It's rather annoying that so much of your success hinges upon the randomized placement of hazards and platforms. Just keep rolling the dice until you get lucky.
Mini-walkthrough: For the best possible score, kill everything you can, avoid getting hit, beat all normal/bonus levels, and get achievements. (Obvious, right?) Note that several of the achievements involve special "challenge mode" tasks when fighting certain bosses. They are: 1) Kill Raisa's mushroom helper(s) before ending the phase it/they appear in--forest clearing. 2) Don't let Zuzana hit you at all--gloomy woods. 3) Kill all 4 gem clusters (the colorful rocks that spray gems) in Creag's second phase--plains. 4) Kill the red eye, then the green eye before ending each phase against the eyeball monster; use the beam + entropic sphere to hit them--cavern. 5) Get hit by Death's scythe and still finish the fight; this will drop you down to near-death, but never actually kill you. Wait until phase 3 and use a shield--netherworld. 6) Kill the final boss with an eldritch glyph (bomb) attack. On the last phase, background changes direction and little stars flood the screen.
To all the people whining about the "premium content," grow up. :) It's totally optional (unlike so many other premium content games) and, with the removal of the tip jar system, it gives you a way to say "thanks" to Matt if you like the game while getting something extra in return. This series is worth supporting, IMO. ...And with that, the game is loaded. Time to clear the calendar!
Step 1: Suffer through the agonizing grind to level 2. Step 2: Club Noir -> Merchant -> Buying, get Short Sword and Leather Jacket. Step 3: Click the coffin icon (upper left) then redeem some free crap, including scrolls that let you upgrade your special ability--use them. (Items -> Scrolls) Step 4: Kill a Dreadmare using your special ability/whatever it is every 30 minutes (because it won't happen without the special ability, period) Step 5: Repeat step 4 until you complete the challenge, then go play something else so you can forget this atrocity even exists.
The badges don't seem to be working for me--oh the delicious irony in achievements for a game like this not working. Also, this game has some serious bugs and optimization failures going on. For shame!
Protip: If you're having trouble getting 25 big diamonds and your weeks are running out, keep track of how many you manage to collect on a particular week, and if it isn't enough, refresh the page when you run out of fuel. You'll be able to pick up where you left off without having to start over. Infinite retries! :D
So I got pwned pretty fast, and then left the room to go do something. When I got back, the game (in its game-over state) had slowed to a crawl due to lag. Are you properly disposing of things that move off the screen? If you're handling all of the movement in a single enterframe event (which you should be) are you keeping your array(s) of badguys, bullets, etc trimmed down?
I am indeed disposing of actors when they are killed or move off the screen... I'm at a loss as to what is causing the lag, which means it's back to the basics to rebuild the engine from the ground up :(
Somehow, the supercar ninja-unlocked itself for me for seemingly no reason at all, allowing me to have a much easier time meeting the badge objective. I won't question good luck, though! :D
Ridiculously rigged RNG, computer cheats, no fair, boohoo. Time to ragerate this game at 1/5... Ohwait, I just got 3 free rolls in a row and have been watching the computer zilch each turn for 5 turns straight. Change my statement to this: Best game ever! 5/5!
My character...is a giant butt cheek? :o Anyway, for the developer:
Neat game, although people are right in that tutorials should never be mandatory. I can understand the need to explain the stats though--random stats that aren't explained don't make for a fun game. However, consider this approach next time: Tooltips. Having tooltips appear over stats as well as buttons like shop/fight/etc would almost completely eliminate the need for a tutorial and instead, let players get right into the game. Anyway just my thoughts, for what it's worth.
For some reason I never actually thought of tooltips despite being a big MMO player, wow. Thanks for giving me a bit of criticism I can actually take in stride 2 years later!
EDIT: Just realised that looked like sarcasm, haha. It's not, I genuinely didn't think of tooltips.
@death567: Because wow also does it the same way, and he's probably trying to stay true to the game. The problem is that "mana" is poorly implemented in most rpgs to begin with.
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I am indeed disposing of actors when they are killed or move off the screen... I'm at a loss as to what is causing the lag, which means it's back to the basics to rebuild the engine from the ground up :(