Flash Friday Fun: Pew pew space lasers! (Sort of.)
May 23, 2008 12:00 AM   Subscribe

Planet Defender by MeFi's own justkevin.

A tower defense-style game with shades of Missile Defender and Space Invaders, you fight against wave after wave after wave of invading aliens by building ion cannons, shields, and nuclear missile launchers in a bid to stave off the extinction of the human race.

Also, for great health care!

[via mefi projects]
posted by WalterMitty (36 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
That's surprisingly entertaining.
posted by dersins at 12:13 AM on May 23, 2008


Bloody excellent. Last week, my wife got pretty exasperated with me playing this rather than going to bed...
posted by mr. strange at 12:43 AM on May 23, 2008


Speaking of playing this rather than going to bed...
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 1:13 AM on May 23, 2008


This is fantastic.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:32 AM on May 23, 2008


Excellent, easy level could maybe use a time dilation feature (2x or 4x faster), I'm not sure about harder levels yet, as I've just started. It froze my opera unfortunately, but that could be because this laptop is like 7 years old.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:47 AM on May 23, 2008


Surprisingly fun. The simplicity is a real plus when compared to desktop tower defense.
posted by grouse at 2:18 AM on May 23, 2008


a bit too hard? or am i an idiot? i'm playing on easy and i can't beat the big guy with the shield, he kills me every time. i wish there were a way to make the game run several times faster so making mistakes took three or four minutes instead of twenty.
posted by radiosig at 2:34 AM on May 23, 2008


Build an ion cannon and a economic center at the start, keep upgrading them and add a second ion cannon; upgrade that too. Then work on getting a missile complex up and fully upgraded. Add two bunkers to reduce population loss. On easy, you won't need robotics. If you have two fully upgraded missile complexes, the Easy boss is a cakewalk.
posted by WalterMitty at 3:21 AM on May 23, 2008


Friday flash fun again? Let me add to the entertainment with Nano war.
posted by DreamerFi at 3:28 AM on May 23, 2008


(and applaud justkevin with a very nice game, of course)
posted by DreamerFi at 3:29 AM on May 23, 2008


Surprisingly fun. The simplicity is a real plus when compared to desktop tower defense.

You may be interested in Pong.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:58 AM on May 23, 2008 [1 favorite]


You may be interested in Pong.

Link?
posted by grouse at 4:20 AM on May 23, 2008 [2 favorites]


Awesome.
posted by maxwelton at 4:34 AM on May 23, 2008


You may be interested in Pong.

Link?


Here. It's a bit high-def though.
posted by ersatz at 5:18 AM on May 23, 2008


Build an ion cannon and a economic center at the start, keep upgrading them and add a second ion cannon; upgrade that too.

Huh, I was building a wall of cannons straight off, then spaced out bunkers below that and then eco centers, and eventually nuke silos and repair centers. Got me through Easy OK but died somewhere in Normal (3/4 way through maybe?). I should be upgrading more I guess.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 9:46 AM on May 23, 2008


I'm not really sure how the bunkers work - do they just protect un-built-on spaces or any spaces, whatever's there?
posted by EndsOfInvention at 10:02 AM on May 23, 2008


I think they protect any space, but the enemy is more likely to attack spaces with hardware. So it makes sense to have your bunkers next to other hardware.
posted by grouse at 10:10 AM on May 23, 2008


I never used any bunkers, and I got as far as finishing the "hard" level. As WalterMitty mentions above, the key seems to lie in upgrades. Once you've got a few max-power ion cannons and missile bases (to get there it helps to have max-power economic centers), everything just sort of falls into place.
posted by dersins at 10:16 AM on May 23, 2008


Ha, time to tackle Apocalypse...

Fun game, already spent 2 hours on it.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 10:35 AM on May 23, 2008


Also, for great health care!

Okay, I'll bite... what does that have to do with anything? I get the Zero Wing reference, but why universal health care?
posted by hjo3 at 11:09 AM on May 23, 2008


Okay, I'll bite... what does that have to do with anything? I get the Zero Wing reference, but why universal health care?

Beat the game (on any difficulty) and you will find out.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 11:16 AM on May 23, 2008


really fun
posted by cell divide at 1:06 PM on May 23, 2008


Truly fantastic. I'm a fan of the DTD games, and this is a really nice twist on that with (in my few games so far) some interesting opportunities for strategy.
posted by tocts at 1:31 PM on May 23, 2008


Bunkers protect adjacent spaces (and perhaps the space they are on).
Where + = most protection, and . = slightly less protection
[.][+][.]
[+][B][+]
[.][+][.]
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:47 PM on May 23, 2008


This got too easy too fast. Once you understand that one or two upgraded ion cannons can keep you alive for a long time, the rest is too easy. I'm currently kicking Hard's ass, in another tab. The thing is I've maxed everything out and I don't have to do anything anymore. Just wait for the carnage to end.

The interface and concept are great though. Just make it tougher!
posted by sic at 1:53 PM on May 23, 2008


Walkthrough for Apocalyptic mode, in case anyone's interested.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:49 PM on May 23, 2008


It is a great time waster!
posted by bargainhunter at 3:52 PM on May 23, 2008


I died multiple times before figuring out that the bunkers didn't actually do very much by themselves. Other than that, fun!

The music is especially good for looping without driving you bonkers.
posted by dhartung at 6:43 PM on May 23, 2008


Reminds me just a bit of Overlord, which is a good thing.
posted by regicide is good for you at 7:50 PM on May 23, 2008


I'm curious, if anyone sees this. Whenever I play online games like this, there are inevitably a few scores in the top of the list that are wildly improbably if not outright impossible...you know, the ones that exceed any other score by factors of 100, 1000 or more.

These are almost certainly "fake" but you see them on almost every game. What are they typically exploiting?
posted by maxwelton at 12:37 AM on May 26, 2008


I missed it when this was first posted (out of town at a wedding), but I'm glad to hear most people enjoyed playing this!
posted by justkevin at 6:23 PM on May 26, 2008


I finally beat this *$)! thing on Apocalypse. The last boss is pretty tuff.
posted by ikkyu2 at 12:26 AM on June 2, 2008


He's a lot easier if you've converted almost all of your squares to multiple missle launchers by then.
posted by grouse at 1:12 AM on June 2, 2008


I only had about 8 missle launchers. He randomly lased a level 4 bunker near the edge of the board, then started in on the level 4 ion cannon on the edge that had been protected by it. I lost 3600M population from that square in about 30 seconds.
posted by ikkyu2 at 11:47 AM on June 2, 2008


I followed the walkthrough above for apocalypse, but have found through experimentation that you can get the same or better results if you leave all of the bunkers in the center row in place, fully upgraded. Trade out the middle ion cannon for a missile defense.

Biggest problem with the "no bunkers" approach in the end game is that if one of the final boss's nuclear missiles break through, which they seem to do every other game, he can knock out almost a billion population with one shot if there are no bunkers protecting the population. The beam weapon does no population damage.

I've don't know if the final score is population * money / constant or what, but I've never ended up with much more than 4B people...I think you need closer to 5B to make the top ten "honest" high scores.

I wear my crown of geek.
posted by maxwelton at 10:18 PM on June 2, 2008


I just beat the tar out of Apocalypse. A long time ago, without and before consulting any guides, I squeaked out a victory against Apocalypse with fewer than 50 million people left alive at the end. After that I won handily using the guides, then went back trying to improve on my own, and got ground into the dirt, every time, for ages. A few minutes ago I finally found a stronger approach than the guide and really overachieved, hitting a final score of 348,327. That's #8 for the day and #51 for all time. W00t!

Now I can get my free time back. Sweet.
posted by NortonDC at 12:10 PM on June 7, 2008


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