Back when The Space Game was released, casual real-time strategy lovers everywhere agreed that it was one of the very best such games you could play in a browser. It feels a little like an open-ended tower defense title, but lets you play more creatively, with the ability to place your mining platforms and laser banks anywhere in two-dimensional space. Thanks to the required network of energy relays and supporting structures, you end up building this amazing-looking spider creature of a base, tendrils splayed out around the asteroid belt, bursts of neon light pulsing through its veins, lashing out with highlight beams at the incoming swarms of space pirates. It's like Las Vegas in space. But cheaper.
The biggest criticism I had of the original The Space Game was its monotony. Real-life military space mining will probably be like that — just an endless slog through the solar system, pressing little buttons on your space remote to have the nanobot army build you another missile center — but here in this Earth video game, I wanted more variety in the missions, a story please. A goal beyond "Get you some money. Now you are the wealthiez!"
That's what The Space Game: Missions is. The main story path branches off into three sub-plots, each centered around some unique treasure you have to protect, or huge threat you have to face. With 8 missions on the backbone, and 13 more on the ribs, that's a meaty gameplay chowdown. While your own capabilities haven't changed from the first Space Game — your weapons are identical — your focus has to change quite a bit when you are, say, defending a moving rocket from attackers along the length of its flight path, or when you're limited to using the minerals from a single giant mining laser. The tight, balanced gameplay is the same; it's just more engaging this time.
The new missions are hard, even on the easiest setting, and you can unlock a total of four difficulty levels for each. Again, meaty. Even without any major gameplay shake-ups, this is a more than satisfying challenge for The Space Game veterans. Thanks to the in-game tutorial, newcomers should be able to appreciate it too, though you might want to try the first game before diving in here. This game is largely fan-service. We wanted a harder game with a stronger story, and that's what developer David Scott has given us. No multiplayer yet, but this is still a great update to The Space Game, the one and only.
Play The Space Game: Missions.
Thanks for sending this one in, Jell and Philip!
You can also play the game at Kongregate
Just discovered this today, and it is great. But it does get hard sometimes. The main missions aren't outlandishly difficult, but the side ones seem a lot tougher.
I've tried five times to do the 'escort a moving ship' mission, and fail at the same point each time.
But I'd say this is exactly what an intense casual game should be. Excellence in every aspect.
Is the site down?
It doesn't seem to load.
O not casual collective again!
Their games just never load on my computer
I guess I can't enjoy this game even if it will be fun.......
my friend says this game is sooooooo fun and other games on the casual collective is fun, like minions and minions on ice or something but it never loads on my computer! arrg
The game is loading for me at the Casual Collective, but I've posted a link to the game at Kongregate, too.
Is there something I'm not getting for the last level? Not the main mission, but the side mission s at the very end. I can't even beat the first one, though I had no problems with everything else. The final boss is just too hard..
Otherwise, the game is just as great as it was last time!
If you have problem loading these games just check you have your ad blockers turned off as they sometimes block games that load in the way the CC games load.
Re: Final boss:
I'm playing on Easy because I like my games easy, but the same principles always apply. Start off by building a grid of solar stations and energy tanks. Then build a couple of missile towers, a couple of THEL beams - I find that a pair of these on a boss unit is the most effective and consistent weapon - and then a pointed barrier of regular pulsers at the front. Make sure everything is fully-upgraded. You probably want to leave a buffer of a few thousand minerals for missiles and in case anything goes wrong.
Really final boss:
The second one appears from behind, but a little later on, and you get a generous delay and maybe double the amount of minerals. Same as the first one, but more and bigger and symmetrical.
I really enjoyed this, but I wish there was a quiet, persistent mode. I just want to quietly mine and never stop.
Gawlly this game is good! It's so challenging. The new missions definitely expand on the original theme in a way that's new and exciting.
I'm surprised there are so few comments. What a wonderful game. I loved the original and the missions succeed in giving the game more depth. I also like the balance. I was able to beat every mission on "Crazy" except the last two, which I can only beat on easy!
Love the sound and graphics, love the hotkeys and challenge. 5 stars for sure, a TD milestone!
Here are some tips:
- Turn off missiles when fighting ring ships!
- Mine fast and mine often! Double-up on clusters of asteroids.
- THEL is overrated. Too much of a power drain.
- On the "follow the rocket" missions, you want to build right along its path and dismantle what is behind it for minerals.
The last of the side missions, Jumping to Warp, was incredibly hard, but I beat it on Crazy after about 50 tries. Here's the trick:
Build a long chain with a fork on the end where three fully upgraded missiles are on top, two fully upgraded missiles on the bottom. Use missiles judiciously. Spend everything else on upgraded basic lasers in between, they only have to be strong enough to handle the ring ship wave. The trick is to have the final wave of motherships zip in BEHIND your missile towers so the don't get distracted shooting down the mothership drones. It also helps to turn them on before the last wave so the "sky" is full of rockets when they zip in.
Well, I finally beat the supership on the last mission. Here was the strategy I used:
First, set up a network of power stations and energy towers. Once that's done, create a "fork" with five fully upgraded missiles on each side. Then branch out further, and further, building a network of energy towers along the supership's whole path, resplendent with non-upgraded basic lasers and non-upgraded repair stations. This will go down quickly, so keep building a lot of energy transmitters around it, to keep the attack ships' focus on them, thus slowing its advancement forward, giving your missiles time to do more damage. Just keep this up (and watch your mineral count!) until it finally goes down.
Wow, I can't even beat the third regular level. If anyone's still reading these comments, any tips?
People seem to forget that The Space Game is a casualized, well, rip-off of Oxeye's Harvest: Massive Encounter. They deserve the props for originality, The Space Game is largely derivative of their game.
Here is how I beat Response 3/4 and 4/4 (granted I was playing on easy, but I think it would work otherwise):
The key to my victory was realizing that the supership doesn't divert its attention until its target is destroyed.
So, I constructed an array of solar stations, then repair stations, then pulsers and finally missiles. I upgraded all of them -- though I don't think you need to upgrade the repair stations if your base is compact enough.
Then I constructed another pulser set apart from the bulk of the base using energy relays to use as bait. By using a multitude of repair stations, the supership was never able to destroy the bait, keeping it's massive laser occupied.
The pulsers and missiles take care of the smaller ships the supership spews out, and when they aren't dealing with the small ships, they attack the supership.
@Vandrovec :
The description text found on the game says :
"A RTS that is a cross between Harvest Massive Encounter and Vector TD!"
So it's not a rip-off, it even made me look into harvest and try it out myself. Sure the gameplay is similar, but hey, any RTS game is like Dune 2 huh ?
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