SwarmZ Campaign Walkthrough

So the other day I was watching a YouTube video for Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator, which I do every once in a while.  One of the recommended videos YouTube showed me was for this game SwarmZ, which I proceeded to watch afterwards.  The game looked reasonably interesting, and I'm always down for a good tower defense-like game as demonstrated by my love for Kingdom Rush.  I checked on Steam and it was only $5.  I saw that it had mixed reviews, but I figured I've wasted $5 in worse ways if it turned out to be a dud.

I won't say I regret spending the $5, but at the same time I can't say I can recommend this game either.  It's a little hard to even call it a game - it feels more like an alpha demo for a game that still needs to be fleshed out.  I just have so many thoughts about this game that I wanted to share, and doing a walkthrough video really feels more like justification for doing this blog post, especially since the game is so easy a walkthrough video is somewhat redundant.

There's a seed of a good game in here, but merely that - a seed.  For one, the game is way too short and way too easy (as evidenced by my walkthrough only taking 30 minutes).  There are only six maps total, and the "campaign" just consists of doing them all sequentially.  After that the only replayability is sandbox mode, where you can custom place both the baby and the zombies on those same six maps and have unlimited funds for your defense.

The game becomes largely trivial once you make the key realization - the zombies are programmed to just make a beeline straight for the baby.  They only attack your units and barricades to the extent that they are in between them and the baby.  Once you know this, you realize the most effective strategy is not trying to put up defenses directly in the zombies' path, but rather to place your offensive units in lines parallel to the zombies' path, turning it into a murder zone where they are mowed down as they pass through.

It's at this point that you also realize that barricades are largely useless then, and the supremacy of the Assault Rifle unit becomes apparent.  While they are the second most expensive unit, their rapid fire, high damage, and superior range makes them the perfect unit for creating death alleys for the zombies to run through.  You know your design is busted when you can get by with only a single offensive unit and no defensive barriers (I do use some on the Farm map, but honestly could have survived without them).

It's because of these factors that the gameplay design just doesn't really work either.  The game has a dichotomy of a build phase where you place defenses and an attack phase where the zombies then attack.  There's nothing to do during the attack phase but just watch - you can't add defenses on the fly, move units around, etc.

The problem is the game is balanced in such a way that either your defense works or it doesn't.  On every map there are so many zombies it makes it so that if the zombies are gaining ground on your defense at all - attacking barricades or units - then you've already lost, because there are so many of them they'll eventually break through ALL of your defense.  This isn't the kind of game where you're going to survive an attack phase by the skin of your teeth, with your last-stand defenders right around the baby taking down the last zombies.  Because of this, once you develop a winning defense strategy (which again isn't hard), the attack phase then becomes tedious to watch even on 4x speed, as it's just your defenders mowing down the zombies at fixed points on the map for several minutes.

The only way to fix this issue is to either drastically alter the balance of the game or (better) change it to more of an RTS style, where you can continue to build and move units around while the attack is going on.  There are other changes that could be made to increase the challenge as well.  Zombies need better AI, where they will actually go somewhat out of their way to attack your offensive units.  Just changing them to "make a beeline for the nearest human" instead of the baby would be a massive improvement and make barricades worthwhile.  In addition, making friendly fire a thing would greatly aid the challenge - it would eliminate setting up units in parallel lines to shoot at zombies in between them, which is such an effective strategy right now.  I did see that in a previous patch they made it so that friendly units can't fire through each other, and I can only imagine how broken the game was when you could put together lines of Assault Rifle units two or three rows deep.

Alas, none of these things will ever happen.  The last update for the game was in 2019, so it's clear that the developers have either moved on or are no more - I couldn't be bothered to research which.  The game is what it is.  Again, I can't say I really recommend it, but if you have $5 and a couple of hours where you're really bored to burn, there are worse ways to spend them.  Here is the walkthrough, then, such as it is:

SwarmZ Campaign Walkthrough

Ultimate Doom Ultra-Violence 100% No Enemy Damage Walkthrough - Knee Deep in the Dead

As I said in the single-segment run I just did for Knee Deep in the Dead, I want to do it again but this time with no enemy damage taken.  It's theoretically possible to do no damage at all (at least for episode 1, not sure about the others), but it requires really good RNG which I don't have the patience for.  You already need pretty good RNG just to do no enemy damage with all the hitscan enemies in the game, and combining the two would require amazing RNG.  Trying to do it as a single segment would also require amazing RNG, which I again don't have the patience for, so this one is divided up by map.  I'm still getting 100% kills, items, and secrets on every map.

Episode 2 is in the works and I'm about halfway done.  I'll eventually do both single-segment and per-map runs of all four episodes.

Ultimate Doom Ultra-Violence 100% No Enemy Damage Walkthrough

Ultimate Doom Ultra-Violence 100% Kills, Items, and Secrets - Knee Deep in the Dead

I put Doom on my list on my Road Ahead blog post many months ago.  While I'm still chugging along on my Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge and Skyrim 100% Maximized Playthrough, lately I've been getting that itch for something a little different, and Doom fit the bill.

I have so many fond memories of this game.  I remember playing the shareware version in my dorm room on my roommate's computer in January 1993 after coming back from winter break.  I'd played Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny before, but this was a huge leap forward for FPS games.  If you know anything at all about FPS games, you probably are aware of Doom's legacy, so I won't belabor it here, but between "will it run Doom?" memes and the fact that the franchise is still going strong with Doom Eternal, the original Doom's effect cannot be understated.

Someone in our friend circle got the full version at some point, and I played the entire game.  Everyone who plays video games has those special memories and moments from certain games that just stick with you.  For me, one of them is getting to the end of The Shores of Hell and facing the Cyberdemon for the first time.  Towards the end of the episode you start coming across wall decorations of mutilated Barons of Hell:

I distinctly remember thinking, "What could do that to a Baron of Hell?", which I'm sure was the designers' intended effect.  Then I got to the last level, and at first all I can hear is the footsteps - heavy, mechanical footsteps.  Then I see him, and when he shot the first rocket at me I might have wet my pants a little.  He was using a rocket launcher!  That was my weapon, and he was using it against me!  I truly was terrified of him.  He really should have been the final boss of the game in my opinion, as the Spider Mastermind just didn't have the same effect for me.

We soon were playing deathmatches long into the wee hours of the morning, connecting two computers together primitively through serial ports.  When Doom 2 came out I naturally played it as well.  At that point we had access to a proper computer lab with ethernet-linked PCs, and we reveled in four player deathmatches.  It was a glorious time.

Doom games since then have passed me by, but getting started on this has made me want to revisit the entire series.  I've also been watching a lot of Under the Mayo's Doom Eternal videos lately as well, which has piqued my interest in that game.  In any case it will be a long time before we get to all that.

This is a single-segment run of episode 1, Knee Deep in the Dead, getting 100% kills, items, and secrets on every level.  After this I will release segmented runs of each map where I take no enemy damage in addition to getting 100%.  Putting together the RNG for no enemy damage across the entire episode is something I just don't have the patience for.  A similar effort for episode 2 is in the works, and eventually I'll do all four episodes.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Dragon's Power Iron

Here we are at last - the very last map for this challenge.  And I must say I'm disappointed that we're going out on a whimper instead of a bang.  It's the same old stuff that's been recycled for three maps in all three modes now, and it just doesn't present much of a challenge.  The middle section is just outright boring, as you trivially stop a wave of Mogwai while waiting for a bunch of High Sorcerers to walk ever so slowly to the magic pots that will kill them.  As with most of the iron modes in the game, the tower usage and placement is pretty darn obvious, so there's no challenge there.

So where do we go from here?  Well, we're not done yet.  The newest elite campaign also added a new hero, Dianyun, so now I get to level him to 10 and do every map in the game again with him.  Every.  Map.  In.  The.  Game.  I need to go cry a little now.  Once I finish that I'll do a final report card and retrospective as I did with Origins, and I can't wait, as I'm very much over this game at this point.

Impressions

It's not a hard map, so it's mostly 'A's all around.  Asra gets a somewhat rare 'A', as her Spider Bite ability allows you to kill the High Sorcerers without the magic pots, granting more money to get your build up faster.  Veruk gets a 'B' because he's Veruk, and I'm not sure if Oloch truly deserved a 'C' for this map, but I consider it my parting shot to a lousy hero who ruined my no-'F' streak.

Final Grades

• Veruk - B
• Asra - A
• Oloch - C
• Margosa - A
• Mortemis - A
• Tramin - A
• Jigou - A
• Beresad - A
• Doom Tank SG-11 - A
• Jun'pai - A
• Eiskalt - A
• Murglun - A
• Jack O'Lantern - A

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - Dragon's Power Iron

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Dragon's Power Heroic

The final heroic mode for the game turns out to be moderately challenging but mostly uninteresting.  The only thing to figure out here is the necessity of using the magic pots to kill the High Sorcerers and Carnival Dragons instead of trying to DPS them down for non-uber heroes, but that's honestly old hat at this point.  Like the campaign mode we build an early chokepoint in the top right, and the rest largely works itself out.

Impressions

Just like campaign mode there are no surprises here.  And again, it's just not that hard, so no one is worse than a 'B'.

Final Grades

• Veruk - B
• Asra - B
• Oloch - B
• Margosa - A
• Mortemis - B
• Tramin - A
• Jigou - B
• Beresad - A
• Doom Tank SG-11 - A
• Jun'pai - B
• Eiskalt - A
• Murglun - A
• Jack O'Lantern - A

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - Dragon's Power Heroic