Continuing from prior comment:
I haven't actually bought a gift basket yet. When I got close to 300 taiyaki the first time my game reset. Whet I meant by no guarantees is that the tool tips don't seem to work and I can't figure out what is in any of the baskets. Is there always at least one cat in each basket until you max out rarity levels?
Ah I gotcha! The 'i' icon is going to show the drop rates and percentages we just haven't got those hooked up yet. And yes you will always win a kitty til that rarity is maxed :)
I'm level 8, 15 xp to 9th, with 6 max level cats. Even when I hit 9 there is no indication I get a new cat from the preview.
So I can either start a long slow painful pointless grind to get xp from skills, or a long slow painful pointless grind to relevel cats for pitiful amounts of taiyaki. Which, BTW, the basic taiyaki baskets don't give me the guarantee of a new cat either.
Or I can spend $10 real money to get the bells to either buy taiyaki for two chances at the previously mentioned no promises basic basket or 1 shot of the hopefully guaranteed one cat deluxe basket. And then when I max that cat out I will be stuck in exactly the same situation. Grind forever or pay more money.
This game isn't fun enough to be pay to win. If there isn't a re-balancing you can count me out.
There will be lots of tweaking and adjustments to the balance, this is only the first iteration - an alpha, not even beta. Couple questions: When you say the basket didn't guarantee a new cat, did it give you 3 items instead? Or did you already have a bunch of cats (15+) and perhaps it had no more to award in that rarity? The more cats you get to max level then reset with nap time, the faster the game will be so you should be able to accumulate taiyaki quickly after a certain point. But yah, balance is still undergoing lots of changes and improvements.
Something that helped me that I thought I would share. If you click the empty pixel in the top left corner of the capital 'A' in "Try Again" your mouse pointer will be floating almost dead center ahead of your ship and you can use it as a guide for dodging obstacles.
Easy win/gamebreaker: I beat the 3rd boss (boat) and then was destroyed by a leftover plane. When I went to start the next level it asked me if I wanted to restart at the boss. I did, thinking the 3rd boss kill didn't count.
Instead it took me directly to the 4th boss, with no health bar and only the rockets. It took a while but I beat him with rockets and invincibility. After that the game went back to normal.
Having trouble getting the Space Ace (no damage) achievement? Load Speed Race 1, ass soon as the race is over take to the sky. You will be on a completely empty map. With the right build you can make it all the way to Mars without hitting anything. Amusingly, the race start banner will be waiting for you on Mars when you get there.
 "Kitty Catsanova"){kind=icon}
 "Vector Runner"){kind=icon}
 "Starlight 2"){kind=icon}
 "Ruthless Pandas"){kind=icon}
 "Cyber Chaser"){kind=icon}
 "Into Space 2"){kind=icon}
 "New Star Soccer"){kind=icon}
 "The Idle RPG 2:Renicipation"){kind=icon}
 "4 Differences"){kind=icon}
 "Doodle Devil"){kind=icon}
haha yeah that's a funny one, good catch :) We've done another pass through the dialogue to fix up those discrepancies. Thanks!