HYPERNOVA: Escape from Hadea

HYPERNOVA: Escape from Hadea starts with a nice and funny intro. It combines a mixture between base building, resource management, tower defense and real-time strategy. You play as an alien race, you are escaping your moon, because the sun is dying. You have to colonize another planet to get natural resources so your race will survive. Only this planet is inhabited by angry creatures. Also, this planet is covered with a thick layer of fog, you need to purify the air. At the start of the game, you have to select where you will build your base. It would be wise to build it close to the three different resource types (Omnifoam, Multicrete, and Zapp) that can be found on this planet. You need all three to build things. The map is huge. New buildings can be unlocked by researching them in the tech-tree. The tech-tree is big, so there is a lot to do/build. On the map there are some lairs, evil creatures spawn from there and they will attack all your bases. To avoid this you need to built offenses/towers to attack the creatures and their dwellings and at the same protect your buildings. Before you can build anything you need to purify the fog. You can play this game fully with a mouse, of course you still can use a keyboard (camera controls) The game has a good built in tutorial, I did really like that. There are three difficulty options from which you can choose. The graphics are very good and colorful, it's a pleasant to look at. The music is good and the game has spoken text, even in the tutorial. There is no speed option, hope it will be added. I also wish the game could be zoomed out further, so you can have a better view. I found a bug when trying to name a save, because I could not do it. All my save files have the same name, it's a bit confusing. This game has a lot of options, so you won't get bored if you like this genre(s) Price tag is absolutely fair (the devs lowered the base price, which is good) I would give this game a 7.5 out of 10 [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/] More reviews on our Curator Page [/url]

I was convinced to buy Hypernova because it was described as a cross between Tower Defence (TD) and Real Time Strategy (RTS). As someone who prefers TD to RTS, my initial reaction was that it plays more like Starcraft than Defense Grid. Having said that, I still found it quite playable and a good mash-up of the two genres. After playing it for several hours, I now believe it is a kind of free-form TD game. I thought the graphics and sound were quite nice, if a bit colourful and cartoon-like. They seem in keeping with the alien race you represent, who are reminiscent of Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars, only green and speaking with a Jamaican accent. You might or might not like the graphics. I guess it's a matter of how seriously you take your sci-fi. Some people don't like it when sci-fi is made to look a bit silly. Personally, I think the artists in Hypernova did a good job and the overall presentation is very good. The map is very big, so a game is likely to last several hours. You have to place all your towers within the radius of other towers, so there's a lot of micro-management, but you're never sure whether you have too many or too few towers. Various environmental forces can cause damage to your facilities, such as meteors and tornadoes. You can also get attacked from any side, so there's a tendency to smother the perimeter of the area you have under your control with turrets, just in case. To begin with, the game seems easy and gives you plenty of time. The waves of Hadeans (the native creatures of the moon Hadea) gradually get harder, with greater numbers and new species. The problems start when they rush you and your terra-forming network starts to collapse in on itself. Your thinly spread defensive towers immediately go off-line, leading to a cascade of destruction. Fortunately, the Hadeans come in waves with a gap in-between, so you have a window of time to rebuild after the destruction and prepare for the next wave. You learn to make sure that your defences are sufficient to repel most attacks and then have little forays towards enemy bases to take them out with long range weapons. The aliens react with extreme hostility to these attacks. Sometimes you will lose a few towers, or you may withdraw them. The process becomes a little bit tedious. Everything gets so spread out and towers take so long to arrive, that setting up a crushing attack is not easy. Also, you run out of resources to build and it's not abundantly clear what factor is causing your build queue to stall. To cope with this, you must decide which areas are safe and can have their defences moved to the emerging battlefront, elsewhere on the map. You must build resilient networks that can be re-routed or only fail in parts. In this way you can spread out across the map with the aim of destroying the nests of creatures which attack your colony. Ultimately the aim of the game is to build a stellar-bridge that will transport your species away from the danger of the local star which is about to explode.

STOP TORTURING MY BRAIN WITH CONSTANT INTERRUPTIONS I really want to like this game, but I can't recommend it. The main problem is that [b] the game does not let you play. [/b] It keeps interrupting your fun with stupid crap that doesn't even need to be there. It really is a shame because the game looks very polished and well coded, but it fails at the design level. + The core concept of the evolving, constantly moving tower defense is great <- Thats the fun part, devs! + The art style is unique and fun to look at + The goofy storytelling is enjoyable - Most buildings in the game serve no purpose. - Recycler - Why do I need to build a building to 'sell' other buildings? - Printamp - I have to build the same thing eight times just to unlock other buildings? - Maintainer - I'm supposed to cover the map with these to counter the most annoying game mechanic ever... - The mechanic of printing buildings looks futuristic and cool at first but it really gets tiring. Let me explain why: 1. You decide you want to build something over here 2. Scroll back to the mothership and click the building icon 3. Get distracted by something else while the building is printed 4. Get your attention back to the building once it is finished printing 5. Scroll back to the site you want it to be placed 6. Get distracted by something else while it is flying there 7. Make use of the building once it has landed 8. Repeat this 3-4-5 times EVERY MINUTE - The random building fog mechanic is the single most annoying, useless thing you can come up with. Why is it in the game??? Good ideas, sloppy design.

Too difficult and too simple at the same time. Not much to the game once you are about an hour in and figure out the strategy. Not much like a traditional real time strategy with any campaigns.

It's...an interesting game. Similar style and premise to The Mims, but instead of a slow-and-steady multi-mission campaign, HYPERNOVA gets it all over with in a single mission, which takes approximately 10 hours. It's a real-time strategy meets tower defense game, with an extensive tech tree that takes a long time to fully research (and you will need to fully research it to win). It's well-polished, funny, but rather tedious once the initial mechanics have been introduced. Be prepared for a slow grind of attrition to victory.

Do you like Real Time Strategy games? What about Tower Defense games? You do?? Then this game is a no brainer for you! However, there are some cons that you might wanna read before you purchase. PROS: - The game is fun, not gonna lie and it will keep you on your toes for a good chunk of time, - The graphics, music and animations are really well designed and cool, - The tech tree comes with a lot of upgrade options. CONS: - There is only one level, or rather one mission. It took me almost 18 hours to complete the mission, but I was excited to have finally reached my mission goals but then disappointed when the credits started rolling and I was like "Wha...? That's it??!. One level!!?" There is a lot to do and a stack of gameplay to keep you entertained for a long time, but I was hoping that there were a few different maps, each bringing new weapons or machines, for example: allowing you to have the ability to block certain paths or introduce fresh upgrades and newer technologies even further that allow for bigger, badder weapons, or maybe different enemies or maybe tunnels to navigate around the map quickly, maybe getting a hero to help fight the bad guys? But just one level was disappointing. - If you strategise and wipe out the whole map, I reckon it would take 30+ hours, a very reasonable amount of time for a game, especially what you pay for. But you will be doing the same thing over and over AND OVER again for all those hours within nothing new once you fully upgrade your tech tree. It's fun as you upgrade the tech tree as it introduces new features, but that will be the first 5+ hours or so of gameplay. By this time you are warmed up, have probably set up a good base camp and are doing pretty well for yourself. Once you have upgraded everything, you simply repeat the process to take out the bad guys, for the next 20-30 hours and it's the same thing, with the same monsters, with the same weapons. It would be better if the regions had different monsters which required different weapons, maybe the regions/areas should have had different weather conditions too which affect gameplay or weapon functionality (don't get me wrong, it is a good game, but once you hit the peak of it, you kinda flat line it for the next 20+ hours doing the same thing so the game feels very monotonous after a while and it loses it punch. And then after all that, a sense of relief sweeps past you and you finally won that mission, and mentally prepare for something more exciting in level 2... oh wait... that's it. The games ends! There is no level 2! What!!? - You can't speed up or slow down the game, so make sure you have all your extra snacks and coffee/sugar fixes at the ready, cause you're gonna be on your ass for a long time. - As a strategy game, it fails where you can't control the direction/path of where the monsters come from or have the ability to strategise and use your skills, tools and the maps resources to redirect them to where your towers are placed. You sort of have to be prepared for them to hit you at all angles. I guess that could be seen as a positive to some, but then again, they have all these rocky bridges all over the map, that sit across the paths everywhere. They look almost like a bridge of some sort and it seems, if you were able to smash it, that it would possibly block that road or path, but nope, they are all just there, staring you in the face, and there is nothing that you can do about it, kinda like this isolation! - The game was developed over 3 years ago and it looks like they have never developed any new add ons or new maps, or even one new weapon since the games release, that is a bit different to what most other developers are doing. - The map is really big, no problems there, but you are limited to the amount of power that you can use. I had about 40% of the map covered/controlled, but also had maxed out my electricity power at that point too, meaning I could not build or expand anymore, so yeah, that kinda sucked. That is almost the same as being given a cheesecake and told that after my first two slices, I can only eat the rest of the cake through a straw. Impossible! I still had fun playing this game, but it would be nice for the developers to try to make new maps or add ons to re-engage players to come back and keep playing it over and over. I have many RTS games and have, over the years, revisited the classic ones, and played them again and again because for me, I enjoy starting out with nothing and being able to create a monster of a player, or a kingdom you would not wanna **** with. In that sense, Hypernova was a bit of a let down and it is a bit sad that the developers have never done anything more than just one level. I doubt I will ever revisit this game again, which is sad as it has so much potential.

Langweilig und ohne klare Linie. Das soll wohl so eine Art Mischung aus Aufbaustrategie und Tower Defense sein. Bin leider schon nicht im Tutorial damit klar gekommen und weggedöst. Keine Ahnung, was ich da machen soll. Keine Ahnung, was meine Aufgabe ist. Keine Ahnung, ob es eine Kampagne gibt. Keine Ahnung, was ich auf dem riesigen Planeten zu suchen habe. Keine Ahnung, wo die Gegner her kommen, wann sie kommen, wieso sie kommen, und wo diese langlaufen. Keine Ahnung, warum ich das gekauft habe. Ich lösche das und spiele dann doch lieber wieder Kingdom Rush. Fazit: Keine Ahnung, warum das Spiel im Test ordentlich abgeschnitten hatte und auf meiner Wunschliste gelandet ist. Lieber schnell zurückgeben. Mist, geht nicht, hab schon automatisch Karten gesammelt. Kacke aber auch.

Solid tower defense with some fun concepts. The world is one big map that you progress through, and you can move your buildings around to respond to your changing needs. If you want a traditional tower defense you might not like this, but I found it to be a fun challenge and a refreshing change of pace from normal TD tower placement + maze management tropes. The game is actually more like a base building game with towers - you build civilian buildings to increase your population to unlock tech, support buildings to clear new building area and provide power and provide prereqs for other buildings, harvester buildings to gather resources, and towers to keep the bad guys out. The big map concept is managed well, you're pretty free to expand but you have to manage the enemy threat. It did feel overwhelming at first but once I got the hang of it, I felt like I always had a path to pursue and was generally able to manage the threat despite its source coming from different areas. Being able to move my buildings to new spots to as needed really fit in well with this concept. I enjoyed the feeling of expanding into this dangerous world via careful building placement. I did have a few minor annoyances. There was a stealth enemy type I never figured out how to kill, and sometimes they'd take out supply line elements at range. Building repairers have to be unlocked via tech, and their autorepair didn't work well for me so I had to frequently trigger it manually. I got stuck on one quest for a couple hours, and the game did something at the end that I didn't like though it didn't ruin the ending or anything like that. A couple of spoiler-y hints for those last two (feel free to skip) - Quest: [spoiler]When the game asks you to trap units for study, focus on that. I spent a couple hours finishing that up after I had my map on lockdown.[/spoiler] End of game: [spoiler]As the game progresses you can move your defenses to focus on whatever lair is out there. When you trigger the end mission they send massive waves at you where you have to defend your core buildings especially your main base. So before you finish building the Big Final Thing, build or relocate defenses to your main base. I felt like the game didn't give me sufficient warning about this sudden change in strategy requirement.[/spoiler] Over all a fun and interesting game if you want something with towers that isn't your traditional tower defense, especially if you like base building games. It's not super long and I don't intend to play it again, but I'm really glad I gave it a shot.

Hypernova is a unique tower defense game. I really like how you can move all of the buildings, so you can adapt to various situations. This is also a game where you can take your time and learn the strategies at your own pace. It's pretty fun, but I imagine it will get repetitive after playing for a while. The game does unlock new creatures and new challenges as you progress, so that makes the game more easily approachable. If you like tower defense games, then you would most likely enjoy this game.

Not Recommended