There currently is no co-op or multiplayer beyond competing on scores. A level editor has been mildly hinted at but is far from guaranteed right now.
There’s about 15 distinct enemies and 10 different tower types, each with three levels of upgrades. The game introduces these as you go through missions, which makes for a pretty good progression of new stuff to keep you interested as you play through the main story mode. I haven’t actually finished every mission yet, but there’s around twentyish story missions, most of which have a “hard mode” challenge (in which the attackers are simply tougher) and a “special” challenge (stuff like no upgrades for towers, limited resource pool available from the start, only one enemy type but in huge swarms, etc). There’s also a relaxed mode available if you just want to see shit blown up.
As mentioned I haven’t finished the main story yet (Waste Disposal is kicking my sorry ass), but I’m pretty impressed with the level of polish and detail that went into this game. Each level has a unique 3d background to keep your eyes busy. Tower upgrades are distinct in visuals and sound, transforming your machine gun tower’s diminutive pitter patter into an aggressive and satisfying BRRRAATTT. The game itself is, for me, rock solid and hasn’t crashed once yet, though the option to turn the mildly annoying tutorial computer voice guy off isn’t working 100% for some reason.
Later levels present a lot of options in that the placement of your towers has a significant impact on what path enemies take, meaning you’ll need some time and replays to find the optimal playthrough and score. I haven’t really gotten into this myself, but there’s at least some depth to be found in searching for the optimal solution.
I caved, and am glad I did. I’ve been alternating between this and Trials 2 (super-cheap in the Steam sale) for the past few days even though I have about ten full-price AAA games sitting in my queue waiting to be played. It’s basic tower defense, but beautiful, and I really hope a level editor is released.
It look good, and after playing a friends copy I’m going to say it is good - but not $20 good when there are free tower defense games out that play just as well and are possibly funner.
Any particular hints for the last level? I tried it a few times so far and made it to the 25th wave, but that’s it. My most successful approaches were the ones where I blocked the path to the core at one of the marked locations on the picture, and then set up a choke point at the other. Usually with two or three guns, an inferno tower and maybe also a concussion tower. As soon as I’m done with setting up a basic missile defense at the lower part of the map, I also build at least one temporal and meteor tower near the choke point. I’ve also tried out more cannon-laden approaches, but those didn’t really work out either.
The biggest problem for me are those little very fast floating thingies, and seekers that spawn them. The usually arrive just in time when some heavily shielded units return from the core. They will be killed upon theor second entry into my choking point, but the little bastards then show up and snag them. Andf since there are so many of them, a combination of meteor + inferno + concussion + temporal sometimes isn’t enough to guard all your pieces then.
Are you sure there will be one? If so, I may wait for that. I love tower defense games, though, so I may not be able to hold out long enough for the Live version.
This is basically what I did. The yellow lines are the path the guys walk, the green stuff are towers. Concentrate Cannons where the C’s are, put Meteors where the M’s are, and put 1 or 2 Temporal towers where the T is (that’s your major choke point, obviously). You will also need a couple of Missile towers near the core, so don’t forget those. I beat the level on my first try without losing any cores and was disappointed it wasn’t harder. I got stuck for a long while on Waste Disposal, so it was kind of anti-climactic.
Cheers for that little diagram JPR, managed to go from only rescuing 4 cores to not losing a single one and hitting 28 on the scoreboard :)
The key for the other tunnel is to have them join in to the meat grinder right in the middle on the lower level, the other towers you put up as per the diagram should already lead them this way.
I’m going to put it out there that the meteor towers aren’t that important, but a correctly place temporal tower can save your life (I use the top right corner spot near the T marked on JPR’s map, fully upgraded. It gets a massive area.)
Some people on the leaderboards seem to have found a way to crazily accelerate their scores, the top ranked person on the last level has a score nearly 10 times mine.
One thing not to overlook is the placement of inferno towers. Keep in mind that for a long line of enemies, the inferno tower would usually be locked in the same final position (as it tracks the first target all the way until it exits its fire arc, then continues switching to following targets which would be almost exactly the same place) so you should ensure that aliens are walking directly away from you inferno tower to maximise the duration of the heat and damage application (ie place the towers at the right angles of your turret mazes).
Echo (someone who worked on Defense Grid) explains this in detail. It made a huge difference in my games.
Ya, you can just keep the last guy walking on a bridge(or built section with no damaging turrets, like temporals), back and forth, taking no damage, meanwhile you collect the interest on your resources. Not worth doing unless you’ve an OCD.
This level totally bugged me, so I ended up mapping it in excel(mmm, electronic grid paper). I have to admit it was really satisfying to set up the ‘long road’ achievement, though unfortunately neither diversity nor full house fired up(despite checking 3 times to make sure i satisfied the requirements).
Oh, if you’d like my excel map, pm me and i’ll email you.
I had a go at this, but it seems the interest stops accumulating after awhile and your amount of resource sticks at what it was. Perhaps the developers figured out this gambit and added a timeout?
Yes, I PM’d the dev’s b/c I was trying to figure out how these guys were getting these ridiculous scores, and they confirmed that interest stops when the last wave spawns and then at the end, they credit you for that interest if you survive the last wave.
Apparently there was a trainer (not sure what that means) out and it allowed people to amass large scores but they haven’t cleaned everything out yet.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but are you talking about trapping an alien on a bridge by blocking it with towers? I thought they would walk through if there was no clear path.
He’s talking about building and then selling and then building and then selling a tower that changes the optimal path so that the guys run back and forth indefinitely. I don’t do that stuff, and I haven’t sold many towers. This game doesn’t include a sell-time penalty or anything like Desktop Tower Defense, does it?
