20180416 Part 1:
Today, I played some games offline while waiting at the airport. After trying to play DEADBOLT (with a keyboard and touchpad), I moved onto playing Over 9000 Zombies!. Like DEADBOLT, this game needed a mouse-like device. Unlike DEADBOLT, using the touchpad was reasonable.
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| I'm just gonna stand in my little square... (20181230) |
I repeatedly played one map, Compound, for an hour. My strategy consisted of going for resourcefulness and build turrets. Unfortunate, my strategy didn't work against the wave which spawned fire zombies, because the fire zombies destroyed my turrets which were out in the open. Thus, while resources are easier to grab in the open, the turrets are more exposed.
A possible solution to cover the weakness in my strategy is to build a ring (of blocks) around the turrets and include a building repair turret. Ideally, this would be a self-sustaining system.
Another addition to my strategy would be to build a safehouse that I can enter and shoot from. I don't, however, know where on the map I should build such a safehouse.
Setup: Changed resolution to 1920x1280. At first I was playing with my screen on low brightness, but this was hard and I eventually realized i wasn't picking up many item drops.
Offline Game Time: 63 minutes
20180416 Part 2:
Addicted to the game and curious about my new strategy, I retrieved my mouse and played some more.
Offline Game Time: 72 minutes
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| One of my earlier setups. (20180416) |
20180418:
I have a text file, "20180419.txt", which says I played for 32 minutes, that it was one round, that I was falling asleep, and that I finally lost while asleep.
Assuming the file is to record offline play, in order for it to make sense, it should happen before gameplay that occurred between 20180419 11:54 AM PT (08:09 PM CET) and 20180419 05:08 PM PT (20180420 02:08 AM CET). As such, my best guess is that 20180419 is the correct date using Amsterdam time, but if it were say 20180419 1 AM in Amsterdam, then it would be 20180418 4 PM in California.
Offline Game Time: 32 minutes
20180419:
I played today. I used Steam Achievements, screenshots, and other information to reconstruct what might have happened.
1) I'm back in the hotel room and I open a bottle of beer around 11:54 AM PT (08:09 PM CET).
2) I might have turned the game on at 12:09 PM PT (09:09 PM CET), because 28 achievements are registered by Steam. My best game ended at Day 16.
.) Unknown amount of play between 12:09 PM PT and 01:27 PM PT.
3) One of the games I played ended at 01:27 PM PT (10:27 PM CET). It went to Day 9. At an estimated average of 3.5 minutes per round, the game would have started around 12:55 PM PT (09:55 PM CET).
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| I got a nice number nine! (20180419) |
.) Unknown amount of play between 01:27 PM PT and 2:25 PM PT.
4) One of the games I played ended at 03:49 PM PT (20180420 12:49 AM CET). It went to Day 23. Screenshots for this game start with Day 3. The game would have started around 02:25 PM PT (11:25 PM CET).
.) Unknown amount of play between 03:49 PM PT and 04:39 PM PT.
5) A Steam Achievement is registered at 04:39 PM PT (20180420 01:39 AM CET).
6) I take my last sip of the beer around 05:08 PM PT (20180420 02:08 AM CET).
Assuming gameplay prior to the above was offline, and the total time online is 3.2 hours, then a possible scenario is I played from 21:55 CET to 22:27 CET (32 minutes) and 23:25 CET to 26:08 CET (163 minutes) for a total of 195 minutes (3.25 hours).
Steam Game Time: 3.2 hours (total game time)
20181229 Snapshot:
Steam Game Time: 3.2 hours / last played 20180419
Offline Game Time: approximately 2.8 hours
20181230 AM Hours:
Today I played and determined that each day will take an average of 3.5 minutes (variable because the player can start the release of the zombie horde sooner).
Setup: I played on my desktop (with keyboard and mouse).
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| I try building a ring around the main turret area. (20181230) |
Steam Game Time: 4.7 hours (total game time) / 1.5 hours (session game time)
20181230 Part 1:
I started playing some more today.
Setup: I turned the "Black Equalizer" on my monitor up. Effectively it makes the dark areas of the game less dark.
Gameplay Log:
After a round where I got to Day 21, I realized that my setup was decent but also inefficient. I built the turrets in a section, started building a barrier around them. Then eventually tried to build a bigger wall around which inside I could work. However, the inner region was too strong and makes the outer wall too big. As such, I should just build a small region for me to walk and set turrets along the borders. This way, they also target different enemies.
Trying to keep the turrets separate was much harder than I thought. As such, maybe it's better to have them grouped up after all, except in a smaller barrier than I had before.
On this third or so run (or iteration of strategy), I'm on a different map, "Easy Defensive," which starts out more plain. But also, I'm assigning skills differently. Before I close to maxed "Resourcefulness" and then "Engineering." But now I'm maxing "Resourcefulness" and then partially maxing "Durability," and then "Engineering." I realized that the inefficiency of turrets makes them inefficient to pour points into.
Lol. But sometimes I just get too greedy and I don't watch my health.
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| What attribute should I upgrade? What turrets should I build? |
One thread had the following upgrade recommendation: 4 into Resourcefulness, 4 into Durability, 1 into each until maxed. Then 5 into Carnage, 5 into Turrets, and then 1 into each until maxed. This gets the player to Day 40.
For achievements, I'm left with the 900 thousand zombies killed and 1000 turrets built achievements. I already have 118,634 Zombies, so another 780,000 would be about 50 to 100 games with 10 turrets per game. Or maybe there's a way to quickly farm the achievements.
Hmm. I think maybe spend four minutes and then let the turrets last for as long as they can on their own. So four minutes spent for like twenty minutes of output. It's possible. I'll see.
Steam Game Time: 8.7 hours (total game time) / 4.0 hours (session game time)
20181230 Part 2:
There didn't seem any easy way to farm for zombies. Although, every time I started thinking about letting the turrets do their own thing, I ended up playing for reals. In the end, my greatest weakness is wanting to run around and collect resources, even though I'm pretty stocked up and set at level 20. Oh, another weakness is trying to level up other guns, when I can just stick to the Thermal Nuke. With that being said, I wish there was an easier way to choose weapons. Maybe have the tree of weapons be part of the HUD and be clickable.
I suppose one way to actually farm is to set a clicker and just have the clicker go in a circle. Together with a set of six turrets, just let the game run in the background and repeat when dead.
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| Keeping it simple (20181230) |
Steam Game Time: 10.6 hours (total game time) / 1.9 hours (session game time)
20190103: Steam Game Time: 11.5 hours (total game time) / 0.9 hours (session game time)
Thoughts:
Pros:
+ Challenging
+ Different ways to play (via different choices on skills)
Neutral:
~ Customizable maps
~ Multiplayer (I've yet to try it, but I stumbled across a Steam thread that suggested there's not so many people playing it as of 2018, i.e., no servers; you'll have to coordinate via Steam thread or Reddit to find some players to play with)
Minor Con:
- Maybe a fast-forward feature would have been nice (for players who play with turret-based strategy)
- Is the building useful? What's the point? I thought it would have been interesting if the player had to actually protect the building. Instead, it seems to get in my way? Maybe I have to play around with trying to use it...
- No tutorial. Insufficient documentation. Terrible "How to Play".
- Making the turrets upgradable, or weaker with higher maximum would have been nice; in general, this aspect of the game was not as fun as it could have been
Major Cons:
-- Scrolling through weapons is ridiculous. A button system to choose the weapon would have been great for players who use keyboard and mouse.
-- Similarly, building without hotkeys is unfortunate. This makes building on the fly difficult.
Summary:
I put several hours into the game, but it's not that great a game. In fact, at times, I was under the impression that the game could have been a clicker game or a pure tower defense game. Perhaps I put so many hours into the game, because it is so similar to these two genres. Also, it was extremely easy to get wrapped into playing wave after wave without noticing the time pass by.
Unfortunately, there are too many improvements that can be made to the game for me to recommend. With that being said, during the most recent Steam Winter Sale, the game was only 49 cents (or 59 cents for the two-pack). That's not a bad price for a couple hours of gameplay.
Over 9000 Zombies! (PC) (2015)
Relevant Links:
Over 9000 Zombies! Website
Over 9000 Zombies! (PC) (MetaCritic.com)
Over 9000 Zombies! (Steam Store Page)
