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Titan Attacks |OT| Enlisting in the Universe Defense Force

InertiaXr

Member
So this game Titan Attacks came out a week ago and there are 0 posts about it here so Toma has encouraged me to start a mini-OT:

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What is it?
It's a shmup in the vein of Space Invaders and Galaga developed by the same guys, Puppy Games, who made Revenge of the Titans, a game many of you guys probably already have on Steam, as it was in the 2nd Humble Indie Bundle. It's also on sale on Steam for $4 until the 10th. It has 47 Steam achievements for anybody that is into those.

Price: On sale until the 10th
US: $5 On Steam
UK: £3
EU: €3.99

Reviews:
Bulletreviews: 5/5

Here's the game description from Steam:

As the last surviving tank commander on Earth, single-handedly turn back the evil invading alien army, drive back the Titans across the Solar System, and defeat them on their homeworld...

Titan Attacks has the same easy-to-learn and addictive gameplay of the classic arcade shoot 'em up, but is packed full of extras - new features, new strategies, and stylish neo-retro visuals.

Battle swarms of alien fighters, bombers and giant boss motherships, over 5 unique worlds and 100 levels of frantic action. Earn bounty money and upgrade your ship with extra cannon, rockets and lasers. Destroy falling wrecks, dodge hurtling asteroids and capture escaping aliens - or blast them from the skies! Win prizes in sharp-shooter challenge stages and compete on the online Hi-Scores table!

But forget that, all you need to know is it's basically Galaga/Space Invaders gameplay, with 100 distinct levels in terms of enemy composition, 5 different locales, an individually upgradeable ship, all sorts of unique enemy types, and a excellent risk/reward combo system.

Impressions:

It takes place across Earth, then the Moon, Mars, Saturn, and then Titan. Each 'zone' as it were is 20 waves each, with a alien mothership boss fight at the end of each zone (waves 20/40/60/80/100) of increaseing difficulty each zone until the final boss, wave 100 on Titan, with 'challenge waves' interspersed inbetween which are basically aiming tests, with 10-15 flying saucers going across the map at various speeds that don't fire at you, but hiting them all will give both an achievement and a money bonus.

You can upgrade your ship after each wave in various stats, like shields, gun power, extra bullets, gun addons, smartbombs, etc. You get the money to buy these things based upon the enemies you killed the previous wave, and your combo, which caps out at 9x, and increases by 1 every wave you go by without getting hit. Wave 1 it's a basic 1x, wave 2 2x, wave 3 3x. Get hit on wave 4, then the rest of 4 and wave 5 is 1x, then don't get hit on wave 5 and wave 6 becomes 2x, etc. This bonus increases both your overall score and the money you receive, so it becomes a vicious cycle for the enemies where as long as you don't get hit for a few waves, you can get to a 9x bonus and rack up $1000+ a wave easily in the first few zones and have a couple gun addons and 3-4 additional bullets firing before you reach wave 50. By the time you get to Titan and the last 20 waves of the game, it can become pretty damn hard with 20 enemies firing at you at once and you trying to dodge everything to keep your combo going.

It also adds something that I don't know exists in many if any other games the way it does in here, where it effectively checkpoints you at wave 20, 40, 60, 80, corresponding with the start of a new zone, and keeps your score and ship upgrades. Now of course you have to start at wave 1 the first time you play, but if you reach say wave 50 before you die, you can restart at wave 40 with whatever score, bonus, and upgrades you had accumulated to that point. Once you have beat it a few times and want to start going for a high score, you can start at wave 1, go through with a constant 9x combo and whatever upgrades you want until you reach wave 20, at which point it checkpoints you with that specific score and bonus and upgrades. Then you can always start off at that point going forward. Do the same thing for waves 21-40, then 41-60, then 61-80, then finally start off at wave 81 and effectively only need to go through 20 waves on your quest for a high score. This is great IMO as it breaks a daunting 100 waves up into 20 wave chucks, that you can play over and over until you do them perfectly, then work on the next set.

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For $5 I can't recommend it enough.

Steam

Direct developers website link, but $10 instead of $5 on Steam.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Definitely recommended by me too. Nifty little game for 4 bucks and I really like the approach outlined in the OP that it saves your progression between levels, so that you dont need to start off from the beginning everytime AND can keep your upgrades instead of starting at zero.

Also the combo system works pretty well and lets itself quite well to Highscore gaming. And its pretty cheap.
 
Wasn't expecting an OT for this game. I've been going back and forth between it and a bunch of other indie games. Collecting money and going after that next upgrade has become addicting.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Wasn't expecting an OT for this game. I've been going back and forth between it and a bunch of other indie games. Collecting money and going after that next upgrade has become addicting.

Sort of the reason one was made. Inertia liked it very much, and there probably wouldnt have been many others to make an OT. I'd say its worth promoting a bit at that price, though.

Anyway, does anyone know what Recharge is doing as Upgrade? It was too expensive to simply try it out and I didn't pick it so far.
 
Sort of the reason one was made. Inertia liked it very much, and there probably wouldnt have been many others to make an OT. I'd say its worth promoting a bit at that price, though.

Anyway, does anyone know what Recharge is doing as Upgrade?

No idea. I haven't felt like taking the risk on it yet because of what it costs, haha.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
No idea. I haven't felt like taking the risk on it yet because of what it costs, haha.

Yup, see my edit :p Same reason. 2000 is quite a lot for a non descriptive non self-explanatory addon. The game could have used a few more explanations in that area I guess.
 
Yup, see my edit. Same reason. 2000 is quite a lot for a non descriptive addon. The game could have used a few more explanations in that area I guess.

Yeah, it definitely needs more explanations. I wasn't entirely sure what the add-on did but took the risk and wish I would have put the money elsewhere. It's not useless but it cost too much for what little it provides. I'm sure the higher levels get much better.

Also, some of the achievements may be bugged. I never got one for finishing Earth.
 

InertiaXr

Member
Anyway, does anyone know what Recharge is doing as Upgrade? It was too expensive to simply try it out and I didn't pick it so far.

I think it recharges your shield. It's not a 'shield' as most games describe it but more of just 'health', and the game doesn't automatically replenish your shield, so I think that's what recharge does. I had it for probably 10+ waves in one game and never noticed it doing anything though, so I dunno...

Also, some of the achievements may be bugged. I never got one for finishing Earth.

Same. Don't have one for Earth, the Moon, Mars. The other achievements all seem to work, I think it's just the 'complete this zone' ones that are broken right now.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Also, some of the achievements may be bugged. I never got one for finishing Earth.

Yup, same bug for everyone. But since its a pretty new game and not their first game, I have high hopes they'll patch those small issues soon. Were their other games frequently patched?
 

InertiaXr

Member
Just finished it, final boss not all that hard. It doubles your score when you beat the final boss, so I ended up with 5.89mil for a full run. Interestingly though it throws you right back into wave 1 with your ship upgrades intact, so pretty much a new game+. I'm not sure if the enemies shoot more or are faster or there are more of them or what changes on NG+, I only went to wave 5. I guess you can just keep going through all 100 waves as long as you want to keep upping your score, that's probably how some dudes on the leaderboards have 2 billion+ scores...

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ShaneB

Member
I really should pick this up, I loved the trailer and glad to hear good impressions. I absolutely love the clean pixel art. Fantastic! I really should play Revenge of the Titans some day as well :(
 
Yup, same bug for everyone. But since its a pretty new game and not their first game, I have high hopes they'll patch those small issues soon. Were their other games frequently patched?

Yeah, Revenge of the Titans was patched fine. They also have plans to release their other two games on Steam so they seem dedicated.

Just finished it, final boss not all that hard. It doubles your score when you beat the final boss, so I ended up with 5.89mil for a full run. Interestingly though it throws you right back into wave 1 with your ship upgrades intact, so pretty much a new game+. I'm not sure if the enemies shoot more or are faster or there are more of them or what changes on NG+, I only went to wave 5. I guess you can just keep going through all 100 waves as long as you want to keep upping your score, that's probably how some dudes on the leaderboards have 2 billion+ scores...

Nice. I need to get back into it as I left off at the moon. I can't even imagine how long it'd take to get over two billion, haha. But they obviously did it fairly!
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
I really should pick this up, I loved the trailer and glad to hear good impressions. I absolutely love the clean pixel art. Fantastic! I really should play Revenge of the Titans some day as well :(

Definitely, the style is super charming. Best thing about the game for me.
 

InertiaXr

Member
I wish this game had friend leaderboards. :/ Obviously only a few people are going to be in the top 10/20 globally and local leaderboards doesn't help much, I only care about my all time high score, not a list of all my scores.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
I wish this game had friend leaderboards. :/ Obviously only a few people are going to be in the top 10/20 globally and local leaderboards doesn't help much, I only care about my all time high score, not a list of all my scores.

Single scores for each planet would be neat as well.
 

RetroGreg

Member
Got this last night on Steam and played for a bit. i love how it has the checkpoints that let you keep your power ups when you have to start over. The graphics and music are great. I love the colors they use in their games.
 

domstah

Member
I'm really excited to try this - I loved Revenge of the Titans but I think I can wait for its inevitable inclusion in a future Humble Bundle.

The only good thing about that is I'll probably spend way over $4 on it when I eventually get it.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Great a few others enjoy it as well. Shouldnt be that overlooked at 4 bucks.
 

Dambrosi

Banned
Of course, it's a Galaga clone, so that was enough for me to at least take a look. One look, that price, and the knowledge that it was made by Puppygames, and it was bought.

I've played it twice since then, and love every pixel it pushes. sogood.gif
 

Glix

Member
Recharge makes it so that you're add-ons shoot again faster.

I got this game the day it dropped and have had well over $5 worth of fun with it. It also got me playing ROTT again.
 
J

Jotamide

Unconfirmed Member
Yup, same bug for everyone. But since its a pretty new game and not their first game, I have high hopes they'll patch those small issues soon. Were their other games frequently patched?

Ditto this one. Funny they haven't fixed it yet.
 
Bumping this old thread because the 3DS port will be out tomorrow. 9.99€/7.99£ on eShop.

It's a straight port from the PC/console version, except the UI is placed on the touch screen and there are no achievements. Simple but pretty addicting, too bad there's no 3D.
 

kuppy

Member
Bumb.

This game is great, just completed it myself. A perfect game for the Vita that I've got through PS+.
I loved the juggling to reach the extra saucers, skill shots and aliens, plus gambling on low shields to save up money. Only at the very end I started to look out for the level counter to actually prepare for the boss fight, oops. It was just fun and difficulty wise not really frustrating.

A sequel with just more content would be really neat.
Edit: Oh, there is also Ultratron which is a dual-joystick arena shooter. Should definitely pick that up when it's on sale.
 
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