The Grundo Snowthrow Guide

Ah yes, Grundo Snowthrow. Those cute little Grundos having a bit of a game against those yetis, yes, what fun. What?! Not fun?! Well hopefully by the time I’m done rambling, this will be one of your favorite games ^_^

Okay, yes you’ve caught me! Grundo Snowthrow used to be on my top 10 hated games list too. But I only hated it because I didn’t fully understand how to play it. I had finally been shown the light….and then hit with a snowball for staring at the light too long.

Basics

Well let’s start with the basics. You play 3 Grundos. Your enemies are a bunch of yetis or snow beasts or whatever you feel like calling them. Perhaps you could give them each names or something, but that’s up to you. What you want to do to get to the next level is knock out all of the yetis on the opposing side. Yeah it may sound brutal but *shrugs* it’s a snowball fight. As you can probably tell from the name or from at least attempting it once, you do this by throwing….. (Yes you’ve guessed it!).....snowballs at them. But they aren’t just going to stand there staring at the light and be pelted. You’re going to have to dodge their snowballs too.

So, how do you get them to throw a snowball you ask? Well, it’s very simple. You just click and hold on the Grundo you want to throw a snowball and wait for the meter to go up just a little (or the snowball won’t get anywhere!) and then there goes your snowball hurdling off into space, or time itself or….that tree. Okay, so you want to know how to aim, correct? Well, in Grundo Snowthrow you’re probably going to want to use a little bit of perspective and see that all of your snowballs don’t go off straight, but more so at a 45 degree angle. And, of course, your enemy’s snowballs will do the same thing just at a downward 45 degree angle. So with this in mind, usually you want to be a little below the yeti you are aiming for.

Now, (yes I know you want to get to the tips and hints) each one of your character has two lives, or in other terms, it can be hit twice with the snowball. And being the super huge yetis they are, you’ll have to take several whacks at the yetis before they’re down for good. Each time you hit a yeti though and it isn’t knocked out, there are three things that could happen. One, they could just be temporarily stunned. Two, they could become dizzy and this is basically like number one it just last longer (and you can laugh at them as the little stars spin around their head!) And three, they could pretend to be knocked out which is very evil indeed. They look just like they would if they were knocked out….except they’re not knocked out, and will come back. This last the longest out of all of them, and personally I think the most annoying because you’re like “Yay! Level done!” and then all of a sudden you don’t get taken to the next level even though all of your enemies are knocked out. And remember! When a yeti is in any of these states, your snowballs will not affect them! So just wait a second until they go back to normal. After you get in some practice for the game you should be able to predict when they will come back, so you can have a snowball flying their way as soon as they’re back to normal. This is helpful because they can’t throw snowballs in this state, so if you can constantly keep those snowballs flying, you won’t have to worry about dodging any!

Points

Okay, because it doesn’t let you see what your score is, I’m going to quickly run over how they come up with your score so during the game you can try to compute it yourself. There are two main components of your score. First it would be the points you get from beating levels. Each level you beat, you get five points for it. I usually get to at least level 20, so that’s 20*5, which gives me 100 points already. The second part of your score will come from your accuracy of hitting the yetis. What ever your accuracy is, that’s how many points you get. 98% accuracy? Well that’s 98 points. So, we currently have 198 points from the first two parts. Now about those last few chances to get points that can make the difference. You get 5 points for every time you beat a level in less than 15 seconds. This usually happens on level One and Two, and on levels Eight and Nine (and I’ll explain why levels Eight and Nine in the tips/hints.) So you beat all of those levels in less than 15 seconds, so that’s another 20 points. That puts us at 218. Now your final chance to get points would be knocking out the golden yetis. For each one you knock out you get 2 points. So, we knocked out four of them, that giving us an extra 8 points. We now finish the game with 226 points, which will get you the avatar during the beginning of the month, and possibly a trophy. Later during the month, beating 4 more levels will get you 20 more points (246), which should get you the avatar anytime.

Tips/Hints

Now that I’ve rambled enough to seriously bore all those people that already know this, it’s on to tips and hints! (Before they all gang up on me and I am pelted with tons of snowballs *looks around*)

Well, like I promised to tell everyone why you can get less than 15 seconds on levels Eight and Nine, here it is. Every eight levels, the number of characters will go back to one. This means on level Eight there is only one enemy. And on level Nine there are only two enemies. And on level 16 there is only one enemy, etc. This makes it easy to get under 15 seconds on not only level One and Two.

When you play, it is usually best if you try to control one instead of all three at the same time. Put the other two you aren’t using down in the lower left hand corner for protection. On some of the higher levels though all of the yetis will crowd down to the bottom, leaving those Grundos you left there open to attacks. In this case, it would be advised to put one Grundo up at the top so that some of the yetis will move back up towards that one. If you are trying to go for a 15 second bonus though, I suggest just leaving the Grundos where they are and using one of them and just quickly pelting snowballs at them.

Keep your accuracy up! Like I said before in the points section, accuracy is half of your score. So don’t just randomly throw those snowballs! And as usual, there are exceptions to each rule. The only time you should just fire away at the yetis would be when you are going for the 15 second bonus. Otherwise be careful with your aim.

Remember about the perspective thing? Good, because it can be very helpful. It seems for most enemies that there is this spot just a little below them that you can hit them with snowballs, but they can’t hit you! A very helpful thing.

Another thing that I have found helpful to remember, and that I think I should share with all of you, is that defense should come before offense! It doesn’t do you any good to hit the yeti – and then loose the game because they hit you.

Make sure not too make the foolish mistake of hitting one of your own characters. I know I have done this several times because I forget about the perspective. So keep the perspective in mind! It plays an important part in the game.

The final tip I have to give you before I leave you would be about the yetis. Even though I have no idea how to use this to your advantage, it seems that if a yeti goes onto the other side of the ice divider line (your side) you can control it. *shrugs* Use it how you wish.

Well, thanks for spending your time reading this article! I hope it helped you gain some insight into it and possible helped you get the avatar or a nice trophy. Or at the very least it made it off your top 10 hated games list. If you have any comments, or would just like something to be explained a little better, or anything, just give me a Neomail ^^ I’m off to frolic in the snow with the Grundos, knowing that if I’m drawn into a snowball fight, I’ll be ready.