Disclaimer: I bought this game first from knuckle crackers website, so most of my game time is undocumented.

When first buying creeper world I don't know what drew me to it. I believe I found it first on newgrounds or something similar many, many years ago. A long time before that I got stuck on the level with the pools on higher ground then you, and three valleys leading out to the flat ground that was your only option to stay on due to the creeper having the highground, Anakin!TM. After a while I got better at thinking and my problem solving skills obviously got better, because I was able to beat it. It was after this that I learned that it had a full game by the developer name Knuckle Cracker. I went and purchased the game it it was one of the best decisions of my life.

Let me take you for a personal ride real quick so I can set the mood of why I love this game and its sequels and spinoffs.

A long time ago after I left school for the neet life (which was mostly involuntary but I don't need to go on about my life story), I had a messed up sleeping schedule. I played minecraft and things around the 2012 time along with a game called mabinogi, and by the time I found this game I was up at night out in the living room with nothing to do, bored to near tears because I had nobody up and about to do things with me. It was hard, to put it lightly, being a 14-15 year old with nothing to do in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. You have to find your own ways to cope with the silence. One night out of that boredom I found the newgrounds demo and beat it after my attempt several years prior and so when I beat it, I bought it. As a result I can happily say that I spent hours and hours forgetting my lonelyness to the unending fun that was fighting the creeper. You can make these games go for a very, very long time if you have the inclination to. Saving odin city and going out of my way to completely delete all creeper from the map before activating each totem was one of my ways of playing the game and getting the most out of it.

Creeper world its self has many mechanics, each fun and unique in its own right and each well placed with its own uses, strategic upsides and downsides to the way you employ them. The game challenges you with differing map types (millions of unique layouts) and a ton of interesting situations. This goes from high-power spawners that quickly fill the map leaving you scratching your head on how to defend or secure terrain so that you won't instantly die, to how to push back the ever expanding wave of sludge so you can further progress to the totems that you need to activate to escape the planet and win the round.

The game has many mechanics with the base being get in, survive the creeper using your small array of weapons and power ups, activate the totems, get out. It's unique in that it's a tower defense game that meets real time strategy with unique concepts all on its own.

Lets move onto the story! I won't spoil anything, but to put it lightly the mix of mythology and space blends together really well! The names of planets, the lore behind the creeper and the ever mysterious enemy that controls it, the curious backstory to it all, I could really go on and on.


The pros: Unique story, a lot of lore to pay attention to, a ton of strategy based maps that can and will keep you on your toes with unique objectives and terrain disadvantages and advantages, overall well built mechanics and a fun 'conquest' mode that can test your skill once you're done with the story for those few extra hours to burn while you wait for your friends to wake up.

The cons: Some missions may feel repetitive, you're able to over-build and overpower the creeper, pushing it back to the spawners with an unbalanced amount of turrets or drones, things of that nature that can take the challenge away. Then there's the leaderboards. Don't uh... don't take them seriously. People hack this game a lot. Jerks.


Buy the game, it's great and is worth the money if you're looking for something new to help burn some time away! It can help take your mind off of depressing hours spent alone at night, too, if you're like me. Try it!

I personally cant get enough creeper world. That being said buy creeper world 3 first if you haven't. This game doesnt really add anything on to that. Really. Unless you just want more.... As as side note most of the levvels in the current screenshots arent even in this. Also many of the levels in the current video are not as well. But i liked it anyway.

Have owned this game off of steam for years. This is a fun strategy game. If you normally play RTS games by turtling, this game is especially made for you. Build up a series of defenses to hold off literal waves of enemies. Once you get the hang of it, it is a good chill-out game.

If you're reading reviews of this game you probably have a good idea of what it is. If you've played CW3 and are wondering whether the earlier games are worth playing, the answer is yes. CW1 is very minimal, but it really drills you on the basics (efficient use of collectors, blasters, mortars). There are no nullifiers or AC, so you have to be able to put out a lot of damage per second to clear the levels.

If you're new to the series, start with Creeper World 3, then come back to this.

Don't let its looks deceive you. It's a lot more capable and polished then you'd guess on first sight.
That said: It's a very strategic, satisfying and even "zen" experience, well worth it's asking price.

I'm not big on strategy games. I haven't enjoyed one since the first two Warcraft and Final Fantasy Tactics. But quite frankly I can't put this game down. I first tried the demo for the 4th game and soon after bought the collection. This game is challenging and quite unforgiving when you make mistakes but it's not pulling a cheap shot on you just because. You usually realize you messed up and why within a minute. But if you're fast and smart enough you can usually recover and hold out till you rebuild. You have to plan ahead on how you're going to do it. And pulling off a win that you weren't sure was possible is exhilarating. So far I've beat the story, 23 of the conquest levels and 6 of the special ops missions. Looking forward to wrapping this one up and moving onto the second one.

This nostalgic game is exactly as I remembered 10 years ago, had a lot of fun and I still do.

Creeper World probably needs more tweaks like better hotkeys and visual updates, Conquests missions are a bit repetitive and not difficult to clear. Spec ops missions are nothing but fun and creative. For a 2009 game, it's outstanding and beautifully done. Looking forward to play Creeper World 3 if I had the chance.

Growing up, I was a huge fan of Tower Defense & Real Time Strategy games. My favorite thing to do was set up a defensive line to hold off incoming waves of enemies, then slowly pushing their lines back while expanding my own. Unfortunately, there was never a game that did exactly what I always wanted in regards to this play style.. until I discovered Particle Fleet: Emergence, and was later introduced to Creeper World.

Creeper World has multiple different modes including a main story narrative. Each of which I'll cover in detail, below.

A Galaxy Consumption (Main Story + Gameplay)
A majority of Humanity is wiped out by a seemingly endless flow of blue-purple.. liquid, not unlike slime or oil, known as 'Creeper'. Your journey starts on the outer rings of the galaxy, taking command of Odin City, Humanity's final bastion of hope, where you'll travel inwards until you reach the center. The narrative is told throughout the beginning & ending's of missions, via text. Occasionally, you'll be able to collect ancient relics in missions that will provide additional lore & context. The fact there is any narrative at all, is pretty amazing. I personally don't need one for a game like this, but getting one is only a bonus. I won't spoil what's revealed across the game's 20 story missions.

Another factor to the Main Story, is to introduce you to the game's mechanics & units/structures. These skills will come in handy when dipping your toes into Creeper World's additional challenge modes & custom missions. Firstly, everything is extremely easy to understand & difficult to forget. Like riding a bike, I started up this game, and ended up putting it away for roughly a year. After returning, I remembered how everything worked like it had only been a few days.

Each mission is a set screen/map. 'Creeper' emitters will begin consistently spewing out the dangerous 'Creeper', that will spread across the map. Getting hung up on terrain - Something you'll be using to your advantage constantly. The entire map is split between height & terrain formations. Your towers can fire down at 'Creeper' from above, without getting damaged by it. However, they can not fire up from below, and are sitting ducks if any goop pours over a wall towards you.
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Odin City, your heart, if you will, cannot be lost under any means. You'll connect structures called "Energy Collectors" to it. Expanding the distance at which ammunition & build resources can be transferred to your structures, but to also begin collecting Energy. Essentially your money value, if you want to simplify it. You'll have access to many different units that you can use to defend & ultimately push back the 'Creeper'. Including a simple Blaster Turret that'll fire continuously. A Mortar Tower that will penetrate all the way through deep 'Creeper'. - Both of these sort of attack towers can be moved around like units, as long as they're connected to your energy grid for resupply. A Drone for bombing runs. As well as additional support structures like the Speed node, that increases the speed your resources are transferred. A Storage node that increases your Energy reserves. A Reactor that increases your Energy income. & lastly a SAM turret for defending against meteor (Spores) attacks (Only for certain missions).

To win, or complete a mission, unless there's a specific objective stated otherwise, you are tasked with connecting your grid to various totems placed around a map. Once all totems are activated, a portal is opened, and Odin City is able to safely escape to a new region of space. 'Creeper' Emitters can also be capped/stopped by approaching them with blaster turrets and overwhelming its emitting speed. Stopping its production, and making your job much easier.

Every mission & map is completely unique, and specific to Story Mode are some unique objectives and units.

Conquest Mode
In Conquest Mode,you can take on five different planets with five missions each (For a total of 25 different missions). The maps are different to the story, but the gameplay is noticeably more repetitive here. I say that with a heavy heart, for as long as I enjoy an activity, I am not bothered by anything repetitive about it. Unfortunately, Conquest Mode missions place their emitters at the edges of the screen, every time. The terrain is always different sure, but the emitter placement made these a slog to get through after a while since there just wasn't anything new across each of the missions.

Still a nice bit of extra content if you're interested.

Special Ops
The final mission-collection mode in the game, is Special Ops. 10 completely unique mission map layouts with unique emitter layouts to boot. These are little bonus mission. Where the map pays homage to another product or company, or just a cool design. They were a blast to play through after finishing up on Conquest.

Additional Modes
Last but not least, there's custom missions. Where you can download user made maps for virtually endless amounts of challenging content. There isn't an ingame map creator though, unfortunately. As well as a randomizer, that generates a mission for you based on a few different parameters.

Anniversary Visuals
Apparently the 'Anniversary Edition' is home to entirely new visuals? I wasn't around for Creeper World's original internet release, so consider me a relatively new player as of writing this, but I couldn't find an option to turn on the new visuals & ended up playing with the old school visuals. Which was perfectly fine.

Visuals
I wasn't going to include a visuals section originally, but decided to at least mention that this game is a 2D top-down style RTS. It uses its visuals and ingame height meter to show you how deep 'Creeper' is, and how high different terrain is. It's simplistic, but works. However in the non-anniversary version of the game, there's not all that much variety in the terrain texture. Dirt/sand & gray rock is about all you'll get.

Additional Notes
The audio was okay. Music is nice, and sound effects are acceptable. Unfortunately, in regards to SFX especially, it can get old & annoying very fast on later more challenging missions. There is no audio slider to adjust volume, only a mute button for both.

There's a Steam achievement & ingame achievement tied to every mission in each mode, completing them all unlocks a New Game+ mode known as Double Down. Which makes the game significantly harder for challenge seekers.

A scoring system is in place for those interested in sharing high scores with one another after mission completion.

I've waited a long time for a game like this, and I'm happy to have found it. It's entirely replayable. Although I think I'll probably find myself replaying the later titles more often than this one, once I get around to them. That's not to say I'll never be back, but as a foundation point, Creeper World I is incredibly unique, and a must play for any Tower Defense & or RTS fan looking for a fantastic hybrid of the genre's!

Pros:
+Tower Defense x RTS hybrid
+Unique concept
+High replayability
+Good supply of content
+Steam Achievements

Neutral:
~Conquest Mode

Cons:
-Passable audio SFX (No volume slider, only mute)

Thank you for taking the time to read my review. Please remember, that this is just my opinion. We don't have to agree, one thing I love you may hate, and one thing I hate you may love. Hopefully this gave you an idea of what to expect.

Review lengths have been greatly compressed due to the character limit.

3/21/2023

I started with Creeper World 3 here on Steam, and liked it a lot. So when the Anniversary Editions of the older games showed up, I decided to check them out too. And on first impression... I was going to give this game a thumbs down. Not because it's bad, but because to almost every introduced thing I would think "Oh, like in 3, but simpler or cruder." Since 3 has a bajillion stages, why not just play more of that?

But then I kept playing, enough to finish all the standard stages and get all the achievements, and it's still just too much fun to give a thumbs down. And having every single stage be exactly one full square screen of size is more different than bad, really. Standard price is also quite a bit cheaper, so maybe it's a good choice for your first step into the series.

The Chronom is also a pretty cool feature. It procedurally generates a stage based on a given date. You can then try to be the first to win the stage based on your birth date, or set a new high score for the stage based on some notable date in history. As long as you've got the urge to play, you won't run out of targets.

With the release of Creeper World IXE, I figured I'd take the time to play through the series. Creeper World is a series in which you play a commander and you have to fend off the creep from flooding the world and destroying Odin city (Your base.) Unlike standard Tower Defense in which waves come down a lane/path, Creeper World's Creep is essentially water. That means it drips from higher elevations to low, it pools up and has depth, and has the potential to travel backwards by attacking the source rather than its current point.

Story is simplistic, not enough for me to care but its there to just explain why you are going from planet to planet. You save a few survivors, you unlock new tech... standard "As you play more, you get more cool toys." formula. Graphics are simplistic, sound design is basic and I recognize a few "public domain" tracks.

8/10 Game play shines depth, the rest of the game is 6/10 that works but all it needs to do. Haven't tried "Double down" mode, but I've spoiled the hard difficulty you get told at the end of special operations. Wonder if it got tested... they didn't put any Steam Achievements for it so I'm going to say it did.

Now to CW2...