The Humble Botanicula Debut and Be Mine 2

The latest Humble Bundle is now out, with games available on a pay what you want scheme with money split between developers, charity, or the Humble Bundle.  The charity this time is the World Land Trust, an international conservation charity.  It seems that the Humble Bundle have changed their terms slightly this time, with Steam keys only available to those who have paid at least $5.

There’s a point and click theme to the games in the bundle this time with Botanicula, Machinarium and Samorost 2 from Amanita Design.  For those paying more than the average price, there’s also Biograf’s full length feature film Kooky and Vector Park’s Windosill to check out.. and soundtracks are included with Botanicula, Machinarium and Samorost 2!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_0s65bYZmM]
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Xenocide

After many hours playing Sol Survivor I finally got the “Xenocide” badge, for killing 1000 creeps on a map!

I’d had one soul remaining from around the 26th minute, so I didn’t expect to get it this time, but the upgraded laser turrets did their job nicely 🙂

Sol Survivor

I’ve been badge-chasing in Survival Mode over the last few weeks, aiming for all the gold badges for lasting 20 minutes, as well as going for a few others requiring the use of a specific Commander or to kill off a certain number of enemies.

Should you upgrade your towers or not?  The cost per firepower seems to suggest that a fully-upgraded tower does more damage than multiple level 1 towers, but having more towers means you can be hitting more enemies at once.

For a while I was unable to quite make it to 20 minutes, being finished off around 18 or 19 minutes in.  I eventually made it on the Cwm map by going mad with level 1 towers, with plenty of railguns for their massive range.

Surviving Survival

I thought WoW was meant to be addictive, but I’m finding Sol Survivor’s survival mode more so..

In singleplayer, I’m obsessively chasing the badges, with the current goal of getting the gold badge for each.. it took ages to get the Cwm map with a load of attempts coming in around 20 to 30 seconds short of the required 20 minutes.

A friend offered to help me get the badges, so there was more co-op multiplayer.

The Undoer’s “Wall of Death” was made of lasers in this game, and aside from being rather nice to look at, are quite effective.

We also tried out the versus mode; the map was split up with coloured sections to show where you could place turrets, and we each had a drop point and base.  The “Wall of Death” was more effective than my tactic of spreading out different types of tower along the path, and I lost. 🙁

We managed another three-player game during the week too.. now how’s this for a light-show? 😀

Sol Survivor

Sol Survivor is a brilliant tower defense game from Cadenza Interactive, where you must protect colonies of innocents against the evil Ascendancy invaders.  I love tower defense, so this one was an instant winner for me 🙂

This game gives you an enormous range of turrets; from old-fashioned type pill boxes and mortars to lasers, radiation and lightening towers.. I quite like the drone turret, which sends drones to circle the enemy and shoot them, as well as the speed boost tower, which allows the towers to shoot at insane speeds.

In addition to the turrets, Sol Survivor gives you orbital support weapons, which you can use to finish off any creeps who get past the turrets.  During the earliest parts of the campaign, I preferred the fire bomb, but once I got into multiplayer and was able to try out the other support options, I found Fear and Drones became my new favourites.

Multiplayer Survival is also a lot of fun, and with the ability to share resources evenly between each member of the team, there’s no issue with one person getting an unfair share of the killing blows, and therefore the money.  I think the best we managed so far was just short of half an hour..

We also tried out multiplayer campaign, but found the earlier levels a bit too easy.  Once you’ve placed your first few turrets, the incoming creeps stand no chance.. especially with four of us vying to laser or firebomb them before they’ve even made it down the first stretch of road. 🙂