A friendly warning to everyone enjoying this edition of Link Dump Friday: 40% of the facts stated below are blatantly false. In fact, that fact is untrue. Really, you should take everything you read with a grain of salt. Did you know that salt was invented by the natives of a frozen continent over 50 years ago? It's true!
Upgrade Your Enemy - Did you know that the practice of upgrading enemies dates back to beetles in the 14th century? It's true! Just like this unique little shooting game, the beetles of old would use glue-like spittle and attach weapons onto their foes, increasing their stats while they received a random stat upgrade of their own. Then, each round became an exercise of moving close to the bad guy, taking them out one at a time, and hoping they survived to the next upgrade!
Runatic - Did you know the word "runatic" is a combination of the two words "run" and "attic"? You can tell because this crazy arcade game (no offense intended) is all about running! You have escaped from the asylum, and now you're running around with a curtain rod (or is it a giant Q-tip?) beating everything up in sight. Complete goals to get things, then beat up a building just because you can. It's pretty much straight-up destructive carnage with a few missions tied to it, but boy is it fun running around in that attic. (Note: Attic is what I call everything outside of my office.)
Dor the Dwarf - The first recorded sighting of a fully-bearded dwarf was in the year 0714.3 AED on the planet Notearth. Represented in this game is the dwarf in their current, modern form, starring in a point-and-click adventure that stands out for one strange reason: you can lose. And you can lose in a number of ways. Solve puzzles on each screen by clicking on items in the correct order, moving things about the screen so you can progress Dor from area to area. If you do something wrong, you'll have to retry, which is not something you see in these sorts of games!
Spaceblasters - Awrite! Time to blast some things in space! Did you know that if you took a real laser gun into space, fired it, and tried to eat a sandwich, the sandwich would taste like pizza? You wouldn't know it from this shooter, though, because it's all about dual stick-type control, moving in one direction and simultaneously firing in the other. Nice techno-ish design, complete with pulsing visuals and a thumping soundtrack. And the first boss? A vector cube. How retro awesome is that?!
Cog - Cogs have been used since the age of dinosaurs when the woolly mammoths would attach them to their feet so they could skate across the ice that was formed when the first meteorites landed. This cog, however, has a decidedly different purpose: to rotate. How novel! Use the [arrow] keys to turn the game board clockwise and counterclockwise, tipping things so the ball rolls towards the red circle goal. It's more of a reflexes game than a puzzle experience, but it's well-tuned and has a number of neat obstacles to keep you on your toes.
Along with the rest of the facts
Upgrade your enemy is good, though do not put all of your upgrades into number, they will zerg rush you.
For anyone that missed it, the mouth of the pacman-thing is the direction it shoots in.
More tips about upgrade your enemy:
Your at the hand of the random number generator, not all games are the same.
Try to put a glaring flaw that is weak to what you have.
The front of your character takes very little damage, take advantage of that.
@John:
Did you know that if you read this edition of Link Dump Friday while eating a pizza and juggling 3 oranges, the pizza will taste like sandwich? xD
I can't get past the first upgrade in Enemy. Aiming at the things is tough; once you are in range of them, you seem to rotate much further with a tap of the keys, making it almost impossible to track them.
Upgrade Your Enemy was kinda fun, until I got to my second run and it upgraded my regen past the normal limit, which removed my ability to shoot, and made me invincible. So, yeah...that kinda brought my game to a quick end.
Seems a bit insensitive to promote a game like runatic after people have died in the London roits recently.
People die everywhere, everyday. No links to violence, ever!
@Josh: And I remember one time they linked to a game where a guy got his arm cut off when my friend's arm got cut off a week earlier! :P No offense. People DO die everyday you know, and if JIG operated like that, then the diversity here would be startling less diverse!
@josh.
Were you personally offended? If so then fair comment. Or were, as I suspect, you being offended for others? If so then let people take their own offence. There is more censorship and general whoohaa caused by people taking offence by proxy in this world than by real offence caused.
@ThemePark - And to think, I only have lemons in my house! :-(
Upgrade is neat in idea and execution, though it makes me somewhat more annoyed when the rng/ai gives me bad upgrades rather than if it were the enemy getting random good ones. Partly because it may very well become the case that it reaches a point where you simply cannot win, which means you basically have to restart the game (luckily it's pretty short, but I had restart 3 times to win on no tactical issue myself, rather than just lousy upgrades).
Anyway some hints regarding how to win:
Might want to give up until the 1st upgrade you get is attack. Makes the game MUCH faster if nothing else.
Giving the enemy speed is fairly safe in most regards. With its inertia it can't take full advantage of its speed even with higher range than you (though you might need to be smarter to trap them/confront them).
Next safest is probably range for similar reasons, but careful not to give them too much of both before you get some speed/range yourself. The last range upgrade makes them act slightly odd as they can basically hit you from the start, they seem to care less about trying to get out of your range as much.
Giving them more attack is almost always a bad idea unless they can't hit you much. Which is certainly a build to attack them with retaliation by making them too slow/short ranged, but hinges too much on your upgrades to be reliable.
You get "better" upgrades than your enemy. Ex: you get double your attack 1st, but they only get to 150%.
Many upgrades get more powerful as you get more. As in, 1st upgrade might increase a stat by 10, but the next increases it by 15. (luckily not for number) However, save attack, it does get less effective to keep upgrading one stat in most cases (so you want to do that normally).
Upgrade your enemy suffers from an extremely sucky control scheme. The concept is interesting, but would work much better with a traditional move-with-keys, aim-with-mouse shooter format.
It also might have worked better if it were controlled like an RTS that starts on more even footing, and gives the player the opportunity to gain more units as well. To that end, it could even become fun as a two-player game in which each player picks the other's upgrades.
Here's the message I got:
hey player.
gratz you going through this game.
but i think it's beacuse your upgrade is too imba.
if you acept, i will use your upgrade Sequence in the next duel.
yours,AI
Guess they think I had it too easy. Although I never once got a speed upgrade.
Agh, Runatic's menus looks like it's on a handheld camera which makes me dizzy.
Upgrade Your enemy rules. Nice balance & deceptively simple design. 5 stars
I beat upgrade by breaking most of the guidlines I've seen... Maxed numbers before anything else, maxed ranged and speed (speed only at the end).
My stats ended up making the game VERY easy for the middle, difficult in the last level or two, and hardish in the first level or so. At first I had high regen and a little bit of health, then high regen and lots of health, then some speed too. Ended the game with maxed regen, health, and speed, a tiny bit of attack,and NO ranged.
I found my horrible range/enemy's good ranged was really hard to deal with in the beginning, but once I started getting speed it was no problem at all until the final level, where they had full ranged. Had to retry that one three times.
Anyway my point is that I am known among my friends for being awful at video games, yet could do this fairly easily with going by the tips. I think in the case of this game, it really depends what your stats are.
Though I do agree that pumping attack is just plain not a good idea.
Anyway, I really liked it, though I had trouble with the controls at first--had to redo the first level several times before I got the hang of it, but after that it was smooth sailing until the end--so give it a shot!
In case it's not clear, I meant with not going with the tips
Upgrade is a fun game and a great concept, though I agree that using the same buttons to control your rotation and your acceleration feels clunky. I also found that if you have more (speed+range) than your adversaries, you can win any encounter trivially by strafing and running away until you regenerate, the only downside being that it's hella boring.
But that didn't stop me from continuing again and again until I won, and when I did I thought that the imba twist was really funny! I'm currently working through my second cycle. Overall it seems like a great game, but it could use some tweaking for balance.
At first the soothing piano music seemed incongruous, but after five or six deaths I realized it was a good choice, as it helps stave off The Ragequits.
i got an IMBA announcement for the ENEMY game after i beat it in 5 mins. lol...
upgrade their range, and their speed and numbers before anything else. even their attack, keep their health low. after a while you can kill them in one shot.
I like Upgrade Your Enemy, I think it deserves its own review. Its damn addictive.
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