Arcen Games

Other => Off Topic => : TheVampire100 April 30, 2015, 10:15:46 PM

: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 April 30, 2015, 10:15:46 PM
It's finally here, teh Steam version of Gameinabottle's latest Tower defense Game. Gemcraft is a series of uniqe TD games were you don't build specific towers, instead you craft gems with different propoerties and you can mix those gems to combine their powers. This gives you nearly unlimted possibilities how to play the game. Long range snipers with chain hit? Is there. Slowing Poison? Also in the game. How about a tower that crushes you with hue damge and get's even stronger the more it attacks? It's all in there.
For me the series is probably the best TD games ever. It is complex and hard, be ready to get crushed more than once. The high difficulty comes with the huge varity to play the game. The game has also a roleplaying component, you can unlock skills and level them, you get better yourself the more you play and there is even equipment.
The game features three basic towers. The normal tower is the simple shooting tower that you know from other TD games. It uses 100% of the proberties of the inserted gem. than there are traps. Traps deal far less damage but their special proberties like poison, slow, chain hit, wirk a lot better that the tower gems. Then tehre are amplifiers. They don't attack but add damage, range, speed and even special properties to nearby towers and traps, making them more deadly if used right.
The game features 9 different gems, slow, posion, mana steal (money steal), bloodbound (gets stronger with more hits), manabound (gets stronger with more mana), chain hit (hits multiple targets at once), critical damage, armor destruction and life suppress (monster regenrate heal, this gem prevents this).
You can mix the gems like you want, creating the dream gem you ever wanted. the game is been known to get literally destroyed by ambitious fans that find out every exploit that there is possible, making them unstoppable. Maybe yo want to be the one that finds a new exploit.

The game cost's fully 10$ and is 10% off on Steam. Grab it now while it's hot.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/296490/
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: orzelek May 01, 2015, 06:59:22 AM
I've been waiting for this one from some time.

I liked it in flash version but it always feels a bit less then a game as flash :D
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: eRe4s3r May 01, 2015, 07:38:02 AM
Yeah count me in ;) One of my favorite TD's (well, the flash one) and SO much customization. And having it proper also means 419 achievements to get, hah ;)
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 May 01, 2015, 08:20:55 AM
The Steam version does not add many new features. Mainly the Iron Wizard Mode (New Game+?), better resolutions/graphics, full screen mode and of course included Magic Pouch (Premium Web Version).
I have completed already the first tile but that's the simpelst and fastest one. After that it gets only harder.

Lol, 419 achievments. More than AI War with all expansions purchased. That's a lot of stuff to do.

What is a little sad, no Chain Hit as starting gem. But on the other side, starting with the red gem has made you a little op because you cpuld apply all the other traits on multiple enemies at once. I'm curious where it is now, ther emust be either a new tile or it is added to an old one.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Cyborg May 01, 2015, 07:54:53 PM
Looks good, but I don't see any mazing? Compared to defense grid, which lets you maze.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: KingIsaacLinksr May 01, 2015, 08:09:13 PM
Looks good, but I don't see any mazing? Compared to defense grid, which lets you maze.

I see a bit of mazing in the trailer....I think.

*shudder* Don't get me started on DG2 though...what a disappointment.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Aklyon May 01, 2015, 08:17:48 PM
I thought DG2 was alright, but I don't put a huge amount of hope on my non-creeper world TD games in the first place. Either they're alright or they aren't to me, for the most part.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Cyborg May 01, 2015, 08:48:29 PM
Looks good, but I don't see any mazing? Compared to defense grid, which lets you maze.

I see a bit of mazing in the trailer....I think.

*shudder* Don't get me started on DG2 though...what a disappointment.


Where you can redirect the flow of the enemies by placing towers?
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: KingIsaacLinksr May 01, 2015, 08:58:24 PM
Looks good, but I don't see any mazing? Compared to defense grid, which lets you maze.

I see a bit of mazing in the trailer....I think.

*shudder* Don't get me started on DG2 though...what a disappointment.


Where you can redirect the flow of the enemies by placing towers?

Hmm, rewatching it, it seems like you redirect it with "blocks" of sand/dirt/whatever material that is. It's not with the towers themselves. I don't know, I haven't played any of the Gemcraft games.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 May 01, 2015, 09:05:41 PM
Looks good, but I don't see any mazing? Compared to defense grid, which lets you maze.
Gemcraft has some basic mazing depending on the levels, some more, some less. If you want a Gemcraft with heavy mazing, look for Gemcraft labyrinth on the internet. This was (like the name suggests) designed around mazing. There was a level in GCL that has literally nothing, only a huge free space, ideal for your own maze. Also one of the hardest levels int he game.

You can build blocks and towers in the way of enemies and they have to move around them. Blocks are cheaper and are easy mazing material but they cannot attack. You can however always build towers on top of blocks, so they are good for inital mazes until you get enough mana for towers.

I have also the opinion that a good TD game is not defined by the ability to maze it or not. Soemtimes mazing makes the game also a lot of unbalanced and harder and trust me, GC is already hard enought with all the possibilities. You can also control the flow o enemies via monster nests. IOn a lot of levels there are these monster nests where monsters spawn. You can destroy them, so monster do not spawn there anymore, letting you control where you want monsters to spawn.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Draco18s May 01, 2015, 09:09:02 PM
Gemcraft is OK in my opinion.  Not outstanding, but definitely a solid game.

Just not one I'd put money on.  The last (?) iteration they did on Kongregate I never got anywhere near completing.  I just didn't feel compelled to continue playing.

Also, pure gems are better than mixed color every time.  You can get away with dual-color most of the time, but it tends to be hit-or-miss on whether or not two colors combine to be better than the sum of their parts, as often the penalty for mixing colors outweighs the benefits for having two abilities.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 May 01, 2015, 09:17:00 PM
Dual-Gems deal more damage, have better range and attack speed,  pure gems are only better in terms of special abilities.
It depends on what style you use of course, raw power, more abilities or combined stuff. You could also go all out on traps and spells.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: tigersfan May 04, 2015, 06:47:00 AM
I've put a TON of time into this game so far. I'm loving it. I'ts super polished, I've not run into a single (even minor) bug.

Also, yeah, the focus here is absolutely not on mazing, so if that's your thing maybe look somewhere else, but personally, I'm not a big fan of mazing.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Mánagarmr May 04, 2015, 06:51:17 AM
Ancient DOS Games made a filler video about it here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qEc6sUxZdo). This was about the old Flash-based game though.


I'm curious: Have the game moved to a new engine with the Steam release? If so, I'm probably getting it soon. I'm not to fond of flash based games. They tend to be wonky as crap.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Draco18s May 04, 2015, 08:45:29 AM
I glanced at the screenshots the game has on its store page.

They are super-busy with non-essential graphical material, to the point that on one I wasn't sure I was looking at path with monsters on it, or terrain.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Mánagarmr May 04, 2015, 09:39:39 AM
I glanced at the screenshots the game has on its store page.

They are super-busy with non-essential graphical material, to the point that on one I wasn't sure I was looking at path with monsters on it, or terrain.
It takes a while for the eyes to get used to it, this much I know from the ADG video. But once it is in motion it's actually not that hard to tell what is what. (That being said, I haven't actually played it myself)
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Draco18s May 04, 2015, 09:53:22 AM
Oh I'm sure.  It just reinforces my opinion that the older Gemcrafts were better.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: eRe4s3r May 04, 2015, 10:15:25 AM
There are options to highlight monsters and paths ;)
Ancient DOS Games made a filler video about it here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qEc6sUxZdo). This was about the old Flash-based game though.


I'm curious: Have the game moved to a new engine with the Steam release? If so, I'm probably getting it soon. I'm not to fond of flash based games. They tend to be wonky as crap.

It's using Adobe Air for Steam integration and Flash as engine. But the game is pretty solid as long as you don't push too far into the insane end-game where hit points are beyond trillions ;). At that point you gonna play with all graphics on lowest possible anyway :) Considering towers get fire rate around gem level 30 that literally fill your entire screen with bullets.

I am Wizard level 460 or something after I actually managed to eek out an endurance run for 11million and the next one for 33 million XP so as you can guess I am probably putting too much effort, thought and time into this as well :) Have to say though, it's super nice to finish such a run and see your level bar just infinite loop the level up +7's. The level up system is very addicting, the amulet requires a lot of planning and thought too.

If you push the game you also need to combine your gems properly.. basically you need tons of strategy to get beyond wave 300 ;)
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Draco18s May 04, 2015, 10:38:49 AM
It's using Adobe Air for Steam integration and Flash as engine. But the game is pretty solid as long as you don't push too far into the insane end-game where hit points are beyond trillions ;).

Trillions, pssh.
Try scientific notation on for size (http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~mmj29/temp/Lyne329b.jpg).

Actually that screenshot doesn't show how much health or damage things had.  But I remember that the forward gun* had a per-shot damage listing in the neighborhood of 4×1018 or so. :P

I don't hold the highscore any more, as the game updated breaking things into difficulty levels, which reset all the scores.  And I haven't bothered re-achieving it.**  Then again, no one else has either, due to the sheer tedium (I was not the first person to discover this particular cheese, it was/is a long-standing tactic, I was just sadistic about placement in order to maximize the result).

But yeah, same response as to end game Gemcraft: mind-numbingly boring due to the level of perfection required.

*For those not familiar with Onslaught 2, the laser guns would chain.  When a laser gun fired, any laser gun anywhere on the field that had a shot ready and had the firee within its range would fire into the firee and add its damage * 1.25, and then every laser gun within range of those would fire...  So a chain of four would do 576% the damage of 1 tower.  Check the screenshot, look at how long that chain is.  149 turrets, that if the only enemy is at the very start of the path, each tower is capable of being boosted by only 1 other tower.  No splits, maximizing that exponential.   The other towers there are all damage/range exchangers.  +300% damage -66% range.

**The game took over 6 hours, for most of which I was AFK (once I'd pixel-perfect placed all the towers using Windows accessibility options and Flash's zoom feature and got everything upgraded just right I could walk away).
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 May 04, 2015, 01:25:21 PM
Yeah, Gemcraft gets really hard, especially int he endgame. You will need a lot of manafarms and supergems to deal with most monsters. And don't get me started on marked giants or shadows (god, I HATE sahdows. Why do they have to disobey the pause button?).
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Draco18s May 04, 2015, 03:25:52 PM
Why do they have to disobey the pause button?

Ok, that's a dick move and terrible design.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 May 04, 2015, 03:35:47 PM
Well, at least they are slowed down to a significant amount but they are a kind of "super boss" that is also a threat when you pause the game (breaking the fourth wall as well).
I don't like it because you will loose time to plan your strategey but at least they appear very rarely in the game.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Draco18s May 04, 2015, 03:47:01 PM
No no, see, it's an enemy that breaks all of the previously established rules.  That's a serious no-no in game design: your rules must have internal consistency.  Every other effect stops when the game is paused, ergo Shadows should stop when the game is paused.  If you don't want that to be true, then you shouldn't add a pause option, but instead a super-slow mode where it's clear that everything is running at 1/10th (or whatever) speed.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 May 04, 2015, 03:59:59 PM
For you this might be the case, for thousands of other players (actually I don't know the exact number but since the game is successful it has to be some serious amount of players) this seems to be okay.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: eRe4s3r May 04, 2015, 09:18:38 PM
The shadows just punish you for bad tower layouting ;) If you ever encounter a shadow you can't beat then your maze would fall within the next 10 waves anyway. And "normal" speed is already very slow imo.

If you ever encounter "her" or the "leviathans" in an actual round you will know that the game loves pulling this kind of stuff too ;) Ignoring pause button? How about locking your controls and hiding your entire GUI? ;) (for 1 wave only)

And shadows are clearly designed to offer you some real challenge, as even in death they can annoy you greatly (especially when you use walls to guide everyone path your orb in 2 tile distance, as you have to do on some maps...

Ps.: Enemies on wave 300~ have 3x1020 HP's ;) And regenerate 3x1019 per second. So if you forgot building a proper suppression chain you learn the hard way how losing feels ;) (This largely depends on your battle-traits, so for some on wave 300 it may well be even more insane.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 May 04, 2015, 11:02:10 PM
I have still my hand sfull on collecting all the gem skills, so far I've only gotten poison.
I don't feel I make progress but that's just a feeling because the game is so huge. And the Steam version got even bigger with a lot more levels.

At least my skill layout is this time a lot more organized as in the web version because I'm already experienced with it and know what I need and what I don't need.
I've always been a heavy trap user, so traps are very high skilled in my case.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Mánagarmr November 15, 2016, 04:45:06 AM
N-n-n-n-necropost!

In case people are still struggling with understanding the finer mechanics of this game, I've started a Tutorial/Let's play series. (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbzG_U1QRBBZLiLjazR7_EO_om_T81YhG)
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 November 15, 2016, 09:30:56 AM
I'm jealous at that talisman.
Watching you play makes me want to play the game myself again. But I know if I do so, I cannot stop for a while.

Also, two of your videos in playlist are marked as private.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Mánagarmr November 15, 2016, 11:32:19 AM
I'm jealous at that talisman.
Watching you play makes me want to play the game myself again. But I know if I do so, I cannot stop for a while.

Also, two of your videos in playlist are marked as private.
It took a while to build that talisman. And yes, the two private videos aren't released yet, so that's correct.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Misery November 15, 2016, 10:34:45 PM
Huh, a TD game that actually looks like it has real depth and strategy.  Here I'd thought that the Creeper World series was the only one.  Not to mention replay value, these often don't have all that much.

The biggest thing I don't like about many TD games is that I often find the strategies involved to be more than a bit obscure.  Like, it's often never clear to me how to deal with different types of waves, or the best uses of different towers.  CW3 being the exception, where I know *exactly* what each tower (or weird flying thing) is good at, or how much stuff it can handle on it's own, and how I can fit it into my tactics.  But I remember playing something like Defense Grid, and mostly just being confused all the time.  Not to mention there's not that much you can DO with the towers in many of these games (CW3 specifically being by far the most "active" of these games).  I'm never too fond of "sit there and watch" moments.

I might go ahead and pick this up.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Draco18s November 15, 2016, 11:17:32 PM
Huh, a TD game that actually looks like it has real depth and strategy.  Here I'd thought that the Creeper World series was the only one.  Not to mention replay value, these often don't have all that much.

Gemcraft definitely has that.  It eventually got too complicated for me to really do well at it (I could manage about 15 or 20 levels, then hit a wall).
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 November 15, 2016, 11:55:10 PM
Gemcraft is (arguable) the best TD game you will ever find. At least it is for me. People tend to praise Creeper World and (for some reason) Defense Grid but THIS was always my top game among the TD games. Simply because you can play it YOUR way.
There are trillions of ways to play this game and like Mánagarmr (I had to correct the name multiple times, lol) said in his video, some are better ways to play than others. It is simply in games with multiple playstyles that there are some that can be considered the "best" playstyles however, you are not forced to follow them just because some pros swear they are the best way to play the game.
If you are willing enough to put a decent amount of time in the game your own playstyle will eventually succeed. You may take longer than other playstyles but no matter how you apporach, eventually you will win with it. That is, because the game is also to a big part a rpg game, you can level up your character and that affects directly your tower. Do mind that most skills have NO skill cap, so you can really put all the effort you want into the game and reach new heights with it.

About towers and what not else: The game oes (sadly) not introduce you how to use specific mechanics or towers, it is the best to find yourself out what everything does. the description of course tells you the abilities but since the game has such a big open world there is no real tutorial for specific towers/gems. Given the fact that you create your own towers anyway, that is kind of excepted. Also there are actually three different tower types that make the function of gems different. Towers simply shoot, thats it. Traps work only when something steps over them but they boos special abilities a lot. And amplifiers simply work as boost towers and the boost is related to the gem it holds.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Draco18s November 16, 2016, 12:52:13 AM
Gemcraft is (arguable) the best TD game you will ever find. At least it is for me.

(Creeper World for me is pretty much a "play it once, I'm done" with no specific attraction to challenges or replaying).

IMO the best TD game I've ever experienced was Immortal Defense (http://store.steampowered.com/app/298360/).  The mechanics are exactly as much as it needs to be in order for the game to work.  Its the story that's hands down the best thing in a game ever.  And its literally told through very short segments, and only about eight of them.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Misery November 16, 2016, 01:31:34 AM

(Creeper World for me is pretty much a "play it once, I'm done" with no specific attraction to challenges or replaying).


Eh?  Did you not mess with any of the stuff beyond the campaign, then?   The campaign is almost just an extended tutorial that teaches you about each game element... which is why it's not all that hard.  The game's real content is everything AFTER that, which is where players sometimes get AI War levels of replay hours out of it.  Particle Fleet is similar in this respect but isn't quite as robust yet.

Immortal Defense looks interesting.  Bloody strange, but interesting.   Be nice if this genre had more games like these... there's WAY too many of them that are effectively Defense Grid except slightly different.  Developers just copy each other WAY too much in this genre, which is a shame, as it has the potential to be so interesting.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 November 16, 2016, 02:06:50 AM
Immortal Defense might be my second most favourite TD game. However, it remains second for a good reason: Little replay value. Except the survival levels there is no big reason why you want to play it again. From time to tiem you may pick it up again and play it again because it is a fun game but the thing is, afert you are done, you are done.
Gemcraft on the other hand still offers a lot more to do even after you've finished the game. Even if you beat all levels. there is the New game+ mode (Iron wizard) to challenge yourself.

However, Immortal defense is a pretty good game. However, it is also very emotional and some people might turn this off.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Mánagarmr November 16, 2016, 02:49:52 AM
Creeper World and it's spiritual successor Particle Fleet: Emergence both look like very interesting takes on the TD genre to me. I'll likely pick them up sometime in the future, even though I personally despise the TD genre and everything it stands for. (Mostly because of TD games being all around mazing, which is dull and boring)

GemCraft speaks to me mostly because of it's complexity and depth. If you want to beat Endurance mode (999 waves rapidly increasing in power) you really have to understand the deep mechanics of gem crafting (pun not intended) and how gems progress in strength, how to maximize mana gains, exploit shrines and whatnot. That's what really fascinates me about the game. To beat the normal story mode, you really don't need many of these deep mechanics as the game is relatively easy.

For challenge you have the nine traits, three different difficulty levels and once you think you're good, you also have the Vision Fields. Vision Fields remove the concept of skills, talismans and spells. You are presented with a challenge, a limited set of gem types and spells and are expected to figure the puzzle out. I still have yet to beat even a quarter of the Vision Fields. They're really challenging.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Misery November 16, 2016, 03:28:55 AM
Creeper World and it's spiritual successor Particle Fleet: Emergence both look like very interesting takes on the TD genre to me. I'll likely pick them up sometime in the future, even though I personally despise the TD genre and everything it stands for. (Mostly because of TD games being all around mazing, which is dull and boring)

GemCraft speaks to me mostly because of it's complexity and depth. If you want to beat Endurance mode (999 waves rapidly increasing in power) you really have to understand the deep mechanics of gem crafting (pun not intended) and how gems progress in strength, how to maximize mana gains, exploit shrines and whatnot. That's what really fascinates me about the game. To beat the normal story mode, you really don't need many of these deep mechanics as the game is relatively easy.

For challenge you have the nine traits, three different difficulty levels and once you think you're good, you also have the Vision Fields. Vision Fields remove the concept of skills, talismans and spells. You are presented with a challenge, a limited set of gem types and spells and are expected to figure the puzzle out. I still have yet to beat even a quarter of the Vision Fields. They're really challenging.

Yeah, those two games don't play even remotely like normal TD games.  There's no mazing at all, for instance.  I mean, one game has liquid as your main enemy (which can get *anywhere*), and the other has a bazillion swarming particles that bounce and float all over the place and generally cover the universe in red doom.   Not to mention a total lack of restrictions on where you can build things in CW (Particle Fleet has restrictions, gotta build ships within range of an energy mine, but they're not "turrets" and are more like RTS units COVERED in turrets, so they can be sent all over the place), and the fact that you have to actually PUSH BACK; you cant just sit and kill "waves", because the stuff never ever stops coming.  You have to drill through it and take out the emitters (and other things) in both games. 

And those restrictions on building, that's another thing that often bugs me about TD games, is that in most of them, no matter what, you are absolutely not able to build things in places other than the exact spots the devs want you to.  I've always thought that was a little dumb.  So it ends up being all about these towers, but you don't get to do that many interesting things with them.  They're very static in so many games, and that's boring.  You just place them and sometimes do extremely direct upgrades.  Dull!   Gemcraft's mechanics look a heck of a lot more interesting when it comes to tower types and upgrades and such.

As it is, I've started watching through some of your tutorial videos there to get an idea as to what it's like (excellent narration, by the way).  I might pick it up in the next day or so.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Mánagarmr November 16, 2016, 05:49:06 AM
And those restrictions on building, that's another thing that often bugs me about TD games, is that in most of them, no matter what, you are absolutely not able to build things in places other than the exact spots the devs want you to.  I've always thought that was a little dumb.  So it ends up being all about these towers, but you don't get to do that many interesting things with them.  They're very static in so many games, and that's boring.  You just place them and sometimes do extremely direct upgrades.  Dull!   Gemcraft's mechanics look a heck of a lot more interesting when it comes to tower types and upgrades and such.
Gemcraft has some measure of this as some fields (levels) have very restricted building areas. Like some levels are designed so that you can not build any towers anywhere, as all the area outside the path is unbuildable. So you're forced to use traps. This varies A LOT between levels though. Some levels are almost entirely buildable. It depends.

As it is, I've started watching through some of your tutorial videos there to get an idea as to what it's like (excellent narration, by the way).  I might pick it up in the next day or so.
Hope you enjoy! Both the videos and the games. Thanks!
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Draco18s November 16, 2016, 11:57:25 AM
Eh?  Did you not mess with any of the stuff beyond the campaign, then?   The campaign is almost just an extended tutorial that teaches you about each game element... which is why it's not all that hard.  The game's real content is everything AFTER that, which is where players sometimes get AI War levels of replay hours out of it.  Particle Fleet is similar in this respect but isn't quite as robust yet.

But that's my point. The mechanics aren't satisfying enough for me to want to do that.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: eRe4s3r November 16, 2016, 05:29:31 PM
To be honest I also consider GemCraft to be one of the best TD games, followed by Immortal Defense (which has, that much is true, 0 replayability) while in Gemcraft you have so many choices and approaches that it is really fun to experiment even on maps you already finished.

My personal "favorite" exploration map is by the way C1 where I even got to a billion points, (this 1 run put me from mage level 321 to 2400 ) and to this day I can't replicate that on any other map. Though I regularly get to wave level 300, in reality if you want to really push for a good run you have enrage waves and that always and to the extend that your defense can handle. At no point should your kill counter stop counting and this creates some really intense moments ;P

This idea of enraging waves is not found in any other TD as far as I know.

Also there is the infinite ongoing debate whether to use bloodbound or poolbound gems...  bloodbound scale quite extremely up in the later levels, where your gems have a million hits or more.. but poolbound scale much faster and heavier earlier on only to patter out late game... and "more damage" isn't what you want late game, since your crit traps and tower are the one thing that kills enemies, if you don't have special bonus boost you end up with low damage no matter what.. so yeah; gemcraft.. awesome TD ;) But sadly really bad engine.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Mánagarmr November 17, 2016, 03:58:45 AM
I am Wizard Level 9400 ish at this point and you're right. Poolbound gems are much better early, but once you start getting into waves beyond 400 the bloodbound gem takes over due to its power curve. The Poolbound stagnates pretty hard rather quickly.

As for XP well... After a good run I'll usually scrape together at least 40 to 60 billion XP. But that does take like an entire day.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: tombik November 17, 2016, 06:22:54 AM
You may take longer than other playstyles but no matter how you apporach, eventually you will win with it.

Do you mean that if you grind hard enough, every strategy is valid. This sounds like a negative to me since it will make the game similr to clicker games.

I don't think it is a good thing if my experience can be summarized as "Lose enough times to win finally". Can you elaborate more? I am about to be done with Kingdom Rush, and I would like to pick new TD I will play.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Misery November 17, 2016, 07:22:23 AM
Hm, the whole "runs that take 10 squillion hours" bit is my own main concern with this one.  It almost sounds like this hits a position of being grindy as all hell instead of strategic after a certain point in a Disgaea-ish way.  Like, "do this dull thing for the next 20 years to advance, so that you can do it again except bigger" sort of thing.   If I'm sitting there waiting for something to happen for long periods of time (even with things sped up), something's a bit off.

If a "really long" run was like an hour or so?  That'd be very different.  But... a whole day?  That seems wonky to me.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Mánagarmr November 17, 2016, 07:46:38 AM
Hm, the whole "runs that take 10 squillion hours" bit is my own main concern with this one.  It almost sounds like this hits a position of being grindy as all hell instead of strategic after a certain point in a Disgaea-ish way.  Like, "do this dull thing for the next 20 years to advance, so that you can do it again except bigger" sort of thing.   If I'm sitting there waiting for something to happen for long periods of time (even with things sped up), something's a bit off.

If a "really long" run was like an hour or so?  That'd be very different.  But... a whole day?  That seems wonky to me.
Depends on what you're after with the game itself. If you're simply interested in beating the story mode, or beating all levels on the hardest difficulty, playing Vision fields and whatnot, you'll be fine with an hour or two most of the time.

It's when you decided to do things the game was never designed to do that it explodes into ridiculousness. Such as beating endurance mode. Or just seeing how far you can really go. That's why I'm playing those insane length games. Though to be fair, they're mostly that long because of the horrendous lag, not really because the game really is slow.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Misery November 17, 2016, 08:29:39 AM
Ah, I see.

Sounds more like the idea of someone getting *really* grindy with Disgaea just to power up so much that they can hit some poor peon with a 70 kersquillion damage punch.  No POINT in doing it and there's non-grind replay elsewhere but they just do it because they can and to see if they can manage it.

That makes more sense, then.  Sort of.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 November 17, 2016, 11:05:17 AM
You may take longer than other playstyles but no matter how you apporach, eventually you will win with it.

Do you mean that if you grind hard enough, every strategy is valid. This sounds like a negative to me since it will make the game similr to clicker games.

I don't think it is a good thing if my experience can be summarized as "Lose enough times to win finally". Can you elaborate more? I am about to be done with Kingdom Rush, and I would like to pick new TD I will play.
I actually think that not every strategy may work but I could be wrong with that. But some strategies don't work very good. Also, when you loose you get nothing in this game, except Shadow Cores. You have to beat levels to get xp.
The game is to some extend grindy because it's a RPG and all RPGs are to some extend grindy. You will eventually hit a point where you notice that you need more skill points to beat a level, so you try another level first or redo an earlier level. If you've seen Mánagarmrs video, he showed that you get skill points for leveling (xp) and achievments (and there are tons of achievments int he game, so you won't run out of them soon). Stat points can be assigned to the different skills, most of them don't even have a level cap, or you can ave them for extra starting mana.

Back to the question if every strategy is valid: In Gemcraft you need some stuff to succeed. You need fast firing towers to kill large monsters groups, for example swarms. And you need strong towers to kill armored monsters or monsters with lot of HP, for example giants. If you don't have anything of that you will most likely fail. I also think that a no tower strategy will fail on most stages.
How you get thi stuff is however your choice. You can use poison, you can use chain hit, you can use slow, armor shredding, critical hit. There are 9 different gems, so you can say there are 9 different "core ways" to play this game.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Draco18s November 17, 2016, 11:43:18 AM
I actually think that not every strategy may work but I could be wrong with that. But some strategies don't work very good. Also, when you loose you get nothing in this game, except Shadow Cores. You have to beat levels to get xp.

What Misery means is, that you can go to a level you've already beaten and just beat it repeatedly for the exp.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 November 17, 2016, 11:53:11 AM
I meant Tombik, not Misery.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: tombik November 17, 2016, 12:26:00 PM

You will eventually hit a point where you notice that you need more skill points to beat a level, so you try another level first or redo an earlier level.

Hmm. I should skip that one then, thanks for the explanation.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Aklyon November 17, 2016, 07:19:33 PM

(Creeper World for me is pretty much a "play it once, I'm done" with no specific attraction to challenges or replaying).


Eh?  Did you not mess with any of the stuff beyond the campaign, then?   The campaign is almost just an extended tutorial that teaches you about each game element... which is why it's not all that hard.  The game's real content is everything AFTER that, which is where players sometimes get AI War levels of replay hours out of it.  Particle Fleet is similar in this respect but isn't quite as robust yet.

Immortal Defense looks interesting.  Bloody strange, but interesting.   Be nice if this genre had more games like these... there's WAY too many of them that are effectively Defense Grid except slightly different.  Developers just copy each other WAY too much in this genre, which is a shame, as it has the potential to be so interesting.
Immortal Defense gets very strange if you TD your way into the secret area, that for sure. Interesting strange, but not exactly replayability like was said already.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 November 17, 2016, 08:39:03 PM
I think what I liked the most about Immortal Defense was, that you are an important part of the defense. Liek Misery already said, a lot of TD games work that way that you cheese you build stuff and wait for enemies to die. While not everyone may have the same distaste for that kind of gameplay as he has, Immortal Defense puts the player on the active role of playing. Simply because, you, the player are the strongest "tower" in the game. Not that there are any real towers int he game, just points.
The mouse cursor in this game represents your focused willpower (you have no body, you are just a mind with endless power), so you focus your rage into one point and it materializes as bullets into the real world. Sounds more confusing than it is, basically your cursor shoots bullets wherever you direct it. This works perfectly in the game since you have autoaim. Simply move it close to enemie and it fires directly at them.

The points are different aspects of your psyche, they represent your emotions and thoughts that you have while being in space. Points work similiar to towers like in other TD games but not quite the same way. First, you have only a limited amount of them per level. It's not liek yu can build the ones you want as long as you have moeny. Like I said before, they represent your emotions and because of this you can only build them if you HAVE those emotions. So you get a limit of them each level, depending on the current level. However, these points produce MORE points over time. I never fully understood what exactly the unlock requirements for new points were but I think if your towers produce enough damage (kills, they create a new point for you to place. however, if you have a specific point not aviable in that level you won't get it later of course. They only duplicate.
There is another difference to normal towers. Your points react to yourself (since they are parts of your mind), if you charge your special attack, they are drawn to your cursor, if you release it, they fly into the direction of the special attack. There is also a special point that always attacks the same target as you do.

And don't get me started on the more crazy towers/points, the game simply does not want to behave like other TD games. They literally break the genre with this game.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: Aklyon November 18, 2016, 07:53:45 PM
And you don't have a body in the first place because your planet discovered some sort of tech that takes the you out of your body and throws it up two dimensions (path space being above hyperspace, where the enemies are actually rushing through). The result is you seeing it as an entirely non-straight (usually) but linear path, and them seeing your points as some sort of demon ghosts they can't kill (but can effect, much later) destroying their ships easily.
: Re: Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam
: TheVampire100 November 19, 2016, 05:43:23 PM
This is another TD game that might interes you: http://store.steampowered.com/app/218410/
Defenders Quest is a mix from rpg and td. Every tower int he game is a typical rpg character. You can summon them on the field and they fight the enemies for you to protect you, however they can also be attacked and die. If thats happens you have to summon them again.
All characters in the game get xp after each level (even if you loose it) and can level up, you can invest points in new skills, you can also buy them new weapons and armor, just like a regular rpg.
It's a really well designed game and they are currently working on the sequel.

Your own character levels also up, he can cast spells that help your other heroes and he gets more hp (so you can sustain more enemies that reach you) and more PSI, which acts as the curency for this game.