Roofcats Band - Suika Style Achievement Guide & Road Map

Roofcats Band - Suika Style
Roofcats Band - Suika Style Achievement Guide

Overview:
- Estimated achievement difficulty: 3/10 [skill and somewhat luck dependent] [Achievement Difficulty Rating]
- Offline: 10 [1000]
- Online: 0
- Approximate amount of time to 1000

: 3-6+ hours [highly skill and luck dependent] [Estimated Time to 100%]
- Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 2 technically, but plan on many attempts at each of the three main requirements
- Missable achievements: None [arcade style gameplay]
- Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty option, but all achievements must be done in Classic mode
- Unobtainable/glitched achievements: None

DLC: Title Update
- Difficulty: 2/10
- Time to 1000: 10-20 minutes
- Unobtainable/glitched achievements: None

Introduction:
Welcome to Roofcats Band - Suika Style, a really chill and relaxing cat game that plays like a Suika game: you drop objects (in this case, cat heads) from the top of the screen, being given random ones, and you need to combine pairs of matching ones to make bigger and bigger cat heads. If you've played THREES! or 2048, it's the same concept except instead of sliding tiles together you're dropping them in from above more like Tetris. It's very simple but very addicting. Achievements require three basic things: get a high score over 20,000 points, get all ten different types of cats on the screen at once, and get a low score under 100 poiints. While those first two could technically be grouped together, it's way easier to do them separately. Let's get started.

Abbreviated Walkthrough:
As noted above, this completion requires three separate tasks. I highly recommend separating achievements for 20,000 points and for all ten band members on screen, because the strategies are slightly different, but different enough that you need to make a decision right away as to which you're going to go for. Obviously the low-scoring game is completely separate.

I'm not going to go into much detail here because I've done that in the guide below, with strategies and video clips for each. Refer to +20k! (150G) for strategy and tips for getting a high score, Full band! (150G) for tips on that achievement, and Less than 100! (125G) for strategy and tips for getting a low score.

While there isn't much from an achievement perspective, it'll likely take you multiple hours to get +20k! (150G) and Full band! (150G) since it's so easy to mess up or get some bad luck. The good news is that Less than 100! (125G) should be relatively quick. The other good news is that the music is really relaxing and the gameplay is really fun and addicting. Keep at it and you'll succeed at all three, wrapping up this completion.

Title Update DLC

This title update adds ten new achievements, and unlike the base game, whose achievements all unlock after your current game is over, these achievements unlock immediately in the middle of your game. All of the achievements are related to having a certain number of cats on screen at once. The higher ones are simple because you'll be doing that anyway through normal gameplay to score points. The small ones, on the other hand, are ones you wouldn't normally build up that many of when going for points, unless of course you're going for low score, then you likely would have that many small cats. Either way, if actively trying for these achievements, it won't take long at all to knock them out. Just pick one or two cats and go for those achievements, then either start over or continue on and go for others. For the smaller cats, use the strategy in Less than 100! (125G); for the bigger cats, use the strategy in +20k! (150G).

Overall Conclusion:
While looking into this game, watching the gameplay really made me want to try the game, and then the same thing happened to my whole family while playing this game. It's really simple but addicting, and really relaxing yet engaging at the same time. This is the only game I've ever seen with a low-score leaderboard, so see if you can top my low score of 8 points! Hopefully you got the two tougher achievements for 20k and the full band, and if so, congrats on the completion!

[XBA would like to thank Necrophage33 for this Roadmap]
[XBA would like to thank Necrophage33 for the DLC Roadmap]

+2k!

50
Finished a match with 2000+ points in classic mode
Refer to +20k! (150G) for more information.
+5k!

75
Finished a match with 5000+ points in classic mode
Refer to +20k! (150G) for more information.
+10k!

100
Finished a match with 10000+ points in classic mode
Refer to +20k! (150G) for more information.
+15k!

125
Finished a match with 15000+ points in classic mode
Refer to +20k! (150G) for more information.
+20k!

150
Finished a match with 20000+ points in classic mode
This is one of the toughest achievements in the game, but not the toughest. Full band! (150G) is harder, but in general the strategy for both achievements is nearly identical. I suggest reading through Full band! (150G) to understand the best way to score points and make bigger cats.

The main way this achievement diverges from Full band! (150G) is with how you'll be using bombs (dogs). With that achievement, your goal is to make bigger and bigger cats, so you'll be using dogs to blow up anything blocking you. With this achievement, however, the strategy becomes entirely different. For getting a high score, you'll want to use your dogs to blow up the biggest cat you have on screen. For example, if you do manage to reach the ninth or tenth cat head, when you get a bomb you should be immediately blowing them up. This may sound counterintuitive, since you've been working all game on making these bigger cats, but the reason for this is pretty simple: big cats take up more space, and blowing them up "resets" your play area without affecting your points. This allows you to restart building up a big cat without another big one in the way. To phrase it another way, imagine you spend 5-10 minutes making the ninth cat, the tall gray head which takes up at least one third of the play area, but closer to half. You have around 5k points by the time you make it (for example). Blow up that huge gray head, and now you still have your 5k points but you've just freed up a ton of space for yourself. Now you can do this all over again (make another big gray ninth cat head, for example), get another 5k points or whatever, and then again blow it up.

This is obviously a little easier said than done, because you're at the mercy of RNG for getting bombs. However, any time you get a bomb, always blow up the biggest cat head you have, whether that be the one with the flute, the singer, the gray one, or the one with the mohawk. Don't get greedy and try to keep your biggest so you can make a bigger one. If you go on a long drought of no bombs, it could end up biting you. There is no time limit, so while it will absolutely be much slower to reach a high score this one, it's by far the safest way. You will definitely go long periods without bombs, but that's where you'll be using the strategies in Full band! (150G) to consolidate all your cats and minimize the amount of play area they take up. With any luck, you'll get bombs at good times where you have big cats and they're exposing to drop a bomb on them. With this strategy of bomb usage in mind, as well as the general strategies in Full band! (150G), you should be able to reach 20k points. Just mentally prepare yourself for a longer slower game as you destroy everything you work to create, and the points will eventually come.

Here's a clip (albeit not a very helpful one) of me reaching 20k points. At no point during this game did I make the tenth and final mohawk cat. I bombed all my biggest cats, got to this point, and had a long string of no bombs where I was able to make two gray cats as shown in the clip, and comfortably reached 20k points.

https://www.xbox.com/play/media/zfzRvDH5c3
Less than 1000k!

50
Finish a match with less than 1000 points in classic mode
Refer to Less than 100! (125G) for more information.
Less than 500!

75
Finish a match with less than 500 points in classic mode
Refer to Less than 100! (125G) for more information.
Less than 200!

100
Finish a match with less than 200 points in classic mode
Refer to Less than 100! (125G) for more information.
Less than 100!

125
Finish a match with less than 100 points in classic mode
These achievements are actually pretty fun and interesting, because they require you to do the exact opposite of what you've been doing for high scores: strategically place cats to avoid matching them, and try to pile them up to lose with as little matches as possible. There is even a low score leaderboard to see how successful you can be at avoiding matches!

The general strategy here is to build up a pile of cats on either side of the area, using the wall as a place to lean the cats against so you can pile them up. What I recommend doing from the start is filling up a row across the bottom of the area, before you start stacking. This is to prevent your stack from shifting or collapsing. So, start by dropping your cats along the bottom, being careful to stagger like ones so you don't accidentally make matches. Once you have a decent base, start building up along either side wall. You don't want to try to build straight up, because that'll just topple. What you want to do is make a sort of leaning tower/pyramid against either wall. Start with a wide base, such as a blue and yellow cat next to each other, and get more narrow as you go up, like a big grey one on top of those two, and so one.

If it's hard to visualize, I have provided a clip below of my successful run where I finished a game with 8 points, unlocking all of these low score achievements. Obviously you don't need to be that "good" since you just need to stay under 100 points, but the important takeaway from this clip is to see how to properly stack a tower against a wall and have it lean toward the wall so it doesn't topple from being top-heavy.

https://www.xbox.com/play/media/dG8ccRAVgC

One last thing to note is that you will get screwed by RNG plenty while trying for this. Sometimes you'll be given the same cat 4+ times in a row, and there's just no way to avoid making matches. Thankfully, each attempt only takes a minute or two, so restarting often to get good drops isn't a big deal at all. Keep at it, and you'll eventually be able to make it up without too many matches.

If you're really good at low scores, try to tie my record of 0 points! Sadly I didn't take a clip of it, but here is the screenshot for proof. Even more sadly is that the leaderboard apparently didn't accept zero as a valid score, so it still shows my score of 8 as my lowest.
Full band!

150
Finish a match with 10 different musicians in any mode
This is definitely the toughest achievement in the game. As the description says, you need to end a game (i.e. lose by reaching the laser across the top) with all ten of the different cats on screen at the same time.

If you've played at all, you're likely wondering how it's even possible to fit all of those bigger cat heads on screen at the same time. The answer is that it isn't easy, and it's going to take some strategy and planning, because you're going to need to take advantage of all of the available play space, including the overflow from the top before reaching the laser. I'm going to start by showing you the layout I had at the end of my game so you can see the arrangement of heads. Refer to the following clip:

https://www.xbox.com/play/media/qcYWBaGyjx

Now I'll go through the strategy to get there, first from a general perspective, and then I'll talk specific gameplay tips. As you can see in the clip and probably surmise, your first goal is to get to the tenth cat, with the mohawk. However, it's also pretty important to make this mohawk cat on one side of the play area (either left or right) rather than dead center. To do this, rather than building up big heads in the center, do it on one side. I talk more about stacking combos in the tips section below, but basically you want to keep making bigger heads on top of your existing big heads, rather than next to them. Once you've got the mohawk cat made (which is probably the hardest part, since getting two ninth cats to touch can often be tough), as long as it's off to one side, you should be in a good position now. You now need to do the same thing on the other side of the play area, except you have less room to work with and you're stopping at the ninth cat. Basically, use the exact same stacking technique mentioned above and detailed below to keep making bigger heads on the other side of the play area from the mohawk cat. This is where you'll likely build up to the top and things will get hairy, especially when you get to the eighth cat, the singer. Really, the only way you're going to get the ninth cat on the other side is to have one big combo that leads to it being made. What you absolutely do not want to do is make another huge cat on top of the mohawk cat. There just isn't enough room up on top of its mohawk and you don't want to accidentally lose because the cat you made shot up in height and touched the laser.

I got pretty lucky with the way my ninth cat fell, giving me room on the left and in the middle to make two more bigger heads. Repeat the same stacking strategy here to make the eighth cat, the singer, in whichever spot has the most vertical space to work with. In my experience, the most annoying and riskiest cat head was the seventh, the one playing the flute. It would often form off to the side or in an inconvenient place, and it was virtually impossible to move it somewhere else. This is another reason why stacking to form the cat you want is so important. If you place heads side by side to make the one you want, there's no telling where that new combo'd head will end up (for example, on the left side of your horizontal string, the right side, or right in the middle). For me, it always seemed to jump to exactly where I didn't want it to be. Once you have the three biggest cats made, the rest should be home free since they're so easy to make by this point. You'll likely be stacking cats on both side of the play area, so make the flute player wherever it ends up first, and stop the other side at the afro cat to make sure you have each. The first five cats are a piece of cake since you can make them all from the drops you're given.

On to some actual gameplay tips. I've included these because, while researching this game, I watched a bunch of gameplay videos, and the people playing would always make baffling bad choices that I couldn't understand. Maybe people just aren't thinking ahead or paying attention? Either way, I'm going to try to explain strategy and give tips. That's tough in words, so I've used a few videos and clips to help illustrate my points as I discuss them.
- Always be paying attention to which cat is coming next, and place accordingly. For example, if you're getting the same cat two times in a row, use that to drop them on top of each other to combine them. This is perfect for stacking. But, if you, for example, get the smallest white cat and another isn't following, consider placing it out of the way of your stack and save it for another white cat later
- Speaking of stacking, that's the optimal way to make bigger and bigger cats. For a while, I was putting cats next to each other, trying to make them touch so they'd combine to form a bigger one. This is not only unreliable, but cats such as the afro cat and the flute playing cat and insanely difficult to push or slide around. Essentially, if they aren't already touching another match when they're made, it's going to be extremely hard to get them to do so.
- Prefacing the stacking technique is the (seemingly obvious) guideline to never put a larger cat on top of a smaller cat. You'd think this would be common sense, but the amount of time people have done it in Youtube videos is absurd. Never ever put a bigger cat on top of a smaller one because once you do, that smaller cat is forever trapped under the bigger one, with no way to combine it. This is basically what screws you over and ruins games, because it'll happen unintentionally sometimes, where one bigger head will fall or roll on top of smaller one(s) and trap them. Sometimes it's not bad, and sometimes it's a game ruiner. You therefore always need to be conscious of this
- Use physics to your advantage. If two cats aren't touching but you want them do, you can either trying to tip one over/knock it over (I found this was rarely successful) or you can try to force one cat over by making bigger heads next to it (which I found to be way more reliable). For example, you have two afro cats just barely not touching. You aren't going to move them easily, but the best way is to start making matches on one side of the pair. As you make that cat head bigger and bigger, its size will keep pushing one afro cat toward the other until it's big enough to force them to touch. But, as I mentioned, you should be trying to avoid horizontal combinations as much as possible because of this exact reason. You don't need to worry about moving cats when they're stacked
Let's look at some stacking clips.

https://www.xbox.com/play/media/i9PMzAQHBV

In this first clip, you can see how I'm arranging my cats: putting smaller ones on top of bigger ones, and ideally putting the preceding one on top of the next one (for example, smallest white one on top of the yellow one). In this clip, you can also see how a rolling bigger head can screw you by moving on top of smaller ones and trapping them. Thankfully, when I combo'd into the flute player, it just barely opened up the smaller ones, but realistically there's no way to make a bigger cat with those small ones that are now basically trapped.

https://www.xbox.com/play/media/iCMcZkpe88

This clip takes place just after that one, but you can really see a stacked combo in action. The fifth cat with the white head on bottom, then the fourth gray cat, then the third cat with the blue hat, then the second yellow cat on top, and match that yellow cat and the whole thing combos straight down to the bottom. This is exactly how you want to be arranging your combos, because as you can also see in this clip, I have an afro cat stuck on the right side. There's no way to move it anywhere else, and there's no room to make another afro cat near it. Stacks on top would have to be flawless, and even then it'd just make a flute player that would be stuck there.

I know it's a lot to read, but you'll get the hang of it after a bunch of games and trying things out. Use bombs strategically to clear away big heads that are covering up smaller ones so they aren't forever trapped, stack your heads up to combo down to the next biggest head, and make ideal use of the play area (i.e. don't build up to a big head somewhere inaccessible, like on top of a stack in a corner where you'll never be able to reach it). Even with all the skill, some RNG will come into play, such as being given good cats in a good order, or the physics not screwing you over somehow, like with a bad roll or a bad combo. Keep at it, and you'll get a run where you get all ten cats. Once you have them, don't get greedy. Strategically stack them to end your run as soon as you have the last four cats on screen so you don't accidentally make a combo that eliminates one of them!

There are 10 achievements with a total of 1000 points

Drummers Party!

25
Get 9 drummers on stage
Refer to Piano Bar (75G) for more information.
Bass Party!

50
Get 8 bass players on stage
Refer to Piano Bar (75G) for more information.
Conga's Party!

50
Get 7 percussionists on stage
Refer to Piano Bar (75G) for more information.
Go Rhythm Guitars!

50
Get 6 rhythm guitarists on stage
Refer to Piano Bar (75G) for more information.
Piano Bar

75
Get 5 pianists on stage
For all of these achievements related to the smaller cats, there is absolutely no reason you'd have so many of each on screen at once since you'll normally be combining them to make bigger ones. Therefore, to get these achievements, you'll actually be using a similar strategy to Less than 100! (125G). You goal is to space out cats, touch only ones that are different, stack differing ones, cover up one type with another so you can safely drop one without combining them, etc. If you did the base game completion, this will be very straightforward. As noted in the roadmap, don't try for everything at once; try for, for example, the white cats and the yellow cats first, then try for another two, or just reset and try for others. The more you try to do at once, the harder it'll be. It's way easier to just do one or two at a time then quickly reset or change gears to do another.
The Brass Band!

100
Get 4 trumpeters on stage
Refer to Better Than a Watermelon? (200G) for more information.
Tuatha de Danann

125
Get 3 flutists on stage
Refer to Better Than a Watermelon? (200G) for more information.
Voice Choir

150
Get 2 singers on stage
Refer to Better Than a Watermelon? (200G) for more information.
Vivaldi is Happy!

175
Get 2 violinists on stage
Refer to Better Than a Watermelon? (200G) for more information.
Better Than a Watermelon?

200
Get 1 lead guitarist on stage
All of these achievements related to the bigger cats are ones you would likely get naturally while trying to score high points anyway. One nice thing about these achievements is that they count cats that are on screen even for a split second in mid-combo. For example, you have one violinist on screen, and one singer next to it. You combo combine cats from flutist to singer right up to a second violinist that immediately combines to make the lead guitarist. Even if you physically don't see the second violinist on screen, it existed even for a frame during your combo and that still counts. You therefore don't need to worry about, for example, keeping two singers or two violinists apart on screen for their achievements. Likewise for the flutists, have one on screen and then even if another two instantly combine to make a singer, that'll still count as three flutists on screen for the achievement. The only one you may have to purposely try for is four trumpeters (the afro cats). However, thanks to that cat's immobility, you likely often find yourself with multiple of these cats as you play anyway. Refer to +20k! (150G) if you need any additional tips on creating the bigger cats, but if you finished the base game this will cause no problems.