Cut their string before they cut yours.
Kite fighting is a real sport, played across South Asia, East Asia and the Middle East, and the rule is the same everywhere. You do not shoot anybody down. You bring your line across their line, and you cut.
Yakko Tako Royale plays by that rule, then fills the sky. Every kite hangs from a long string, and that string is the only thing anybody can take from you. Fly above a rival and their string is right there in front of you. So is yours, to them.
SIXTEEN KITES, ONE SKY
Host a game and anyone can join it, from the next room or the other side of the world. Up to sixteen kites share one arena, and it is exactly the kind of chaos that number promises: strings everywhere, cuts landing in threes, the crowd thinning until two kites circle each other over the water. No account to make and nothing to sign in to. Open ONLINE, pick a kite, and fly.
OR ON THE SAME WI-FI
Phones and tablets on one network find each other on their own. Same sixteen-kite sky, no internet needed.
OR ON THE COUCH
Two to four players on one screen: pair controllers, or pass the device around. Everybody picks a stall at the night market, picks a kite, and presses BEGIN. Empty bays take bots, at four difficulty levels you can mix in the same match, and there is always the sixteen-kite fight against fifteen bots when nobody else is around.
PLAY BY TOUCH, OR WITH A CONTROLLER
Hold the right of the screen to fly, swipe the left to turn, tap to lunge. Every menu answers a finger. Pair any game controller and the whole game plays on that instead, prompts and all.
THE LUNGE IS THE GATE
Flying through a string does nothing on its own. You have to LUNGE: a short, committed dart that takes a second and a half to come back. Two passes cut a string, damage never heals, and the tally under your score is how much string you have left.
THE SEVEN LUCKY GODS
Daruma dolls drift through every arena. Hotei mends your string. Jurojin makes yours take four passes instead of two. Benzaiten turns you uncuttable. Bishamonten arms you to ram. Fukurokuju, Ebisu and Daikokuten each rewrite what a lunge can do.
FOUR ARENAS, THIRTY-ONE KITES
A festival bay, a sunken sea, an ukiyo-e woodblock sky and a dream you can hide inside. Fly Japanese yakko and yokai kites beside the patang fighters of the subcontinent and the pipas of Brazil.
AND IT TEACHES YOU
Twenty-three hands-on chapters in a real arena, not a slideshow: fly, turn, lunge, cut, and every one of the seven gods, each with something to actually do. On a touchscreen it teaches the touchscreen; on a controller it teaches the controller.
Timed rounds, first to a number of cuts, battle royale, last kite flying. Three speeds. No accounts, no timers, no adverts, no purchases.
