Difficulty Question

[MrZeruel]

I just played the Demo, I've never really heard of this game, but I kind of enjoyed the demo. Thinking of getting it, but the only thing that did not convince me is that I didn't feel like it posed too much of a challenge (as a puzzle or didn't feel there was a possibility of losing). But I also know that the demo might not be the best to measure its difficulty.

Again, I liked the feeling, aesthetic and the gameplay overall. I'm just wondering if it gets more complex as it progresses, or if it stays quite straightforward? I can see myself losing interest halfway if not.

[Fireswamp]

The levels do generally get harder and more complex as you progress through the campaign (though it is not a consistent difficulty curve), but if you are really looking for a challenge then the campaign levels probably aren't going to do it for you.

However, the full game has access to Colonies: the place where player made levels are uploaded. The vast majority of Colonies levels are not challenge levels either, but I can give you a list of levels to try if you want to do that.

[MrZeruel]

You know what? That's good enough for me. Thanks for the answer, I'll give it a try!

[Cursed Hawkins]

Originally posted by Fireswamp:

(though it is not a consistent difficulty curve)

I'd argue that some do have a bit of a difficulty curve in their mechanics, such as the level that gives you roughly a minute to have snipers setup and ready for a frontal assault.

[Fireswamp]

Originally posted by MrZeruel:

You know what? That's good enough for me. Thanks for the answer, I'll give it a try!

I don't know what difficulty or map style to give you, so I am just going to give you a bunch of options and let you figure out what you want to play. I have roughly sorted the rest of this comment by difficulty, so if you want something harder, read further down.

The campaign levels generally don't try too hard to kill you, they instead try to make progress difficult. The exceptions to this are level 6 (We Know Nothing) an the last 3 levels of the campaign (Sequence, Wallis, Founders). The demo is the first 5 levels of the campaign, and progress should carry over from the demo. So you could go into level 6 of the campaign immediately if you want to try that.

If you are looking for something harder, it is up to you if you want to push through the campaign to try the last 3 levels; they are the next logical progression in difficulty. In Span Experiments (accessed from the main menu) near the top right of the planet layout is Holdem 2. Just beating the mission isn't too hard, but the nullify objective is considered the hardest base-game map objective. The map has creeper++, so creeper production scales with time and you have a hard time limit of 25 minutes to nullify everything.

An alternative would be to play the daily missions (Chronom on the main menu) and go for a top time. Sub-15 or sub-10 minute nullify is a good starting goal, with top times each day usually around 5 minutes.

And then we get to Colonies and where your options really open up, I will give search terms in quotes, remove the quotes when typing them in the search. I think a good starting point would be WitherChat's harder story series; typing "(harder)" into the title search should give you 8 maps. These maps are modified versions of the story missions designed to make them harder.

Heisenberg has 142 maps that you can find by typing "Heisenberg" into the author field. Their older maps are vanilla, but about half of their maps include Vertu units; custom units that are very powerful but expensive and slow to build. A good starting point would probably be (Map 4273: Red Herring 1 - Straightforward by Heisenberg) if you are looking to play with custom units.

Most Hypnotic22 maps are good challenge maps for those who want a vanilla map with a vanilla solution. Typing "Hypnotic22" into the author portion of the search should return 41 levels, the second last one (Map 521: The Omegawave of Omegadoom by Hypnotic22) is a good starting point if you want to play some properly difficult levels. If you liked that level you can look through the rest of Hypnotic22's levels, just be aware that Hypnotic also made "box" maps, which are similarly hard but far from a vanilla experience.

If you are looking for a less standard experience you could try some of Hypnotic22's box maps or you could try my maps (Map 949: Battlecreeper Operational by Fireswamp) or (Map 1410: Farbor by Fireswamp).

Once you know roughly what difficulty level and style of map you want I can give you more maps in that category.

Have fun!

[MrZeruel]

Wow, thanks, that is very detailed! I appreciate it. I'll probably start with the campaign for now (I just played mission 6), but after the campaign I'll start following up your recommendations.

Thanks!