After finally upgrading all but 3 powerups to level 5 (the remaining ones were level 3-4), I FINALLY beat the 15th demon... Only took about an hour total.
After three days of trying to get the hard badge, I figured it out. Hopefully when you have 5-7 weeks left, you should be fully upgraded (as someone else said, just leave steering at 50%). Spend the last few weeks trying to get the trophies. Glitch: If you refresh during the ending sequence, it will let you continue to try to finish your last week, but you keep all trophies that you had prior to refreshing. I just got the Ruby and final depth trophy from doing this (in separate tries, but both on the last week). Then, once you have all the trophies, you can refresh one more time to try to just have a really good run if you're only a couple thousand short!
Originally, I went through buying each ship as I could afford it. Then I got to the 9000 part ship, and stuck with it until I got stuck on a certain mission. Then I saved up for the final 30,000 part ship and made that mission a piece of cake.
Flew through levels 1-20, then got stuck on level 21 for 30 minutes. My appreciation for the game ended about 5 minutes into level 21. I'm now ready to go shoot something IRL, despite having never fired a gun.
That's gotta be one of the easiest Hard badges on the site. I didn't enjoy the game, but I beat it all the way through in <30 minutes, so it works for me.
Perfect! I got all of the achievements without having to reset ANY of the upgrades, and I FINALLY got the "survive for 3+ minutes" on my 25th game, earning me my last two achievements and the medium badge.
It wasn't until I was 3/4 of the way through the game that I finally figured out/realized what the numbers mean while digging... It's a minesweeper-like way of telling you how many other treasures (good or meh) are adjacent to that square.
WOO HOO!! This is the SECOND badge of the day that I've EVER already gotten, and the first one just happened to be EARLIER this week! I'm now very glad that I completed this game for fun a few weeks ago. :D
Awww, man! This is going to be the first badge of the day that I've missed since joing Kong... Sad day. I simply don't have the time to learn this complex of a game and do it twice for a hard badge. :(
I never understood the "Weegee" bonus for killing one goomba until I killed (at least) 5 in the same run. :D [Also, I just landed on a jeep RIGHT in between two wall spike! They were literally the same distance apart as the length of the jeep itself.]