And finished.

I have to admit it does bring satisfaction watching all the little pieces falling together in place to make that huge target, but overall I didn't find the last level good. Its "difficulty" was in putting the inputs in jumbled-up places so it was basically all about having them move forwards, backwards, up and down avoiding the other ones, just so the right ones are next to each other and then combining them. Nothing clever.
Finished worse than average on all three histograms. No work of art there. I could probably optimise in many places, but it's just tiring.

Overall excellent game though. Some extremely clever levels. And some of my solutions were works of art, ending up nicely on the extreme left of the histogram.

And some extremely ingenious solutions there on youtube. Did you see this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO1Ff_pA4dE
(The Fire Control System (the defense one) done without any switches. Fully automated.)

So yeah, highly recommend this game. Did you manage to get it working?

Nope, it's borked. I am quite irked about it.

The folder is intact, it appears to have all the necessary files... it just doesn't work. I've re-downloaded the whole thing, tried everything I can think of...

That's the problem with just throwing together a zip file with no installer. It's probably something wrong with how it's unzipping.


[EDIT] I spoke too soon! I just did a complete uninstall/re-install, changed the folder settings a bit, and for some reason it's working. Hoooooray!!!

Oh shit... sounds like another game I've gotta have.... *sigh*

OK, I have no idea what you frog-faced ****er****ers are saying, but I ain't goin' out like these other turkeys who just lie down and die.

...


Loving it so far. I only had a few minutes, but just finished the fourth "Training Routine"... and it was great, as I spent about five minutes having no clue what to do and then it hit me like a bolt of lightning. And I'm just getting started.

Did you manage to finish that level (Training Routine 4) with 4 blocks only?

I did most of my optimising in block count, though I went for time and footprint if in levels I liked too.

EDIT:
Also some things you might not realize from the game:
_You can speed up/slow down the input rate. I believe the default keys are [ and ].
_The grey block that does nothing (Platform) doesn't count towards your block store.
_There are 'failure logs' on some levels that add to the story.

^and sorry if those are obvious, but they weren't for me from the beginning.

4 blocks? lolno. I used more than that, but it was fun setting up the perfect timing of the block drops to fuse and move. Yes, I was using the input rate adjuster for that one. Didn't know about the platform not counting - that's good to know.

I've found two failure logs thus far - plus those poor bastards that went out the wrong door at the beginning. Great touch - I love the mystery of wtf is going on. I munched a couple of food pellets for good luck. :)

Help me a little with the scoring: I take it lower scores are better, but what are these bar graphs I'm looking at?

Yes, lower scores are better. They are time (cycles) taken, blocks used (platforms don't count) and footprint score (in essence, area covered by blocks (paltforms do count) and moving pieces).

The histogram shows how many people finished the game with this score. The higher the bar the more people finished with this score.
(Not sure how often these get updated/sent, but since GOG's version is DRM-free I imagine nothing is sent from GOG players and the data on the graphs are taken from when this particular version was sent to GOG).

Oh man, do I empathize.

This is the best game I've played in years.

But I'm... oh... 600+ blocks into this level and I'm going blind. I swear to god if my timing falls off on the eight iteration or something I might go postal. What a quantum leap from the entire game to the "Homeward Fleet" campaign.

Hah, congrats on reaching that far. Which level exactly are you on? The first one of Homeward Fleet?

Second.

I had looked at exactly zero solutions/advice/other info at any point (so as to remain unspoiled) until the first level when I just could not figure out the trick.

Who knew welders could do that?

I've looked ahead a bit, but I just have to finish this damn thing - I can't even remember what it actually is called - before starting another monster. I have already completely deleted a solution I was over 500 blocks into when I realized I was not going to be able to repair the damage I did to the production resonance and the cycles were going to degrade. And yes, you are spot on - the difficulty here is artificially inflated via awkward production placement / finishing pad placement.

Still the best game I've played in just ages. Once I finish I'd love to pick your brain about some of these levels. We can move it over to the game forum. :)

It's like I'm looking at myself. This was the first and only time I looked online for help with this game.
Ditto.

For what's it worth you get the very nice feeling of accomplishment "Finally done. Yay!" after you finish the game. And the second last level is a pleasant change of pace.

Let's solve that problem!

I made a massive thread, and I hope you (and anyone else interested in this game) can check it out. It has some mild spoilers in terms of level names and a few bits about strategy, but it's mostly just a compendium of my scores and thoughts. Check it out!

Will check it out. Level by level.