This is the fourth part of my series of Braid hints. It’s not a walkthrough, because simply giving the puzzles’ answers would ruin the game. But I got so frustrated at the game that I gave in to temptation and looked online to find answers to a puzzle in both world 2 and world 3, so I’m now providing the spoiler-free hints I wish I’d had access to.

The official walkthrough says…

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. Once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 6: Hesitance

World 6 introduces the ring. The ring that slows time. And creates all kinds of freaking difficult puzzles…

The Pit?
There’s actually no puzzle piece here.

There and Back Again
1. (very easy)
No hint.

Phase?
1. (easy)
It might take a bit longer than you like to get there, but two steps forward one step back is still progress.

2. (medium)
Take note that you can climb all the way to the top.

Cascade
1. (medium) – this is the one at the upper left
You’ll need to use the ring, and you’ll need to have some pretty good timing. Thank goodness for the rewind button.

2. (very hard) – this is the one just above the door
There are many many steps involved here, as you’ll notice if you’re manage to get the key. Put the ring in a hard-to-get-to place.

3. (easy)
You’ll need to use the ring here too.

Impassible Foliage
1. (hard)
There are two challenges in getting this puzzle piece. Firstly, getting past the plant. You need to find a way to use the ring to slow it without slowing yourself. Secondly, actually getting to the puzzle piece. If you’re having trouble with this, just enter the level, stand still, and watch what’s going on. You might have to kill a couple monsters while watching, but just watch.

2. (very hard)
To me, this is one of the hardest puzzles in the game. Obviously, bouncing off of one monster doesn’t get you up there. You’ll likely spend a lot of time in trial and error to get two through. It’s tedious. Experiment with different positions for the ring. It’s helpful to remember that you can jump up through certain portions of floor.

Elevator Action
1. (medium)
This is one of my favorite puzzles in the game. The solution is so elegant. I’m really hesitant to give even a hint, since finding the answer is so fun. Getting past the cannons is pretty easy, it’s getting out that’s the trick. I urge you not to read this hint: How can you slow down not just one or two, but all the cannons?

2. (very hard)
This was the last puzzle piece in the game that I ever got. The thing I wish I’d known was that one of those two moving platforms is actually blocking the other one. Knowing this by no means makes the whole thing easy, but it sure helps.

3. (medium)
The trick here is to realize that once you’re on either of the glowing platforms, you’re immune to both rewinding and to the ring’s time-slowing.

In Another Castle
1. (hard)
It’s all about the glowing section of floor to the left of the lever.

This is the fourth part of my series of Braid hints. It’s not a walkthrough, because simply giving the puzzles’ answers would ruin the game. But I got so frustrated at the game that I gave in to temptation and looked online to find answers to a puzzle in both world 2 and world 3, so I’m now providing the spoiler-free hints I wish I’d had access to.

The official walkthrough says…

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. Once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 5:Time and Decision

World 5 introduces your shadow self. After you rewind, a shadow copy of yourself will re-perform whatever actions you have.

The Pit
1. (very easy)
No hint.

So Distant
1.(easy)
Your shadow self can’t pick up this puzzle piece, but it can help you to get it.

2.(easy)
Look! There are two tasks, and there are two of you. Have one do each.

(No Name) – It’s not clear whether the game developers intentionally left this level unnamed, but there is in fact no name.
1. (hard)
The pit is too far to jump, but it’s so close… How about a relay?

2. (medium)
Have your shadow self create a diversion.

Crossing the Gap
1. (easy)
Notice that a new monster comes out of the cannon when the first one dies.

2. (medium)
You should probably be pulling that lever earlier than you think.

3. (very hard)
I figured this one out purely by accident while screwing around and trying different things. Just as you can jump on the monster’s head, it can jump on your shadow’s head.

Window of Opportunity
1. (hard)
The real you needs to pull that lever to get the platform to move – your shadow self can’t do it. Getting to the lever and pulling it is easy. Getting back out is what’s hard. Let your shadow self help you. You just need to time things right.
2. (very hard)
It took me forever to figure this one out. Hard to give a hint without giving it away, but just keep in mind that in order for your shadow self to pull a lever, he’s got to be in the right vertical position.

Lair
1. For the most part, this is just like the earlier Lair level. The main difference is the fairly easy puzzle at the end. The lever and door are at opposite ends, so you and your shadow self will need to go in opposite directions. Keep in mind that just because you can’t see something happening, it doesn’t mean that it’s not happening…

Fragile Companion
1. (very hard)
This one is so simple, but so damned hard. This is the only level in world 5 that I looked up online. Yes, I cheated. Here’s a hint: you don’t need to use the monster. The second one is almost a spoiler, so read with care: start rewinding mid-jump.

This is the third part of my series of Braid hints. It’s not a walkthrough, because simply giving the puzzles’ answers would ruin the game. But I got so frustrated at the game that I gave in to temptation and looked online to find answers to a puzzle in both world 2 and world 3, so I’m now providing the spoiler-free hints I wish I’d had access to. I’m happy to say that I got all the way through world 4 without looking online for any help. World 4 is also my favorite level in the game.

The official walkthrough says…

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. Once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 4: Time and Place

World 4 introduces the ability to control time by moving left and right. In fact, you can’t help but move time backward and forward by moving left and right. It’s critical that you understand how this works and what it means in order to solve world 4’s puzzles.

The Pit
1. (easy)
This level is so easy that I’m hesitant to provide any hint. But here’s something: monsters can carry keys.

Jumpman
1. (medium)
Keep in mind that since your movement left and right controls the monsters’ positions, even going so far as to resurrect dead monsters should you move back past where you stomped them, the monsters will always be in the same spot when you’re at a certain left-right position. You may have to find another route.

2. (easy)
You’ll do a lot of dying and rewinding here. If you get frustrated, try the other door.

3. (very easy)
No hint.

Just Out Of Reach
1. (easy)
No hint.

2. (medium)
Before getting too frustrated, check out the entire map.

Hunt!
1. (medium)
Not as easy as the first hunt, is it? The key here is understanding how the left/right time movement thing works. The monsters will come back to life if you move left beyond the point where you killed them. So you’ve got to kill them in a specific order. Also, since time only moves forward as you’re moving right, you can’t kill the monsters without a tinge of rightward movement – you can jump on a monster as many times as you like, and if you’re not moving right, it shouldn’t die. You can use this to your advantage.

Movement By Degrees
1. (easy)
Things can happen offscreen. There are often sound cues you can listen for to determine when something happens.

2. (medium)
If you’re finding that you can’t move quickly enough, make sure you know how to rewind at x8 speed. That will move you very quickly indeed.

Movement, Amplified
1. (easy)
Rewinding isn’t the way to move faster. Try the cloud bridge.

2. (very easy)
No hint.

A Fickle Companion
1. (hard)
This one infuriated me more than any of the other puzzles on this world until I realized exactly how the level works. The key thing (no pun intended) to realize here is that when you carry the key to the right, and then move back leftward, it will follow whatever path back that you’d taken before. So if you move left along a different path, you’ll lose the key. But you can’t get the key up to the door without moving left a bit. So how do you move the key leftwards? The answer to that question is similar to how you’ve solved some previous puzzles.

2. (medium)
This one is one of my favorites in the game – it’s just so clever. You want a hint? You’ve got to use the monster.

And that’s it for world 4. More to come soon.

This is the second part of my series of Braid hints. It’s not a walkthrough, because simply giving the puzzles’ answers would ruin the game. But I got so frustrated at the game that I gave in to temptation and looked online to find answers to a puzzle in both world 2 and world 3, so I’m now providing the spoiler-free hints I wish I’d had access to.

The official walkthrough says…

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. Once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 3: Time and Mystery

World 3 introduces glowing objects, which are unaffected by rewinding time. These open up all sorts of possibilities for new puzzles.

The Pit (easy)
This level is so easy that no hints should be required. Just play around with reversing time, and the solutions should quickly come to you.

There and Back Again (easy)
The solution here is the same as that in the pit. If you’ve passed the previous level, just do more of the same.

Phase (easy)
This level’s clouds do more to introduce you to glowing objects that are unaffected by time reversal. Reverse time and observe the clouds.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet (average)
This level took me a while to figure out. The first hint I should give is that there’s no way for you to fit inside the nook that holds the key. The second hint is a bit of a spoiler: Monsters can carry keys.

For the second puzzle piece, just play around with rewinding things and observe. Note that the platform is glowing, and will be unaffected by rewinding. If you’re still stuck after doing that, you should note that when rewinding, you can generally move through walls and platforms, and hover in the air where a platform once was.

Tight Channels (average)
For the first puzzle piece, just note the glowing cannon and monsters. Rewind time to see how they behave.

For the second, you need to make use of the diagonally-firing cannon.

Irreversible (easy)
For a level that I found so easy, this seems to have given a number of people some trouble. For the first puzzle piece, the most important thing is that you simply look at the moving walls and platforms and see how they’re behaving. Look at which is glowing and you should understand the problem and the solution. The level’s name is a bit of a hint here.

The second piece is easier. It’s just essential that you understand how glowing keys and glowing doors behave – their state isn’t affected by rewinding. Glowing keys remain used when you rewind after using them, and glowing doors remain unlocked when you rewind after unlocking them.

Lair (easy)
Lair is a level without much puzzle – just a Super Mario-like boss.

A Tingling (hard)
This is the level on which I looked up the answer. (shame) Hopefully, it’s the last in the game for which I have to do that. What I wish I’d known is that you have to leave the immediate area of the first puzzle piece in order to get it. I feel that with that knowledge I could have gotten it.

That’s all for world 3. More to come soon.

After having actually managed to download Braid, I’m really enjoying it. But when I got really stuck on one of the puzzles in world 2 and looked up an online walkthrough, I found that the official Braid guide says

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

So I felt bad about having cheated on the final part of “The Cloud Bridge”, but I’m determined to figure the rest out myself, even though I’m currently totally stuck on two different puzzle pieces.

What I’m wishing I could find for these are not walkthroughs but hints. Something to edge me in the right direction without giving anything away. Even then, I’d only look at the hints for the ones I’m truly stuck on. But I couldn’t find any non-spoiler hints anywhere. So I’ve decided to create a non-spoiler hint guide for Braid. In the places where I’m giving hints that might border on spoiling something, I’ll print it in hard-to-read text that you’ve got to highlight to see well. Today, I’ll be going through world 2.

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. As the official guide says, once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 2: Time and Forgiveness

Three Easy Pieces
This level has three puzzle pieces. The first two are so simple as to require no hints. For the third, keep in mind that as it says in the instructions, the only way to get higher is by jumping on a monster. Take a look: there are more than one monster here.

The Cloud Bridge
This is where the difficulty begins to ramp up a bit. The first two pieces on this level are very easy, but I found the second two to be surprisingly hard. This is because the solution requires some totally out-of-the-box thinking. The best non-spoiler hint I can give here is that you’ll need to interact with the puzzle to get those last two pieces. Try jumping at the puzzle.

Hunt!
The one puzzle piece on this level is relatively straightforward to get. If you’re reading this guide and think you’re honestly stuck on this one, I urge you to go back and try more before reading further. But if you honestly can’t figure this one out, keep in mind that the monsters are like trampolines. If you jump from higher up, you’ll bounce further.

Leap of Faith
The final level on world 2 has four puzzle pieces, all easy. I’ll give a number of bulleted hints here, and I urge you to only look at one at a time.

• As it says in the game’s instructions, the way to get higher is by jumping on monsters.
• Looking at the fuses on the cannons helps you determine when they’ll fire.
• Those cannons launch the monsters. They actually catch some air coming out.
• The title “Leap of Faith” should be a hint in itself.

That’s all for world 2. I’ll write up a hint guide for world 3 soon.

It seems like every online guide calls most of the monsters by different names. The names I’ll use here are mostly in keeping in line with what you’ll see in other guides, but nobody seems to know what to call the simplest, weakest enemy in the game: the small white circle with arms and legs. I’ve heard them called ants, acorns, kuri, and puffs. I always thought they looked a bit like pandas. After taking a very close look at them, you can see that they’re actually acorns with arms and legs, wearing that big white mask that all the game’s monsters have. So I’m calling them acorns. The other name that’s hard to put a finger on is the weakest of the fliers: a small acorn-looking thing with pink maple seed pods for wings. Sometimes it looks almost helicopter-like. For lack of a better name, I’ll refer to these things as fliers.

Acorns
The big white round acorns are the most common of enemies. Early in the game, cannons are your best defense, along with an arrow tower or two near the village to pick off injured stragglers. Later, you’ll find that fire or tesla towers take these guys down like dynamite does tadpoles. Mortars are also very effective.

Spiders
Spiders are the fastest enemy in the game, and that’s what makes them so damn tough. Your cannons can sometimes do a bit of damage, but spiders are good at dodging cannon fire. Arrows are the most surefire method for killing spiders. Later on, fire and tesla towers also work very well.

Golems
The token slow-moving blobs of hit points, golems can take a lot of punishment. Cannons are by far your best bet early in the game, as arrows do practically nothing to golems. later in the game, buy fire, tesla, or mortar towers to take down the golems.

Flyers
The easiest of the flying monsters to deal with, these flying maple acorn things will generally succumb to a couple anti-air towers. Placing a few arrow towers close to your village will help to assure that none sneak through. Later in the game, you’ll find that lasers cut through them like a chainsaw through rotted gauze.

Bats
Bats are the fastest of the flying monsters. Anti-air towers work well, but if you can line up a laser just right, it’s even better.

Bees
The big, fat, slow-moving bees are nearly invulnerable to arrows and anti-air towers. The only way you really stand a chance of stopping them is by using lasers.

Stompy the Golden Idol
He’s the boss of easy levels, and he really likes to stomp things. So I’ve named him Stompy McStomperson. He’s big, he’s golden, and he’d like nothing better than to stomp his way over to your village and stomp everyone there into flat nasty villager goo. Gold is a soft metal, but arrows will still bounce off. Fire towers and cannons are your best bet. On the easy levels, you likely won’t often be buying tesla towers and mortars, but they work too.

Mumford Mossback the Mean-spirited Misanthrope
On the medium levels, you get Mumford Mossback. He moves faster than Stompy, largely due to the fact that he’s got actual movable legs. He’s also a bit tougher. Use lots and lots fire towers. Cannons and tesla towers also help, as do mortars when you need extra range.

Horace the Nightmare Snail
Ironically, it’s the snail boss in this game who moves most quickly. Horace is a big jerk. Don’t underestimate him – he’s the toughest creature in the game. Pelt him with all the fire towers, mortars, and cannons you can. No mercy, or he’ll do unspeakable things to your villagers.

In part one of this article, I discussed general gameplay strategies. Now, let’s take a closer look at the game’s individual towers. For your convenience, I’ve also created a printable pdf quick reference guide. Yeah, it’s really ugly – I know.

Arrow Tower

The only tower in the game (other than a hive) that can hit both flying and ground enemies, the arrow tower remains useful throughout the game. It’s especially useful at the beginning, as it’s the only way you’ll prevent waves of spiders from getting through. They also work very well when placed near your village as a last resort to pick off wounded monsters that have made it past your other defenses.

Every upgrade except the final upgrade to black is merely a range upgrade, so it’s generally not worth it to spend the gems or the time dancing in upgrading an arrow tower.

Cannon Tower
Cannon towers are the only power weapons you’ll have available early in the game, before fire and mortar towers become available. Later in a level, although they’ll do less damage than fire, tesla, or mortar towers, they’ll still be the backbone of your defense since you’ll have so many built. The greatest flaws of cannon towers is their short range and slow rate of fire.

You have to be very careful when positioning cannons. If they’re too close together, they may both fire at a single monster that could have been killed by one attack, thereby wasting a shot. Since their rate of fire is so slow, other monsters can then sneak by before the cannons can fire again. Also, cannons must be placed as close as possible to the monsters’ paths. Ideally, you want to place them where their area of fire covers a place where the monsters spend the most time. Corners tend to be good places to place cannons, since the cannons will attack the enemies the entire time they’re going around the curve. Every level of upgrade on cannon towers increases power, so upgrade them as much as you can.

Anti Air Tower
Until you can get laser towers, the anti-air tower is the absolute best defense against flying monsters. They’re fast and they have very good range. Although they don’t do much damage, they fire so quickly that the damage will add up. Unlike arrow towers, it’s definitely worth it to upgrade anti-air towers, since every upgrade increases the speed at which they fire. If that means a tower fires at a monster six times as it passes instead of only three, you’ve doubled the damage. The final upgrade is power, and as such is very useful. Unlike cannons, anti-air towers work well when grouped together.

Fire Tower
The fire tower is everyone’s favorite tower, and with good reason. They’re incredibly strong. They’re great for mowing down acorns and golems, and are even fairly effective on fast-moving spiders. They’re also an excellent way to attack bosses. But more so than many other towers, you’ve got to carefully consider where to place a fire tower. The fire comes out in a line that damages any monsters in the stream. The fire keeps coming out for a few seconds, and will continue to do damage to any monsters in the stream, but once it fires it will not change direction. This means that you’ll want to place the fire tower in such a way that its stream will hit as many monsters as possible. You should also never put fire towers right next to each other.

Upgrading fire towers is important, and it’s especially important that you get them to red as quickly as possible. The first upgrade from green to yellow increases the tower’s range, and the second upgrade from yellow to red increases the fire tower’s power, or damage. Going from red to purple increases the fire’s spread, and going from purple to black will give you extra range. Getting fire towers to the red level is critical, and the purple and black levels make it even better.

Ice Tower
Aah, the ice tower. If only Pixeljunk Monsters’s ice towers were as good as the freeze towers in Desktop Tower Defense. Alas, they are not. They don’t slow down enemies nearly as much as they should, and do close to no damage. As a result, the ice tower is easily the most useless tower in the game.

If you do use ice towers, focus on upgrading them to red as quickly as possible, since the first two upgrades increase the damage they do. The final two upgrades to purple and black only increase the spread, or area of effect.If you didn’t need to spend gems to unlock ice towers, I’d probably use them from time to time. As is, I never use them.

Laser Tower
The laser tower is at the same time one of the best towers in the game, and one of the most difficult to use well. Proper placement of laser towers is critical, because one of their greatest strengths is the ability to hit many monsters at once. Lasers have unlimited range. What? What’s that? Yes, let me say it again. Unlimited range. Laser towers will not fire until enemies come within their marked range, which is about the same as an anti-air tower. By itself, that’s good. But once it does fire, the beam continues to the end of the screen, hitting any flying monsters in its path, even if they’re all the way across the screen. So it’s critical to place the lasers in a location such that when they fire, they’re firing along a path of monsters, hitting as many as possible. If you place a laser tower poorly, it may fire across the line of monsters, hitting only one or two.

The laser tower’s first two upgrades are speed, which is good because the tower starts with a very slow rate of fire. The third upgrade to purple is range, which helps the tower fire earlier. The final upgrade is power, so it’s in your interest to fully upgrade the laser tower as quickly as possible.

Mortar Tower
At first, mortars may seem like no big deal, but in the end they’re just bigger cannons, and as such they do have a use. They’ve got great range, and the blast area of their explosions hits everything in a very large area. Upgrading a mortar is a bit of a mixed bag, as upgrading to yellow, red, or purple only increases the area of effect. But that final upgrade to black doubles the mortar’s speed, which is like having two mortars. Mortars aren’t as important as fire or laser towers, but they’re definitely useful in the right situation.

Tesla Tower
There seems to be a consensus in the online community that tesla towers are mostly useless. I’d like to disagree. In the right situation, I’ll use them in place of fire towers, and they do a good job. For example, in “Hard 1”, the level is constructed in a way that makes fire towers very difficult to use – it’s tough to place fire towers such that the flame will hit more than one monster at a time. But there are a number of places where two or three grouped tesla towers can wreak havoc when upgraded.

Tesla towers begin with a terribly short range, and usually must be upgraded to be useful. I’d suggest only upgrading them as much as you need to reach passing monsters, as every upgrade only increases range, and the fully upgraded range can sometimes be more than you need. There’s no point in spending gems so that you can reach forested areas where monsters can’t walk.

When fired, a tesla tower will attack every monster within range, which is fantastic. Not just enemies within an area like cannon or mortar towers, but every single monster it can reach. This is the power of a tesla tower. Once that range gets big enough, you can hit lots and lots of monsters at once.

Hive Tower
You can only build one hive tower on a level, but it can reach anything on the screen, including flying monsters. I’m not a big fan of the hive, primarily because it requires you to aim for it. The bees that fly out of the towers head directly for you, attacking any monsters along that path. In order to do acceptable damage, you really need to upgrade the tower fully.

The first two upgrades make the bees come out more quickly, and the second two increase damage. If you plan on using a hive, you really should upgrade it fully as quickly as you can.

Perhaps I’m a bit late to the party on Pixeljunk Monsters, but since I bought it from the Playstation Network store, I’ve been playing it constantly. It’s like crack. Not that I’d know what crack is like. What I mean to say is that the game is pretty damn addictive, and the demo’s free. We bought a second controller and my wife and I now play the game together in co-op mode whenever we have spare time. The great thing is that co-op is actually just a bit easier.

But it’s not exactly an easy game. I find myself playing certain levels over and over, trying to get that rainbow rating for completing a level without losing a single villager. It’s really sad when some cute village kid gets carried away by a giant bloated bee or crushed to death by Stompy the Golden Idol.

Amazingly, I tend to get worse the longer I play. On my first run, I’ll make it up to the thirteenth wave before a spider sneaks into the village and I immediately restart the game. Then I’ll make it up to wave six, where I’ll fail to stop a golem. On my next run, I’ll lose a guy on wave two. It’s infuriating!

But I’ve picked up a few things along the way. I’ve now rainbowed ten of the game’s levels, and I’ve only got the hardest level in the game left to complete, then the “Encore” expansion awaits. I’m hoping that I can help others avoid some of the angst that I’ve felt struggling through the game. All this week, I’ll be dishing out advice on how to ace the game. This first segment deals with general gameplay strategies.
For starters, cannons are best for taking out acorns and golems, while arrows are best for taking out spiders. Spiders are fast, and tend to dodge away from cannon blasts and not really get hit, whereas the arrows just seem to bounce off golems.

Never group your cannons closely together. It’s much better to stagger them, allowing some space between each cannon. If two cannons are placed right next to each other, they may fire in quick succession such that the first cannonball kills a monster, but the second cannonball is already in the air, and is thus wasted.

When placing towers, pay close attention to the range indicator. That dotted red line shows how far the tower can reach. You should place towers at corners where they can reach all the way around, or in the center of a dividing line of trees so that they can hit monsters on both sides. When choosing tower placement, keep in mind that some towers can have their range upgraded so as to eventually reach a bit further than what you see initially. This is especially true with arrows and tesla towers.

Place a few arrow towers near your village, as they can be very effective at picking off stragglers who’ve been weakened by earlier attacks.

Dancing to upgrade towers is valuable, but you should understand how it works in order to use it correctly. It takes 18 seconds to upgrade a brand new tower from green to yellow, but to bring it from there to red takes another 33 seconds. The dance times required get longer and longer, but towers will also upgrade themselves marginally with each kill shot. Never spend a gem to upgrade a tower when the progress bar is near the top. Instead, dance on it to upgrade, since at that point it shouldn’t take long. You may only have to dance 5 or 10 seconds to get it to the next level. You can press L1 to reveal the update progress of all towers on the screen. It can also be a good idea to wait until coins and gems begin to flash before moving to collect them, so as to maximize the amount of time you spend dancing to upgrade a tower.

Don’t upgrade arrow towers. All upgrades except the final one improve nothing but range, and if placed well, arrows usually have good enough range at the start to reach any monsters.

On the “easy” levels, don’t buy any special towers at all. You generally won’t need them, and gems are much scarcer in the easy levels.

On each level, there are coins and one gem hidden in random trees. If you touch a tree where something is hidden, it will fly out and you can collect it. Time is often better spent dancing on towers than running around touching every tree, but if it’s not too far out of your way, hit a few extra trees. Especially if you need gold.

Near the end of a level, watch the meter at the bottom to see what enemies are coming next. If you can tell that there will be no more flying enemies for the rest of the level, sell any anti-air or laser towers you have. Selling purple towers will get you a gem in addition to the money, and selling black towers gets you two gems. By this point in the game, gems are more valuable than gold.

The number of coins you drop when hit by monsters increases with each wave: if you get hit during wave 2, you’ll only drop 20 coins, but if you get hit by a monster on wave 18, you’ll drop 180 coins! Needless to say, it becomes increasingly important to avoid being hit as each game progresses.

Starting during the medium levels, some monsters will be shielded. Before the wave of monsters appears on-screen, you can’t tell from the upcoming MonsterMeter what type of shield they’ll have. It’s even difficult to tell once they do appear. It only becomes obvious what color their shield is once a monster is hit by an attack – you’ll then see the shield glowing red, blue, or green. Those are the three different color shields, and you’ll need to know what each does in order to best attack the shielded monsters. Green shields protect against cannon and mortar fire, but are very vulnerable to attack from fire and tesla towers. Blue shields resist cannon, mortar, and ice towers, but are especially vulnerable to fire. And red shields, which are my own least favorite, resist fire and tesla towers, but are vulnerable to cannon and mortar attack.

Many levels have areas with water. If coins are dropped by monsters, by you getting hit by a monster, or by selling a tower, they can fall into the water and will be lost. There will be times when you have no choice but to lose coins this way, but be mindful where you can.

Section two comes later this week, and will deal with the different types of towers and how to best use them.