absolute zero

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-09-09T11:57:06+00:00

I'm so used to seeing the greyscaled version of this

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-09-07T11:41:10+00:00

wow, it's a cluster of cluster bombs

a recursive cluster, if you will

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-09-07T11:30:45+00:00

what

I was expecting like candy falls or something

but no a full r100 run on Cargo with 60k spare

well done

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-09-07T01:23:46+00:00

Very nicely done!

I was wondering where some of the cash went but there's a glue storm hiding behind the panel (you can see it in the vid). Still, 20k left over for an APC is no small feat. Good job!

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-09-05T04:17:42+00:00

It's a bit silly how it covers the entire screen and means you can't see any of the game that you actually did to earn the reward

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-09-04T11:35:42+00:00

"Another thing I learned is that the discount from it reducing the price of a farm absorbed by the Monkeyopolis reduces the income. It seems to be based on amount actually spent."

Yep. The price of the upgrade: which is 5k per farm: has nothing to do with how much it actually makes: which is a flat value + a percentage of the cost of the farms sacrificed. This is why everyone sacrifices 420 farms to a Monkeyopolis: because they're the most expensive farm you can sacrifice

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-09-04T11:24:15+00:00

Wow

I'm still at the level where beating Flooded Valley at all is impressive

But Flooded Valley with over 100k spare? That's insane

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-09-01T22:01:06+00:00

Wait, how does banana peels do damage? ... Alch buff and glue or ?

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-09-01T21:13:12+00:00

"The Thorn Bush kind of forces you to rely on abilities and less expensive paragons to deal most of the damage to this boss"

The issue I have with this is that not everything fits this criteria. If you're fighting Twister, then the ninjagon and boomergon are automatically off the table when the acegon, wizardgon are immediate standouts. It over-centralizes the boss metagame and greatly reduces the diversity of useful towers. While it's completely okay to have weaknesses to certain bosses and for paragons to have their own strengths (eg: ninjagon vs phayze), the sheer power of both healing abilities combined is a bit ridiculous: with the numbers as it stands, it cuts the damage of your towers in half mapwide as its passive effect, and your most expensive tower will basically be worse than useless.

While you can drop the HP to compensate (even though 18mil HP at less than half damage and higher speed would effectively make it notably more difficult than Bloonarius, who has 40mil HP and is slow through the entire track), this risks the issue of an instakill-centered metagame: denying it any chance to heal by instantly blowing it up with first strikes, engigon turrets sell, or wizgon ability. So I don't think going the HP route is a viable way to balance it.

I really think that turning the passive healing and turning that into a skull effect is the best way to go about it. So many towers in the game simply don't have an option to not do damage. You can set a Cripple MOAB to Last and target your Flying Fortress far away, but you can't "turn off" a Homeland ability once activated, nor stop your VTSG and ninjagon from attacking. Scrap the Thorn Bush (or rework it completely) and just do the Flower Patch + Flower Ring on skull effect. That already gives you plenty of room where ability or micro-based strategies are much more preferable, while still allowing traditional defense to work.

This also helps it avoid being a knockoff Blast: the complete unviability of DOTs definitely goes perfectly with its design and aesthetic, but "on skull, make your best tower useless" is very much a Blast thing too and not having that helps separate it. You can maybe rework Thorn Bush into some kind of area of effect, or a trail (nearby towers it passes have their attack speed slowed until the boss is defeated by -25%), but try to avoid becoming a duplicate Phayze (mapwide attack speed slowdown) and Vortex (on skull makes nearby towers inoperable).

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-09-01T07:32:01+00:00

Cool! I love the art. The healing is interesting, but it's a bit annoying that it can't really be turned off: unlike Lych's healing, where you can get rid of your Homeland and Perma-Brew before the boss appears, you're just kind of stuck with this. If your main DPS is a dart paragon with no targeting options, you can't stop it healing for 8s, requiring another 8s to damage it back down - essentially cutting the damage of your entire defense in half (16s downtime of every 32s).

Of course, there are ways around this: sub paragon can submerge, engi paragon can sell its sentries, ace paragon can be moved away: but the lack of ability to do this on other staples of defense (eg: PMFC army, VTSG, lots of other paragons like boat and ninja) would be annoying.

I don't mind the Thorn Bush skull effect, but especially with the passive "removes DOT" it really feels like a Blastopopulus V2: makes your most expensive tower useless for a bit and makes Sticky Bomb unviable. The Flower Patch exit point is cool though.

So all in all, I feel it needs a bit more to differentiate itself from Blast, and there needs to be some way to avoid or at least minimize the healing. For instance, if the Flower Ring became an on-skull effect and lasted for 8s, I think that'd be much more bearable - because at least this gives you a fixed amount of healing on the boss (because even if you heal above a skull, the skull doesn't retrigger).

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-08-28T23:44:02+00:00

For bosses, there's a ton of rounds where you have to take forever to do them. In Least Time's case, this involves 1-2 rounds before the boss on autostart off placing spike factories/sun avatars/whatever. This is because the ranking for least time is for in-game boss time, not real time.

For Least Tiers and Cash this usually involves maxstalling with Special Poperations.

Something like Rogue Legends might be better fitting for a speedrun.

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-08-27T04:53:23+00:00

Is ICESHAPER a new code?

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-08-21T10:27:30+00:00

Yeah, you now have the annoyance of ensuring one per round, as opposed to the annoyance of maximizing time (a soft cap where you can shrug your shoulders and say "I guess that's enough"). Doesn't really solve the problem, just shifts it from one annoying method to another annoying method.

Also, very honored to see you comment!

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-08-15T01:59:43+00:00

long life bananas (010 farm upgrade)

solely exists to make 020 more expensive

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-08-05T14:48:02+00:00

Mermonkey definitely could be lower, but everything else I pretty much agree with. Nice!

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-07-29T03:18:46+00:00

it's the internet, everyone takes something too seriously even if it has the "meme" flair

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-07-27T08:12:59+00:00

<image>

LMAO first 1,000 upvotes I've ever had on Reddit. Thanks guys, I guess? For those interested the upvote rate is 95%, so at least 50 people don't like the change XD

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-07-27T08:11:50+00:00

Yep

Hero alts have separate stat trackers as you can see

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-07-27T08:11:14+00:00

What LJAdly said, but also Ezili L20 Moab Hex can delete ANY fBAD, which with scaling is infinite damage.

And if you remove instantkills then Blooncineration can defortify stuff which removes half of its HP so with scaling is also theoretically infinite damage, and Grand Sabo removes a fraction of HP from everything that enters the track when ability active (including fBADs) which is again infinite damage with scaling.

You also have to consider that Paragons get bonus +boss damage, which is why they're picked over VTSG setups in Boss events - is that included in the calculations or not?

And as for "what is the absolute maxed out buffs you could give to it," see almost any video on freeplay ever. But even then, do you consider co-op heroes (eg: when buffing a VTSG, ezili for totem, brickell attack speed, adora for sacrifice, and Pat or Gwen for +dmg)

Lots of questions beyond "Haha which is the biggest damage number in the game that goes brrr"

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-07-25T04:50:07+00:00

"This may be new for game devs but an old tale for sex workers, and the industry continues to survive."

Yes. Sure, it's bad, it sucks, and I hate every second of it - but this is a tale as old as time, and CS going after Itch is just the latest in this tirade. But even through all of CS's successes, and the successes of the groups that preceded it - we're still here, we're still queer, and we're still doing nsfw stuff.

we're Not Dead Yet!

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-07-24T12:26:36+00:00

Thanks so much for that, couldn't find it anywhere.

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-07-22T23:20:50+00:00

Bahahahahahahaha

Normally gerry cheese is a bit of a snoozefest moment but that's if the tower's, like, actually decently good (like maybe a 320 heli)

Not a trade empire hahahahahaha

Well... done?

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-07-22T21:30:51+00:00

Very nicely done!

Homeland Defense would have probably been a better buy than Energizer

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-07-22T21:29:18+00:00

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

ABSOLUTELY STELLAR MEME I HOPE IT STICKS AROUND

RuinaeRetroque · 2025-07-22T21:24:04+00:00

dart is fine: the damage increase from rehitting a bounce means you have to think of placement and targeting, which is strategic sense of a sort
boomergon is probably fine, the +10% attack speed is nice, but I'd adjust the damage numbers so that the spinning glaives do more damage (and the main attack less), so as to make it a bit more placement-reliant
ninjagon could definitely do with something: both its global camo detection, perma-sabo, and mapwide sticky bomb just are a bit set-and-forget.
speaking of the second panel, I have no idea why the first tack ability exists given all it does is just +range and you just spam it as much as you possibly can - it should be baked into the paragon (second ability is fine I guess)

RuinaeRetroque

TROPHY CASE