Besides creating own games every flash developer also plays other cool games. That’s how we learn the ropes of good game design and mechanics.
So I decided to create special category here on The Gamest Blog where I will publish articles about games that impressed me the most! I even created arcade games site Jar of Games to be able to publish games I love.
Today I’ll share the review of the game, created by Russian indie developer Lumarama: Tentacle Wars. This game was released more than year ago, but still draws huge attention from players. At this moment it got more than 15 millions game plays worldwide, was published on more than 3000 game portals and still getting 10 to 15 thousands game plays daily. Impressive result, isn’t it?
I played this game about a year ago, but didn’t manage to clear all the levels back then. So I returned to the game few days ago and just fall in love with it again. I played it until I passed all 20 levels in both games: original Tentacle Wars and its sequel Tentacle Wars: The Purple Menace.
In my opinion the reason of such a success is very creative and original game mechanics. You play for the green microbes trying to capture hostile (red, black or purple) ones using tentacles. All microbes on the stage grow with time and your main objective is to takeover your enemies before they become too strong to be killed. They also have the ability to attack you, so you should be really attentive to control the situation on the battle field.
But what makes this game really fun – it’s the variety of tactics you can use to defeat your opponent. In most cases enemies are more powerful than you so the only way to win is to find the clever strategy.
Game guide
If you like this game as I do, here are few suggestions on tactics.
First what you should know is how tentacles work. When you connect your tentacle to the enemy it constantly sends units over it based on the size of the sending microbe. But if you want to send units faster – you can cut your tentacle directly near the sending cell. This way you send all the units the tentacle consists of.
If there is neutral cells on the stage try to rush them as soon as possible. By capturing neutral cells you get bonus troops contained in these cells. This is the one of the most efficient ways to increase your strength. Another one is to connect your tentacles to your own microbes and send additional units to them.
You should also note that your microbes evolve based on containing units. Higher class has increased sending speed that allow to attack enemies or support your own cells more efficiently. Your microbes will evolve to the next level if they contain 15, 40, 80, 120 and 160 units. They will devolve if they drop below 5, 30, 60, 100 and 140 respectively. So, for example, to get an embryo, you have to first get it above 15, then as long as you keep it above 5, it will stay an embryo.
Try not to overextend your tentacles as it used units containing inside the cell and you may devolve your microbe, making it weaker.
The last tip that will help you to win in most complicated cases: try to always attack back your enemies if it’s possible so you at least can take down some of their numbers. If enemy attacks your cell and you don’t attack back you just lose your power while your opponent grows stronger.
If you cannot wait to play this game, here are links: Tentacle Wars and Tentacle Wars: The Purple Menace
I really like this style of strategy game where you send troops or in this case cells or whatever to overtake a formidable CPU opponent and Tentacle Wars does happen to be one of my favorites as well.