Conquering Swarm

by Moneyboyjr

Hey, Neopian Times readers, this will be long, but probably helpful! The best tip to making major money fast is playing Swarm. Not good at it? Practice! Not only does Swarm give out LOADS of NP, but it can be mastered in a short period of time. As soon as it came out, I was making an average of 750-800 per game at 3 a day! Do the math and that's around 70,000 NP every month out of Swarm.

Anyway, out of the statistics and into the game itself. If you've never played before, you are a tank with the mission to shoot approaching waves of invading insects. You use the arrow keys to move along the bottom of the screen. To shoot your tank's cannon, press spacebar. Those are the only controls, making the maneuverability incredibly simple! The normal enemies are a sickly puke green, but if you destroy any of the differently coloured bugs, they will drop a slow-moving power up (or down, in some cases).

There are 7 different colours of power up, each having its own unique characteristic. Don't try to memorise what each does, not only because they are also listed at the bottom of the screen while you play, but if you remember that the Blues are good and the Yellow and Green are bad, you'll be fine. The other three, Orange, Purple, and Brown, are also good, but are much more rare.

Okay, when you actually start the game, twenty-eight bugs will appear in formation above you and will begin dropping green orbs on you. Watch out for these, because every time you get hit, you lose a shield. The shields are lives, and you only start out with three. You can get more by collecting Purple power ups, but those are relatively rare.

The bugs will sweep back and forth along the screen, getting closer to you after every pass. As long as you have any towers, the four brown brick things above you, you can hide behind them from the bugs, but every time they get hit they get a little smaller. Make sure YOU don't accidentally shoot these, though, or you might find yourself susceptible to attack. The Brown power ups will rebuild these.

Above the bugs, tiny light blue bugs sometimes zip by. If you happen to snag one of these with one of your cannons, they will drop a random power up. Don't worry about these until you have good accuracy and timing, however.

There are two good strategies to use: 1) The position on the screen to fight the bugs is going to be in either of the corners (take your pick). Just wait for the bugs on the side to come close and pick them off, one by one. This way, the tower closest to you will protect you from most attacks while you can easily dodge any that get through (especially if you got a Dark Blue power up, which increases your speed). Each time you delete a whole column of bugs, the time it takes for all the bugs to sweep past will decrease, so it will take longer for them to close in on you! 2) Stay in between the middle two towers so that you can easily hide behind them and aim at the mass of bugs at the center of the 4 rows. When this area is cleared of bugs, you can move onto each side, using the technique in Strategy #1.

Every time you destroy a bug (no matter if it has a power up or not) you get 5 points. You don't get any points for collecting the power ups (good or bad), so carefully decide whether or not you want the one that's coming down (Don't worry, they take a rather long time to fall). The minimum score for beating every level is 140 points times the number of whichever wave you just beat. In other words, each wave is worth 140 points. This game (unlike some others) gives you the amount of points you gained in NP, but you cannot get over 1000 NP in any game. :-(

After destroying a wave of bugs, you will get a message telling you that, "YOU DESTROYED WAVE X; CLICK BUTTON TO CONTINUE", where the letter X is the wave you just beat. I suggest that you don't click the big, yellow button immediately, because you can still move around and stuff (to a corner). Also, you can take as long as you want before clicking, so if you want, you can dry your sweaty hands or just take the breath you've been holding in (or not ;-) ). When you do press the button, just repeat the strategies.

I really hope that this helped you. If you have any more questions about Swarm, feel free to Neomail me!