You really need to check out Geospark. It is the king of 1 minute time wasters.
JMR
1782
Can you invert the y-axis for aiming? I looked and didn’t see anything :( I can’t play a shooter without inverting the y-axis dammit!
Joe_M
1783
I think I could spend all day kicking chickens in Wolfenstein RPG.
Whoo-hoo! Just went from around 11,000 to around 35,000 in geospark! Quite satisfying, even if it’s still not close to you crazy folk. Openfeint name is WhollySchmidt, of course.
You might call us crazy now, but once we were just like you.
Damn, I’m still stuck at 11,000. What’s the secret? Tell me!
Hard to say. 11,000 seems so easy these days. Oh sorry, that’s not helping. :)
Well, the key is to get long chains as much as possible. Your score for each “kill” is additive by 10 while you’re on a chain, so a chain of - say - 10 will net you 570 instead of 100 for individual kills. If you get a X2 then drag that into the chain for double the score (best if you drag it in as the first object in the chain).
Remember that preventing a collision should come before anything else. Don’t get so caught up in your great chain! (that happens a lot) Also, the smart bombs are your best friend - use them all the time to clear the screen and get some breathing room. You can continue a great chain using a smart bomb, as it clears everything except the shape in your chain. Be careful with that, though, because the longer the chain the greater the gravitational effect around your finger. And finally, never ever be afraid to just pop individual sparks if it starts getting hectic. Chains are great an’ all, but survival comes first.
I got 18k on my first play-through. I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I got to around 12k before I realized shapes of the same type don’t collide, and if I tap them when they’re on top of each other I get double points.
But I figured I had to be doing something wrong, because I took me about 15 minutes to get to 18k, and I remembered you guys all saying how it was great, quick game… Which at 15 minutes, it wasn’t quick anymore.
dermot
1789
Okay, can someone tell me what the hell the 4th part of the Geospark tutorial is trying to tell me?
Drastic
1790
The longer you hold down your finger on a spark you’re dragging around, the more gravity effect there is–other sparks get drawn towards it faster and faster.
I’m impressed that you got to 12k by just tapping shapes. I usually resort to that when I need a breather and my brain stops processing shapes, as it does after a while. When I’m about to drag a blue pacman thingy into a green spiral because they look the same, I need a break.
Tom, you need to update my score again because it seems the only way I can beat my previous score is after you take the time to do that! At the moment I’m at that stage where every game ends in a stupid, easily-avoided mistake.
Oh, you need to DRAG that bonus onto other shapes? I always just clicked on it, like on the bomb and the 1up icon…
Be careful with that, though, because the longer the chain the greater the gravitational effect around your finger.
Interesting, that’s also something I had not figured out from the tutorial.
By the way, what happens when you chain two shapes that are already connected by a spark, and one matches? Does that work, or blow up your chain, or can you now chain both shapes?
I believe if you just click on it, you get nada. What X2 does is to double the additive score for each shape in the chain, from the moment you include X2 in that chain. So instead of 10, 20, 30, 40 it becomes 20, 40, 60, 80 and so on. Obviously you get maximum benefit if you start the chain with a X2, but anytime you’re in a big chain it’s usually worth picking it up.
As far as I can tell, the spark between two different shapes is simply a visual warning that they’re getting too close. You can snatch like-shapes off the spark into your chain with no ill effect, as long as you don’t accidentally drag your finger too close to the wrong shape (the cause of a great many “goddamn it!” moments).
33,610! Knowing how the x2 icon works definitely helps a lot…
I noticed that shapes sometimes come in herds – a bunch of the same type appearing simultaneously around the borders. So I’m usually just quickly picking off singles and pairs to avoid getting swamped, and wait for the herd to get a big point boost.
Another question: what are the rainbow-colored bonus items that aren’t bombs? They seem to have no effect.
They match any chain I’ve been in the middle of, I don’t know if they do anything else. Maybe they let you switch colors mid-chain or something, but I’ve been too cautious to try.
Early on you can afford to let the screen fill a bit more and take a few more risks with chains of perhaps 5-10 shapes, but later it’s all about the herds.
If you tap it in isolation, it slows everything back down again. If you include it as part of a chain… I’m not actually sure. It may have the same effect but I haven’t noticed.
Equis
1797
The herd often comes when you’ve managed to clear the entire screen of shapes. So try to do that when you see a x2 Icon appearing and you can rack up 1000 points in a short order.
The Rainbow bonus slows down the shapes, though not that noticeably until the speedy yellow spinny shapes come into play.
99,700 points, and I can repeat that performance. Just that much shy of 100,000 points.
I just jumped up to 71,090, passing krok and Chick, but I imagine the lead will be short-lived. I hate that I lost because of a missed tap; I was doing much better than usual at avoiding outright mistakes (although crashing one of those drunken speeding yellow sparks into a golden peanut was how I lost my 1up).
After a few more rounds in the 50,000–60,000 range, I think I might be done with geoSpark. At this point, I’m losing to mis-registered taps far more often than any mis-matched collisions when dragging or failure to respond to impending collisions. I’m not saying it’s necessarily the game’s fault or that you other guys are just luckier than me; there’s probably still significant skill involved in hitting quick taps more precisely that could help my game if I practiced, but that doesn’t really appeal to me. Improving my speed at recognizing and responding was fun, but I’m not sure the draw of just tapping better will keep me interested.
51,150! Take that, Tom Chick! Curse you, Wholly Schmidt!
That rainbow icon does indeed slow down the game, but it’s only noticeable when it’s already fairly hectic. And I noticed that herds of a type often appear when only sparks of the same type are left on the screen. Also, I can’t have the iPod in a protective leather pouch while playing because sparks often need to be tapped right when they are appearing at the border of the screen.
So once I stop accidentally dragging different shapes on one another I should be all set for 100k points…
