the file packages that contain changes, but often even small updates tend to modify a majority of the asset bundles that make up the game, which require them all to be re-downloaded. We’ll continue to make improvements here, though - thanks for asking!
Who cleans up the maps after battle?
The clean up crew, consisting of the towers that no longer have any practical use. <cough-bloonchipper-cough>
You said that Bloons TD 6+ would have update parity, yet it's still stuck at 29.0. Is parity still planned between each version?
Yes! 30.1 for BTD6+ is currently under review by the Arcade team. This does take time as it needs to pass stricter Apple review being an Arcade title. As soon as it’s ready we’ll be pushing it out to ya’ll and once live will have Odysseys, Races, and Bosses turned on same as the App Store version.
Is SAS: TD 2 ever going to come out?
Lots of love for SAS: TD and some of that same instinct was in Last Line of Defense. There’s good gameplay there and definitely food for thought but not likely in a SAS:TD2 - it would be bigger/better. For now our SAS thinking continues to go into SAS5, but that game is still not yet started.
Are we also gonna get banana farm plush?
We aren’t planning one at the moment!
who’s your favourite hero to use?
I’m a sucker for Obyn! - Sav
Does Bloon Solver use bloontonium to disintegrate bloons? Which is why it's green?
We daren’t ask Glue Gunner what he actually puts in those tubes.
Do you pick your favorite questions out of the comments?
We try and pick questions we haven’t answered before and a large range of topics! :)
Have a great weekend and happy gaming!
- Ninja Kiwi Team
In my native language we don't have generless pronouns, so how should I refer to Psi? Are they *biologically* male or female?
Ninja kiwi, are you planning to remove vsync in btdb2 since it causes lag?
I think ya'll chose one of my questions but it was unfinished, I was asking if the NK team plans to update btd5 or add more bloons games on the Nintendo switch
Do you think that the Monkey Farmer misses the "Pro" days of leaving behind peels on the tracks? Or do they prefer the simple nature of collecting Bananas?
Hello, I would like to know if the sas4 flamethrower turrets have DoT, and if they do, how much is it? It would be very helpful for us content creators to add this kind of information somewhere as it cannot be found officially.
Why can't you just close the doors on dark castle? it's not like they cant close.
Will Bloons Pop get another update?
Will voice lines for paragons ever be a possibility?
Does Smudge Catt have multiple cats or just the one? Does it (or do they) ever have play dates or anything with Etienne’s Roomba cat?
Question for the blog: In one of the recent blog entries we were told that Ninja Kiwi plans to allow us to tweak tower stats. Could Ninja Kiwi tell us more details about this? For example whether only basic tower stats will be tweakable or maybe we will be also able to edit tower upgrades? Also, does it mean that we finally will be able to see in-game tower stats like range, pierce, damage, footprints, ability cooldowns &c. along with how they are modified?