Attracto TD is a difficult and challenging entry into the Tower Defense genre that is deceptively unassuming until you get into actual gameplay. The difficulty inherent is so great that it is not uncommon to die within the first few levels, even on the first level if you don’t place your towers correctly. This flaw unfortunately makes it hard to get past more than a few levels, and is a fatal downfall in a flawed game.

Graphically, the quality is rather poor, unfortunately. The enemies that come at you are varied in type and strength, but their avatars are 8- to 16-bit quality at best, and so are the towers that you are given to work with. It doesn’t help that the background is a flat green surface and never changes unless you replace your towers in other locations.

The sound and music is merely average; it’s a track that loops easily and allows you to concentrate on playing the game but there’s nothing really special to differentiate it from generic elevator or other instrumental music that you would find in a game.

The controls are honestly sort of confusing. There’s no real interactivity with the towers other than placing them, and upgrading them if you like. You are allowed to adjust their health, strength, and range; all of which are reset after completing the level. Other than the upgrades, they just sit there after you place them and (hopefully) get in the way of the incoming enemies, unlike other tower defense games where they typically shoot at the enemies to defend your objectives. The resulting gameplay is one of a lot of waiting and watching each tower’s health closely so that you can hopefully last long enough to get through the time limit.

The challenge and replayability of this game depends on your tolerance for difficulty. If you’re willing to learn the ropes and get through the first couple levels by experimenting with tower placement, you might find this game worthwhile. If not, this game is not for you.

Click here: Play it now!

Attracto TD

Graphics – 2/5
Sound/Music – 3/5
Controls – 3/5
Replayability – 2/5
Gameplay – 3/5
Overall – 3/5

Jail Escape is a good example of how to do a Flash action game right, with the right amount of depth to it to make the challenge worth it to get to the end. The premise is that you are a prison inmate on an island, accused of a crime you didn’t commit, and with your fellow inmates help and collaboration, you decide to launch yourself out of the prison and off to the mainland.

Graphically, the game is somewhat of a mixed bag; due to the nature of the game, launching yourself into the air (where there isn’t a lot of graphics devoted) can be boring to look at. On the other hand, the ground-based graphics are good, and the additions to your character as you outfit yourself with better gear are well done. The look of your character changes as you buy upgrades and there is also considerable attention devoted to the prison inmates and background of the prison on the ground.

The sound and music is a constant accompaniment to your gameplay throughout this game; every area has a unique sound track, whether you’re at the title screen, shopping, or trying to see how far you can jump off the rooftop of the prison building. It’s really the primary connection with the game in terms of immersion; you’ll switch areas within the game and think, “Oh, here comes the new music,” as it switches tracks. The tracks are so different, though, that it’s up to the player to decide for themselves whether they like it or not.

The controls in Jail Escape! are very basic but mostly well done. Mostly they operate on mouse clicking, you click the mouse several times to speed yourself up off of the ramp and also click on a button at the left side of the screen to control a jet pack. There isn’t very much to do though; you can’t control where helper items that you can buy are placed, nor can you control when they go off except by landing on them.

Replayability depends on the mileage you get out of this type of game, I think. If you can get yourself through the first part of the game to the point where you are able to get some of the better equipment and start really making money through repeated jumps on a consistent basis, it becomes rather fun. It’s just that that point takes a while to come to. I would recommend this game to fans of the action genre who enjoy a challenge.

Click here: Play it now!

Jail Escape!

Graphics – 3/5
Sound/Music – 5/5
Controls – 3/5
Replayability – 4/5
Gameplay – 4/5
Overall – 4/5

Attracto TD, our latest Bubblebox exclusive, can certainly be a tricky one! Lucky for you guys, we’re nice enough to give you some pro tips from the actual creators of the game. Hope these help. Good luck!

• Basics:

Resources:

Cash:Cash is used to buy new towers. Cash can also be used to buy new rubies. Cash can be acquired by collecting gold pieces which come from the Mining Stations and the Gem.

⁃ Rubies: Rubies are used to upgrade towers. All rubies that are used to upgrade the tower return to the inventory after a wave ends. Rubies can be collected after they are released from the Gem. Rubies can be bought using cash. When a tower self-destructs, all of its upgraded rubies return to the inventory.

Tower types:

⁃ The Gem: If this is destroyed by the enemies you lose. Creates Rubies and Cash.

⁃ Mining Station:Mines Cash to be collected

TIP: Strength can be upgraded to mine faster

⁃ Mag Tower: Pulls enemies into it

TIP: Mag Towers pull all enemy projectiles into it. Build these to take the bulk of enemy projectiles.

⁃ Wind Tower: Pushes enemies away from the Gem

TIP: Avoid placing this too close to the Gem because if their push zone extends to the other side of the Gem it will pull the enemies in.

⁃ Teleporter: Teleports enemies to a random position on the map

TIP: These are the best tools for stopping strong enemies

⁃ Reflector: Pushes enemies away

TIP: These are the best tools for stopping non-ranged enemies. If they are upgraded all the way and supplemented with teleporters and Wind Towers they are close to invincible.

⁃ Enemy Types:

⁃ Smart Enemies: Unlike most enemies, smart enemies will attack more than just the Gem but also your other towers.

TIP: These enemy’s ability to be distracted can be used to your advantage. Build some cheap Mag Towers near them and they will stop moving towards your important towers and attack the cheap towers instead

⁃ Ranged Enemies:These enemies do not need to be in melee range of your towers to attack them and instead shoot projectiles. Ranged Enemies are generally considered the most dangerous enemies.

⁃ Fast Enemies: These enemies move lightning fast across the land making reacting to their actions quite difficult.

TIP: Plan ahead. Don’t try to react to these enemies but instead try to stay one step ahead of them.

⁃ Strong Enemies: These enemies are slow but strong and are capable of getting through the push field of any single tower without upgrades

TIP: Do not try to stop these enemies. Instead try to either distract them with cheap towers or use Teleporters to throw them across the map.

• Pro-Tips:

⁃ Restart as often as you would like:

⁃ Restarting a level is fast and free. So if a battle is not going your way don’t be afraid to restart the wave and try again.

⁃ Get Cash:

⁃ Never be too secure in the amount of cash you have. Though you may have plenty of cash at one time, chances are you will need more of it down the line. As such you should always try to keep three (ideally four) mining stations going at all times. Also, if you have some spare rubies it might be a good idea to invest in your mining station’s strength.

⁃ Don’t be afraid to lose towers:

⁃ Towers are meant to be distractions and deterrents from your Gem. Therefore, do not be afraid to lose towers in a battle, as long as your Gem is alive you win.

⁃ Use rubies to invest in health sparingly:

⁃ When a tower is under attack it may seem like a good idea to invest rubies into its health to keep it alive. It is not a good idea. You will very quickly bankrupt yourself all to hold off an attack for a few seconds. Instead try the next option.

⁃ When you are about to lose a tower, self-destruct it:

⁃ When a tower is lost its rubies are lost with it until that wave is over. However if a tower is self-destructed you get all the rubies back to use again. So when you realize that a tower is going down, self-destruct it.

⁃ Prefer more towers over better:

⁃ It is easy to be suckered into the idea of sinking all of your rubies into creating one super powerful tower. Unfortunately what will happen then is all the enemies will attack that tower and even with all maxed-out attributes its push field will be breached and it will be destroyed in a matter of seconds. Instead try to invest in multiple towers. Three enemies attacking three separate towers will last longer and cost less than one tower with full upgrades

⁃ Invest in Rubies:

⁃ Although Rubies do come naturally over time you will find early on how useful they are in supplementing your defenses. Not only that, they are a long term investment which the enemies cannot rob you of. As such, it is a good idea to spend what ever surplus you have on new Rubies.

⁃ Use distractions wherever possible:

⁃ Mag Towers are cheap therefore they make for awesome distractions. Enemies will usually attack whatever is in front of them first. So if you are having trouble with an enemy attacking something valuable try placing a cheap mag tower in the way and watch the enemies waste their energy on that.

⁃ Cross-Pull:

⁃ If two enemies get caught in the pull of two towers pulling opposite directions they will be disabled and unable to attack anything. The best way to do this is to place two Mag Towers near each other so their push zones overlap.

Hope this was helpful and makes you a better Attracto TD player. Good luck!

Stuck on Hit the Troll? Check out the walkthrough here!

F*cked Up, as a concept, is a hilariously funny game, and although it suffers from some significant flaws in its controls, is very interesting to play through at least once to see exactly how screwed up the graphics and controls can be in the hands of talented designers. The storyline is very simple; you ate some bad candy and are having hallucinations as a result, and must get home now to rest. The in-game play places you in several different mazes to navigate through so that you can reach the ending and rest.

The graphics in F*cked Up are perfect for the game theme and concept. Every level, they become more and more odd, colorful, and generally weird to look at. There are many different kinds of barriers to impede progress, including hidden passages, and every level is a progressively stranger experience than the one before, making it clear that your hallucinations are becoming more and more advanced.

The sound and music for each level is pretty different; they have wildly different themes depending on the level. For instance, the opening level is a techno track, while the later ones have an instrumental rock-and-roll feel to them, so which tracks are liked is really up to an individual to decide. It’s nice that the designers went to that amount of effort to put in different tracks though.

The controls for F*cked Up are the most flawed part of it, unfortunately. It’s not the fact that often, “up” doesn’t mean “up”, that is a deliberate part of the game and a design choice that was made to help immersion. It’s more the fact that often there are spots in the game mazes where it’s possible to get outside of the maze entirely, or end up in an immovable position. It’s the only real blemish on an otherwise charming game.

Replayability and general gameplay are through the roof, mostly because of the odd control scheme, where “left” could mean “right” at any given time and the screen constantly changes; no level ever plays out the same even on repeated playthroughs because of how this interaction plays out. I would recommend this game to anyone who likes a weird game, or wants to try something completely off the wall.

Click here: Play it now!

F*cked Up

Graphics – 4/5
Sound/Music – 4/5
Controls – 2/5
Replayability – 4/5
Gameplay – 4/5
Overall – 4/5

Bombslaught is a shooting game made by Rishabh Pandey and featured by Bubblebox this week on their main page. The purpose of the game is to survive for as long as possible through many rounds of increasingly difficult enemies without letting them breach your wall. The game is, in general, well made and fun, but there are several flaws that keep it from a perfect review score.

It is clear that in the making of the game, the graphics suffered most from a lack of attention. The enemies are all mostly clones of each other, with the exception that they carry different weapons and occasionally have a bandanna or other headgear to differentiate them from their brethren, but mostly the environments and character models are both colorless and unremarkable in their uniformity.

In addition, replayability in this game is rather poor. The condition for ending the game seems to be that you die; there is no way to really “win” as such, so the only replayability offered is that you can buy upgrades in a different order and have an easier or harder time getting through. You can also up the difficulty if you so choose as well, but the core gameplay remains the same and so do the enemies and environments. It’s also rather easy to make yourself effectively immortal if you’re good at firing machine guns in this game, especially once you have the more powerful ones. The magazine clips eventually become so large, and the gun power so great, that anything you aim at goes down in short order, even at level 20+ and beyond.

Fortunately, there are other things in the game that make up for the graphics and replayability issues. The sound and music is VERY well done; the guns all sound like their real counterparts and the music is very enjoyable and reminiscent of some of the better rock and roll bands that have put CDs out. The controls are very accurate, even from a distance, which makes it easy to get used to where you have to shoot in order to kill the advancing enemies. The gameplay is also rather fun, since the enemies come at you in a variety of ways, ranging from machine guns to bombs and bazookas.

Overall I would recommend this to anyone who wants to spend a while shooting at things. The flaws are not enough to detract from a good and enjoyable experience.

Click here: Play it now!

Bombslaught

Graphics – 2/5
Sound/Music – 5/5
Controls – 4/5
Replayability – 2/5
Gameplay – 4/5
Overall – 3/5

Attracto TD, our latest Bubblebox exclusive, can certainly be a tricky one! Lucky for you guys, we’re nice enough to give you some pro tips from the actual creators of the game. Hope these help. Good luck!

• Basics:

Resources:

Cash:Cash is used to buy new towers. Cash can also be used to buy new rubies. Cash can be acquired by collecting gold pieces which come from the Mining Stations and the Gem.

⁃ Rubies: Rubies are used to upgrade towers. All rubies that are used to upgrade the tower return to the inventory after a wave ends. Rubies can be collected after they are released from the Gem. Rubies can be bought using cash. When a tower self-destructs, all of its upgraded rubies return to the inventory.

Tower types:

⁃ The Gem: If this is destroyed by the enemies you lose. Creates Rubies and Cash.

⁃ Mining Station:Mines Cash to be collected

TIP: Strength can be upgraded to mine faster

⁃ Mag Tower: Pulls enemies into it

TIP: Mag Towers pull all enemy projectiles into it. Build these to take the bulk of enemy projectiles.

⁃ Wind Tower: Pushes enemies away from the Gem

TIP: Avoid placing this too close to the Gem because if their push zone extends to the other side of the Gem it will pull the enemies in.

⁃ Teleporter: Teleports enemies to a random position on the map

TIP: These are the best tools for stopping strong enemies

⁃ Reflector: Pushes enemies away

TIP: These are the best tools for stopping non-ranged enemies. If they are upgraded all the way and supplemented with teleporters and Wind Towers they are close to invincible.

⁃ Enemy Types:

⁃ Smart Enemies: Unlike most enemies, smart enemies will attack more than just the Gem but also your other towers.

TIP: These enemy’s ability to be distracted can be used to your advantage. Build some cheap Mag Towers near them and they will stop moving towards your important towers and attack the cheap towers instead

⁃ Ranged Enemies:These enemies do not need to be in melee range of your towers to attack them and instead shoot projectiles. Ranged Enemies are generally considered the most dangerous enemies.

⁃ Fast Enemies: These enemies move lightning fast across the land making reacting to their actions quite difficult.

TIP: Plan ahead. Don’t try to react to these enemies but instead try to stay one step ahead of them.

⁃ Strong Enemies: These enemies are slow but strong and are capable of getting through the push field of any single tower without upgrades

TIP: Do not try to stop these enemies. Instead try to either distract them with cheap towers or use Teleporters to throw them across the map.

• Pro-Tips:

⁃ Restart as often as you would like:

⁃ Restarting a level is fast and free. So if a battle is not going your way don’t be afraid to restart the wave and try again.

⁃ Get Cash:

⁃ Never be too secure in the amount of cash you have. Though you may have plenty of cash at one time, chances are you will need more of it down the line. As such you should always try to keep three (ideally four) mining stations going at all times. Also, if you have some spare rubies it might be a good idea to invest in your mining station’s strength.

⁃ Don’t be afraid to lose towers:

⁃ Towers are meant to be distractions and deterrents from your Gem. Therefore, do not be afraid to lose towers in a battle, as long as your Gem is alive you win.

⁃ Use rubies to invest in health sparingly:

⁃ When a tower is under attack it may seem like a good idea to invest rubies into its health to keep it alive. It is not a good idea. You will very quickly bankrupt yourself all to hold off an attack for a few seconds. Instead try the next option.

⁃ When you are about to lose a tower, self-destruct it:

⁃ When a tower is lost its rubies are lost with it until that wave is over. However if a tower is self-destructed you get all the rubies back to use again. So when you realize that a tower is going down, self-destruct it.

⁃ Prefer more towers over better:

⁃ It is easy to be suckered into the idea of sinking all of your rubies into creating one super powerful tower. Unfortunately what will happen then is all the enemies will attack that tower and even with all maxed-out attributes its push field will be breached and it will be destroyed in a matter of seconds. Instead try to invest in multiple towers. Three enemies attacking three separate towers will last longer and cost less than one tower with full upgrades

⁃ Invest in Rubies:

⁃ Although Rubies do come naturally over time you will find early on how useful they are in supplementing your defenses. Not only that, they are a long term investment which the enemies cannot rob you of. As such, it is a good idea to spend what ever surplus you have on new Rubies.

⁃ Use distractions wherever possible:

⁃ Mag Towers are cheap therefore they make for awesome distractions. Enemies will usually attack whatever is in front of them first. So if you are having trouble with an enemy attacking something valuable try placing a cheap mag tower in the way and watch the enemies waste their energy on that.

⁃ Cross-Pull:

⁃ If two enemies get caught in the pull of two towers pulling opposite directions they will be disabled and unable to attack anything. The best way to do this is to place two Mag Towers near each other so their push zones overlap.

Hope this was helpful and makes you a better Attracto TD player. Good luck!

Creeper World 2 is a game which is sort of an homage to games like SimAnt in that you get to build a colony (not of ants like in SimAnts, but you get the idea) out of structures and fend off threats to your colony through the ten missions that you take part in. The game revolves around the creation of training missions for military cadets that you are tasked with defeating, once they are constructed by your superior officer. “Creeper” is the name for the inert but toxic material that is in the depths of the earth and which must be destroyed in each level to progress to the next one.

Graphically, Creeper World 2 is fairly well done; the backgrounds are beautifully done pictures of mountains to admire as you clear your way through the level. The foreground graphics of the buildings that you can construct and the ground it’s set on are not as well done, but due to the fact that this game was made in Flash that is rather expected. For Flash graphics, they are well done though; there is shading and lots of different colors to look at in all of the different buildings, and the buildings have very different shapes.

Musically, Creeper World 2 strikes a decent balance between motivating, exciting beats and lead-ups to crescendos that provide an entertaining background; drums, keyboard, and horns all make an appearance during the soundtrack and are well-represented in the music.

The controls in this game are relatively simple; essentially it boils down to placing buildings where they will fit, moving your weapons around to make sure that the Creeper dies quickly, digging deeper into the level to make sure you can get all of the Creeper, and upgrading your buildings when you can. I did like that some of the buildings and weapons have sub-menus that allow you to do different things with them, like there’s a generator that produces tame Creeper to fight the hostile Creeper, but it also allows you to vacuum up your tame Creeper when you’re done with it, or destroy part of it to make it faster. On the whole, the controls are fairly complex and surprisingly deep.

Unfortunately, replayability and actual gameplay in Creeper World 2 pull down its grade a bit. There’s no reason at all to go back and do levels over again after you finish them, since upgrades are not persistent throughout the levels (if you get an upgrade, you must get it again later on in another level), and in addition the overall game pace is slow. There’s a lot of waiting around for your buildings and weapons to be built, weapons to fire at the Creeper, moving the weapons into place so that they can fire at the Creeper, etc. It helps that there are missions where you get different kinds of mission objectives, such as new enemies to face every two minutes like in the fourth mission, but the basic pace of the game is slow to ramp up.

I would recommend this to fans of the SimCity genre who also like tower defense games, as long as they are willing to play through the game and deal with the slow pace that comes with all the micromanagement of details.

Graphics –4/5
Sound/Music – 5/5
Controls –4/5
Replayability – 1/5
Gameplay – 3/5
Overall – 4/5

Click here: Play it now!