Awesomenauts free weekend

[madcow]

I've gotten this game awhile ago and I still play it, it's quite a fun game. With both casual (and hardcore) appeal, as a 2d platformer in a MOBA style.

It has a free weekend over on steam so if you haven't tried it yet, check it out. All the characters play differently, so give several a try before deciding if you do or don't like it. Clunk and Lonestar are both early unlocked chars that are pretty newbie friendly.

It does have bots, and I play in offline mode quite a bit. And you can earn unlocks in offline mode as well (there's no microtransactions for unlocks, though you can buy optional skins). They do major updates every two weeks roughly, and still add new characters maps, etc.

So long story short, give it a try for free if you haven't yet!

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I gave it a try with lonestar.  It's pretty fun, and basically scratches the MOBA itch though I'm not finding it nearly as fun as I did romping all over the bots in League with Ryze or Caitlyn.  Not sure exactly why that is, but I think it's because the League matches lasted longer and were more complex.  On the other hand, this one is much easier to control (can play keyboard+mouse, but also supports pure-keyboard, which is far preferable to me).

[madcow]

The bots could use work I agree, some of them are exceptionally bad. The clunk is pretty amazing, the lonestar-bot and leon-bot aren't so great.

Also make sure to crank up the bot difficulty, it can be hard to miss. It doesn't affect their AI, I believe it just gives them bigger money gain in rounds.

And the support for pure keyboard/gamepad is something I love (even though it is a bit of a disadvantage). I really dislike platformers that require mouse + keyboard to play, personal preference there I guess.

[keith.lamothe]

The bots could use work I agree, some of them are exceptionally bad. The clunk is pretty amazing, the lonestar-bot and leon-bot aren't so great.

Right now I can beat them because I push the towers down and keep them off my towers, but in champ-vs-champ fights I'm doing quite poorly.  I think with practice I could reliably get champ kills with leon (his escape mechanism is incredible, so I could stay in lane, and his hook is pretty brutal if I time it right) but with lonestar and froggy I only seem to get champ kills by accident

Also make sure to crank up the bot difficulty, it can be hard to miss. It doesn't affect their AI, I believe it just gives them bigger money gain in rounds.

How is ally bot income determined?  My allies are always signficantly "outlevelling" me (I know it's not a real level, just a gauge of total money earned, but still) even when I stay in lane and get lots of bot kills and generally get the money from the tower kills on my lane, etc.  I just can't keep up, and I'm not sure if it's because my allies are getting champ kills or jungling or what.

And the support for pure keyboard/gamepad is something I love (even though it is a bit of a disadvantage). I really dislike platformers that require mouse + keyboard to play, personal preference there I guess.

Yea, the lack of more granular aim is a theoretical disadvantage, but honestly I'm pretty sure I do better on keyboard because while the potential control is less, my actual ability to master it is far better with the simplified model.

Anyway, it's an interesting game, for sure.  Great for 5-10 minute breaks.  Will probably be able to tell in the next couple of days whether I want to pay $5 to keep the privilege

Is there a way to disable the whole-screen-glows-red-when-you-get-hit effect?  My wife can't play games with that because of migraines, but I think we'd have fun playing this in co-op.

[madcow]

I'm pretty sure bots get money over time and from killing other awesomenauts (I'm not sure if they do from killing the mobs or not). Difficulty ramps up how much they get per a second, essentially. I think it also causes them to do increased damage against turrets, giving you a bigger need to play defensive against them.

When I play against them at max difficulty, they tend to all have me outleveled.

[LaughingThesaurus]

When you kill anything, the money just sort of teleports into your pocket. If the thing is killed by a turret or the sandworm or a creep, then its money just drops on the ground for anybody to take. I've seen bots take dropped money, and I have no reason to think that bots won't be able to get turret/creep money.

[keith.lamothe]

I think with practice I could reliably get champ kills with leon (his escape mechanism is incredible, so I could stay in lane, and his hook is pretty brutal if I time it right) but with lonestar and froggy I only seem to get champ kills by accident

Ok, I'm not sure how much of it is different champs, but I did much better with Clunk, Gnaw, and Coco; with the latter going all-lightning-ball I can get 14 kills and no deaths.  I'm sure that's nothing compared to people who know what they're doing, but it's a lot better than the 0-to-1-kills and 3 deaths I was getting on the other guys

[madcow]

I really like Gnaw and Coco, those are my favorite I think. Though I've found with Coco I either do really well, or am completely useless in a match, heh.

Voltar, Clunk, and Lonestar I like as well. Voltar you can do kind of cheesy rushes against the bots which they can't respond fast enough to do anything about it - though that is less effective against players.

Yuri I want to like, but he's just so hard to play well. I just die a lot with him, heh.


As for bots gaining money, they probably do gain it through other means, but I don't think they go out of their way to get solar, they make quite a bit from their passive gains.

Edit: A leveled up Leon is painful to face. I don't really like playing as him, but a good Leon and a good Froggy G have been some of the toughest I've gone against. They can really bring your health down fast, and both have good escape abilities, and good ways to gank you as you try to run.

[keith.lamothe]

Yuri I want to like, but he's just so hard to play well. I just die a lot with him, heh.

I liked him, felt very different with the continuous flight and continuous/richocheting beam, and the mines are great fun.  But yea, not very good with him; I think I'd do better with keyboard+mouse on that one.

I've since gotten to play with Skolldir and I think he's probably my favorite now.  I'm still more effective with Coco but I just got 12 kills and 0 deaths with Skolldir (vs bots, of course, I never play MOBAs vs humans).  It's a very visceral sort of gameplay to hammer someone with the third punch (I buy the snare upgrade for that immediately) and then physically throw them backwards into my turret for processing   I wish the game tracked "assists" instead of just kills, as I got a lot of assists that game too.

[madcow]

I never really got into Skolldir, probably because I tend to prefer finese characters over tanks/brute force (Generally speaking). Though I will likely give him another shot.

I played a little this morning and tried Voltar with an army of blind-bots and only doing healing secondary. It was pretty funny to have about 6 little AI drones circling me blasting enemies, and then sending them to chase people that ran away with low health to blow up on them for the kill.

[keith.lamothe]

I never really got into Skolldir, probably because I tend to prefer finese characters over tanks/brute force (Generally speaking). Though I will likely give him another shot.

Interestingly he's actually pretty squishy and has a faster run speed than average.  He's very high-dps if you get in range, though, and all three of his abilities can make it harder for the enemy to get away.  Throw has the obvious effect of putting them behind you (which can be immediately lethal depending on what's back there) but you can also buy a slow-effect for it.  Earthquake has a purchaseable root.  And his normal attack has a purchaseable stun for the 3rd hit of the combo.

Combined with the damage of his combo and the fact that he can run fast enough (while attacking) to catch or keep up with most champs... well, let's just say it's a good thing for balance that he's not tanky

[keith.lamothe]

Been turning the AI level up now that I've got the hang of it, and on 3-out-of-5 it just gave me a really good run for my money.

I was playing Skolldir again and just messing around going for max champ kills and not pushing either lane at all, and it showed me that this wasn't gonna fly.  I was doing pretty well on kills when I realized that both of our front towers were low, and the enemy Lonestar had them both down pretty fast.  I went all-out laning but they punched down the back row of towers before long anyway.  We got into their base first but couldn't stay there long enough to secure the win.  The enemy was buffing up a fair bit and the enemy Clunk demonstrated an alarming aptitude at turning me into Vikingburger.  I spent a lot of time dead before I learned to play more cautiously

I played stay-at-home-Viking for a while to slow down the whittling our base health was taking.  The viking throw is actually pretty good for an emergency "get the enemy minions off!".  Things were looking like I was going to eventually lose because we weren't getting into the enemy base (it didn't help that they still had the lower back tower) and the enemy kept getting into ours.  But my cautious play and easy access to shop-heal let me wipe the enemy champs one-at-a-time and during those 20-ish second lulls our team made good progress and took down the last enemy tower.

After this things were more even but I still figured we'd lose because our base was at like 15% health.  Eventually I went out on some brief expeditions to help push the lanes, and aside from Clunk burgerizing me once it went well.  After another enemy-wipe I rushed the enemy base and did some damage to the enemy core but got torn from 100% to dead by Froggy doing that spin thing while I was right next to the core.  Ow.  And enemies were in our base hitting our critically-low core too so I figured that was that, but while my respawn counter was still counting down the rest of our team took out the enemy core for the win.

Wow, that was a close one   Attached the post-match stats for the curious; that's definitely the highest numbers I've seen in the game.


Things probably would have gone a lot better if I'd bothered to lane in the first 5 minutes, but it's good to see some challenge either way.

[madcow]

Sounds like you're enjoying it

And yeah, Clunk-bot is a beast. Easily the best of the bots. Lots of health and perfectly timed bites. And at the higher difficulties you really have to play defensive or they will overrun you, they put up a good fight even if you can outfight them 1v1.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Sounds like you're enjoying it

And yeah, Clunk-bot is a beast. Easily the best of the bots. Lots of health and perfectly timed bites. And at the higher difficulties you really have to play defensive or they will overrun you, they put up a good fight even if you can outfight them 1v1.

I just want to take a moment and say that Awesomenauts is fantastic...
and I also want to say that Clunk vs. Clunk mirror matches are awful. You both health drain each other, then self destruct each other, either dying at the same time, or retreating at the same time with roughly the same amount of health. I have never had more even trades with any other champ. Seriously.

[Hearteater]

Picked this up on sale and enjoying it a lot.  Playing vs humans is pretty painless and straight-forward.  Just hit Quick Match, select your naut+loadout and go.  Note that sometimes you join a game that is a bit in progress, but you apparently get a little extra money in that case.  If someone leaves, they are replaced by a bot.  Since anyone can leave if they don't like it, I've heard nearly no chat and it is kind of like playing against really clever bots .  Note that the "leagues" go from 9 to 1, with 9 being what you start in.  Just ignore it honestly and have fun.  You'll encounter some incredibly interesting tactics that bots just don't use.