Overview
This guide is going to teach you everything you need to know to score 10,000 points and get the final achievement of the game. The aim is to comprehensively cover both the fundamentals and some more advanced stuff.
Introduction
Your Gun
Your gun is rapid fire and is constantly shooting. Each object dies in one shot from your gun, except for bombs which only blow up when you run into them. Your gun is very important because it is your primary tool of protection against enemies. While you will gain some shards from the objects you destroy with your gun, it is nothing compared to the shards gained from bombs and so the gun’s main purpose is really to clear a path for you through the oncoming swarm. The firing rate of your gun starts off at 75% of its max and speeds up as you collect shards:
- 0-1000 shards: Firing rate at 75%
- 1000-3000 shards: Firing rate at 82%
- 3000-6000 shards: Firing rate at 90%
- 6000+ shards: Firing rate at 100%
It is important to understand how the gun works because in this game your body is really just a single, tiny point. Your gun often shoots fast enough that it destroys nearly every enemy before they touch you, even when they are chasing you from behind. One of the main ways you die in Swarmlake is when you are faced with very dense groups of enemy objects that your gun cannot shoot fast enough to protect you from. What this means is that at 1000 shards you are going to be stronger than at 999 shards since a faster firing gun can shoot through denser groups of enemies. By this logic, after 6000 shards the game will only get harder because your gun is maxed out while the enemies continue growing denser. You will get used to how fast your gun can shoot and the density that each rate can shoot through.
One last note: your gun is also used to hail bombs to stop moving, but we will talk about that more in the bomb section.
Objects
The swarm is made up of the following 4 objects:
- Pyramids
- Orbs
- Hexagonals
- Bombs
These objects will always spawn at a set distance in front of you, never behind you. This is significant because you can run backwards and be sure that no enemy objects are spawning behind you and the whole of the swarm is in front of you.
Now, the way that the game works is that it spawns objects at a rate based on how many shards you’ve collected. The more shards you have, the faster the objects spawn. This leads to an accumulation of objects as their spawn rate outpaces your ability to destroy them, which causes the swarm.
Although the spawn rate increases as you collect shards, there is a shard-dependent maximum number of objects; the swarm won’t continue growing ad infinitum. For example, at a shard count of one you can only have 3 bombs.
Where it gets interesting is when we look at what happens to the enemy objects when they’ve reached the max. At that point, the objects start disappearing and respawning. Remember, objects only spawn in front of you and they only disappear behind you. For instance, if you run backwards, meaning you are facing your swarm, the 3 bombs at shard count 1 will never disappear and thus no more bombs will spawn. However, once you turn around and start running forwards, meaning the swarm is at your back, then the bombs will disappear and start respawning in front of you again.
In whole this means that if you are running forwards, there will always be objects spawning in your way. As you collect more shards, the spawn rate increases and the objects obstructing you become more numerous. If you run backwards then the objects don’t disappear. These simple mechanics have a big impact on swarm behavior and you can manufacture different types of swarms all based on your movement patterns. In order to get deeper into swarm behavior we first need to understand the movements of each constituent object.
Pyramids spawn in straight lines at the current altitude of the player. After spawning, they remain at this fixed altitude, flying perpendicular to the ground in straight lines and in the direction of the player. This means if you remain on the ground and never jump, all your pyramids will be at ground level. Pyramids fly faster than we can run.
The pyramids will continue flying in straight lines even after the player has changed position; they are not homing like the other objects. Instead what happens is they fly straight until they reach a certain distance from the player and then they redirect toward the current position of the player and start another straight line voyage.
Because they redirect based on their horizontal distance from the player’s position, pyramids will tend to stack into moving verticals that reach up to the maximum height that the player has jumped, tending to be thinner at altitudes where the player spends less time. These verticals often form into other metastructures such as giant walls or swirling cylinders based on the player’s movements.
Orbs spawn in clusters and follow the player in a homing pattern. They are the fastest object and will eventually catch you if left unattended, although it takes a while since your gun can shoot objects very close to you, even if they are behind you. You can feel your screen rumbling as the orbs close in on you.
Orbs have the easiest movement to understand because they simply follow you. Because they move a little bit faster than you, they are constantly applying pressure and forcing you to move as well as creating a zone directly behind you that is full of orbs. This often means that you can’t turn around and retrace your steps directly since the orbs will be in your way, instead you must move in a roundabout fashion if you want to double back to collect some shards.
While orbs move faster than the player, a way that you can put some distance between you and the orbs is by jumping. Jumping makes you move a little faster than running so if you jump occasionally it can buy you some milliseconds. How you really get benefit from this is if you continue jumping on top of the objects until you are very high up. Gravity causes you to accelerate downward so you will reach velocities far exceeding the orbs’ create a momentary respite from the followers. I believe that the orbs travel at speeds proportional to their distance from the player, meaning that they move faster the further they are from you, so whatever gap you create with this method will be short lived.
Hexagonals are objects that act very similar to orbs. They spawn in clusters and also follow you in a homing pattern, however they are a little bit slower so they tend to lag slightly behind the cluster of pursuing orbs just slightly.
What makes hexagonals interesting is that they try to dodge your bullets. If you start shooting near a hexagonal it will move out of the way. Due to this fact it is much easier to shoot your way through a mass of hexagonals than it is to shoot through a mass of orbs. The challenge of course is that even though you can shoot your way through them fairly easily they still obstruct your view and often will have orbs intermixed with them. It is still possible to die while trying to go through a dense group of hexagonals.
Bombs are the best objects and are central to doing well in Swarmlake. Although they are technically enemies and will give you a shard when destroyed, they can’t actually kill you and in fact help you a great deal.
Bombs spawn one at a time and float toward you in a semi-homing fashion. They move considerably slower than the player and are actually the slowest object in the game. They have momentum and so they turn with a radius that is more obtuse than orbs and hexagonals, which means that they cannot tightly follow you as you change directions. If you travel in a straight line, bombs will cluster at the very rear of the swarm and if you strafe left or right while running the bombs will follow in a wide arc. Additionally, bombs’ momentum causes them to overshoot while following you and have to turn around to come back to you.
When you shoot bombs they stop moving. This is a really good way to dictate the motion of bombs, allowing you to choose either to let the bombs continue moving or to stop them in a place of your choosing. Also, the bullets reflect off the bomb when you shoot at it so they can hit other objects around it. The bullets reflect how you would expect them to reflect off a spherical object; if you hit the center of the bomb they bullets will reflect straight back at you and if you hit it more edgewise the bullets will reflect at more of a right angle. This can be very useful as you approach a bomb because your bullets will clear some space around it and even hit objects behind you as you approach despite you shooting straight ahead at the bomb.
The important thing about bombs, of course, is that they blow up. While your bullets will reflect off of the bombs, running into them will trigger them to detonate. When they detonate they destroy all other objects in the vicinity (with the exception of other bombs) and will create rich beds of shards that are easy to pick up. Since the bomb destroys everything in its blast radius, it can be very rewarding to hit bombs that are near the densest regions of the swarm as this is the most efficient way of clearing enemies and collecting shards.