Alien Shooter TD lives up to every single word in its name

Gemcraft is just such a deep and comprehensive package. I haven’t reviewed it because I don’t feel like I’ve wrapped my head around it.

But, yeah, it is pretty dry. You have to be willing to get all cerebral with your tower defense, because it’s sure not going to appeal to your inner action hero.

Hmm, you’d almost think the less powerful weapons – which are cheaper to supply – remain useful the further you get into the game. Imagine that! :)

I kind of bristle at calling Infested Planet a tower defense game. It’s way way too good for that. I consider it a bona fide RTS.

I bet that still holds up. In fact, I bet it’s still installed on my iPad.

I love this comment. I wish I’d read it earlier so I could have stolen it.

It’s getting harder and harder to troll you guys.

But I’m not a turtler. I don’t tend to turtle in RTSs for the simple fact that I’m usually playing against people who aren’t as good as me. Not because I’m really good, but because most of my friends don’t play RTSs as much as me. So it’s usually more effective to boom or just rush.

-Tom

So far, I’ve done two endless modes. The 2nd one it says I’m in 93rd spot.

But to really compete on these endless leaderboards, I think you’ll need to get all your skills maxed out. Endless modes really start getting difficult about level 25 or so and ramp up pretty devastatingly, almost like they really don’t want you to get past level 30.

Did you try any of the endless modes?

The endless modes seemed a bit pointless in terms of return on time spent. I only got a few hundred bucks, whereas I would have gotten a few thousand and some crafting mats just replaying a level in less time. Does it get more lucrative if you last longer or something?

-Tom

No, time spent is not nearly as lucrative as playing a level on easy. You do get a lot more mats in endless, but I find I can get more mats simply by buying crates & recycling the lower grade weapons.

Endless is more of a test to see how far you can get with a certain setup. On the first endless I got to level 30, the 2nd one I got to level 28 before before being vanquished.

I messed with the missile guy a bit and he can work (especially combined with lots of freezing). I just feel that the roles plasma and missile fulfill are so similar (although not exactly the same) but plasma is so much better.

Similar to that i feel like laser competes against sniper and at least in my experience, sniper seems more useful.

I’d be curious about your general go to party configuration. I realize that this changes by a tower or two depending on the map but just a general squad. For me at least I basically take cryo and plasma to every map except for when i was specifically messing with missile.

I do think if they allowed 5 tower picks, i would use the other towers a lot more.

Maybe i will save up a bunch of money and check out a fire setup (flame thrower instead of cryo, burning lasers).

Yes, i had to start doing that around level 7 or so.

It is a fine line though as the low cost weapons tend to do absolutely no damage to some enemies. This is countered by having high level soldiers with very high quality weapons that don’t cost a lot. Also explosives during the first couple waves (especially since i feel like a map is almost useless if i don’t get 100% base).

The game is EXTREMELY stingy with money.

You can make a lot more money by being stingy on using soldiers and not filling their ammo up on the last wave. If you notice the score sheet at the end of the round, easy = X1, medium = X2 and hard = X3. So the more money you have left over at the end of the round, the more $$ you get as a reward.

Also - I hope your shooting the red crates to get your free weapon on every round. That can either be used or recycled.

For me, the first 5-10 levels I had what I thought was a winning combo and was diligently going through all the difficulty levels. Then I hit level 15. Ugh. Still haven’t completed it on hard.

I would kill for a laser that had a cost of 120-150. When the game throws armored bugs at you the first round, it’s very hard. I guess I didn’t get a good RNG roll on any of my crates for a cheap laser. (and I unwisely sold the default weapon it comes with b/c I thought the damage was so bad).

On the weapon screens, there is a sigma (sum) sign. So when you load up a weapon on a soldier, notice that because that tells you the buy-in price.

Yes, 15 is an extremely difficult one that i still haven’t completed beyond easy.

ALmost no starting money and enemies coming from multiple paths at once. Even an 87 cost weapon for a laser soldier, they still cost 147.

This is one of those levels where i think you need SUPER good gear and super high levels (grinded from other levels) to do.

I think i need to slow down and upgrade my cheap weapons more. Changes of weapons are much less common now so it is probably worth it.

Well I finally got level 15 on hard with a liberal use of explosives at the beginning.

I’m finding there really is no “magic” combo, I’m frequently having to swap out weapons to try different combinations.

I finally maxed out all my soldiers + have topped out on most of the weapons.

Then I went back to first endless, water treatment & @Effidian has done it again. He is very good at sussing out the most efficient combination. Now I’ll have to figure out how’s he’s doing it. He’s ranked #42 and I’m hanging out at #160

Out of curiosity, wondering how good these weapons are. They are random, but this is a LOT of buying of crates and swapping out. Here is my loadout - the last weapon in each group is the most powerful.

What weapons do you have that are more powerful? (curious whether I should keep doing RNG on the crates)

Hey Tman. I actually picked this up based on this thread and the Tower Defense thread. I went back on the first endless after I had realized how good snipers were. I had gotten through most levels using Plasma, Lasers, Fire and Machine Guns. But then as I was trying to beat the Hard and Expert levels, ended up using Plasma, Snipers, Cryo and Machine Guns. All my current endless scores are with that combo.

I could never really find a use for the Shotgun or Missile units and after I came back to Snipers, the Laser forces seemed to pail in comparison. As Murbella mentioned earlier, if there were more than 4 tower slots, I’d probably have used more.

On weapons, the top weapon for most classes have a rating around 790, with the exception of Cryo (~190), Fire (~290) and Plasma (~600). So it looks like you are still missing a few of the top weapons. Keep investing in those crates. :) The top tier Plasma is absolutely insane and I’m sure you’ll kill my endless scores once you have that.

One issue this game has is that only the first couple waves seem to be challenging. You can usually get your layout setup in the first couple waves, and then I ended up doing something else while the level finished. Fun though.

A note on level 15, Snipers is what got that one for me (above easy). But I was upgraded when I came back to it, so I’m not sure how effective that would have been the first time around.

Missing one achievement, kill 500k creeps. Considering I’m at less than half of that, with everything done, I’m not going for it.

Hey thanks for confirming I need to keep looking for weapons!

I like to think of Alien Shooter TD as a the XCOM of TD games. Those first few waves can be brutal! But if you think about it, you have less time wasted due to some leak late in the game.

I’m not finished with all the levels, but there are a few later levels which have some challenges in later levels - there was one that had a barricade that could be destroyed, taking away a huge path, and a few very short paths that needed to be managed.

I like Shotguns because they not only do damage but knock creeps back, but they suck against flyers and small fast movers. I have started to incorporate more snipers once I got a decent gun - but it looks like I can get an even better sniper rifle if I keep hunting!

Corrections:
“Some tower defense games let you get in there to do your own [shooting].”
“from [its] identity”
“The [soldiers] just stand there”

I think I may have broken it

I can’t find this info anywhere else online, so I’ll ask here:

Does every mission have a red supply crate, or only some of them?

Wow, I couldn’t remember so I fired it up & through level 5, yes every level has a red crate.

This game is SOOOO good, I’m probably going to replay it again ;-)

I eventually located the crates on the missions that I didn’t think had them. Turns out I just wasn’t squinting hard enough at the various brown things. :)

ANOTHER QUESTION: Do the contents of the crates change depending on the difficulty level? As far as I can tell it’s no, and doing it on Easy or Extreme gives the same contents?

Then Tom Chick needs to reassess his score and knocks another star off!

Snagged a copy of this, so far I am only 7 missions in and I am liking it!

Going back to master the levels is fun and brings in serious money. Also did you guys notice there is an option to auto refill ammo? Its in the game settings menu.

Thanks for bumping this thread @Pod

This was a serious hidden gem! You’d think Tom would write a review or something! :p