This is a work in progress and likely will take a long time. Sorry...
Geometry Wars is one of my favorite games of all time and one of the best shoot'em ups ever done. A simple idea with almost flawless execution and mighty fun to play.
This is a guide with a few pieces of information and ideas to help.
Smart bombs
Smart bombs will kill all enemies on screen (except titans that will be destroyed to their next level). None of the enemies killed by a bomb will yield ANY points. However depending on the occasion, level and number of enemies on screen a huge cloud of geoms will be available. For this reason, the bombs are awesome to use when you have the Magnet special and you have a screen as full of enemies as possible for a huge increase in multiplier.
Specials
Specials will appear at specific points on some levels. The order is usually set and you'll get the same ones in the same sequence over time. A few levels have random specials from the start or after a certain point. Yes, there's a ton of RNG influence on the game. The available specials are:
Quad Fire
Split Fire
Reverse Fire
Missile
Trail Bomb
Magnet
Shield - enemies destroyed by the shield will not yield points, but you can pick their geoms
Drones
Drones are essential to help to achieve the coveted 3 stars on each level. Don't even bother with these until you've maxed the most important drones and supers.
Attack - the best drone, hands down. The best for aggressive play and to control the flow of the level. Unlocked once you beat the first boss (you just have to win, you'll get 1.000.000 for beating each boss, that's the 1 star objective, so even without picking any geoms getting 1 star is assured if you finish the battle)
Collect (unlocked at Ruby boss in adventure, level 10) - hugely overrated. For starters, the collect drone is hugely incompetent in its task so you'll always have to supplement its work in geom collection anyway (you'll see this a lot in level 29 with clouds of geoms just behind you and the idiot picking one or two elsewhere)
Second, it will give you bad practices and experience for the Retro trophy or achievement, to score 10.000.000 on Evolved Classic Level before losing a life. If you don't know how to pick geoms efficiently you'll never get this one done.
Even with these issues in mind it will provide you with the easiest way for some levels to get the 3 stars, and unfortunately, it's the only one you can have in pacifism levels.
Snipe (unlocked at Opal boss in adventure, level 30) - hugely underrated but this is by far the best second drone. It's essential for almost all rainbow, checkpoint and deadline levels, as it's reasonably efficient and it will enhance hugely the advance of the next wave by killing the out-of-the-way enemies. It's dreadful for a few kids of levels like the titans ones. The easiest way to see how good it is is to play level 1 with maxed-out snipe and turret (I can easily do with Snipe 1.35 million score, 610 multiplier and with Collect 950k score, 580 multiplier).
A good example of this:
Supers
Turret (unlocked at 80 stars in adventure) - The first super will unlock automatically at 12 stars, for turret you'll need 80. It's not hard to get 1 star in all levels up to 49, getting a few of the 49 to 2 or 3 stars neither, just some time to get there. Until then use Homing (unlocked at 24 stars in adventure), which isn't very good but it's what will be available. The other 3 are almost useless, no need to upgrade. Turret is simply the best and essential.
Special levels
Gate Dash - Beat Col the Developer high score of 4,769,150 on Gate Dash (level 12)
Information:
Red gates
50 points, 6 geoms
Yellow gates
500, 20 geoms
Each end of the gate will provide half the points.
You can also destroy, usually by accident, gates as they're spawning, this almost certainly won't add geoms and its score can also fail to add.
Achieving the goal of 4,769,150 is not easy at all. The worse is that this requires some luck. Let me start by saying that I hate pacifism levels, I agree that the idea is a really good one, but that isn't good enough for me. I truly hate them, as my head focus on the wrong area, the ends and not the connsting line.
This started to puzzle me because I could do clean runs of the level, even quite good ones and would not achieve the required score, and that since the Vita and PS3 days. Achieving the 3 stars was regular but not much more. Worse, I could do similar scores with bad runs, and once with a terrible run on the Vita with 2 deaths I did slightly more than 4 million. I read a lot of advice about this but what I read was even more puzzling as wasn't agreeing with what I obtained.
When I did this on the PS4 I recorded several runs and started to figure out the whole problem. Even better picked some videos from youtube with runs from this level and there was the justification I was looking for.
With a plain and clean run, even pretty good with a few yellow gates and not much time lost at the start with very far apart gates the best you can hope for is around 4.1 or 4.2 million, and extremely unlikely 4.3 million which is not good enough. However, there are special circumstances that can at any point make your score start to go up a lot and even through the roof and I think these are:
- hitting several gates in sequence with an extremely short time between them, the more the better
- hitting 2 or more crossed gates at the same time, preferably in a sequence too
Only the game programmers will know the exact details, unfortunately.
This video will show it better than any of mine could do:
at roughly 49.5' (with 16 secs left of the allowed 1 minute time) he hits a gate and it scores 13550 points, and he had less than 2.4 million score. At 57' he has hit 14 gates in a lucky run, granted with 3 yellows (crap how lucky is that the yellows all spawn almost in his path) and the last red gate in the sequence is providing a whopping 492500 points and his score has grown by an astonishing 3 million. This was achieved in 7 secs and 3/4 through the level, when his multiplier is still low... The next gate he hits after the sequence provides a measly 20150 points... And his best yellow gate score in the sequence gets 173500, roughly a third of the best red one...
Not saying this guy isn't good, because he is VERY good, but this is a one in a thousands run.
In most of my runs, I get mostly mangled gates or 90% of them spread around the map...
Of course, you don't need this kind of run, but in one without a 500k-800k sequence, you'll never achieve the 4.7 million required.
BTW it's quite possible to get the trophy with deaths. Well, this guy had the trophy and could have died 2 or 3 times...
So all you need is sheer luck and some talent for this one.
Nufo Flow - Beat Phil the Developer high score of 21,478,525 on Nufo Flow (level 24)
Each wave has 1 pink NUFO and 10 yellow ones
1 pink NUFO = 20 geoms, 2500 points
1 yellow NUFO = 300 points (can't figure the maths on these ones, as I never get a correct value although I'm positive of the 300 at start, but for instance 75.300 at 241 multiplier, and 160.550 at 341x which gives slightly over 312 for each one; blowing up more than one at the same time does not increase individual yellow NUFO score)
Waves:
15 with 1 pink NUFO and 10 yellow ones (max 301 multiplier attainable)
5 with 2 pink NUFO and 10 yellow ones
10 with 1 new red block per wave
10 with 1 new violet spinner per wave (destroyable, don't respawn if they die)
1 new cyan seeker per wave (don't think it gets worse, as like it needed anyway... 😂😑😑😑😑)
Essentials for this objective:
- turn off the music to hear the spawning chimes for the pink NUFO's, this is crucial
- concentrate on pink NUFO's these are the ones to get. They're the only clear source of geoms at start and they're worth almost as many points as the 10 yellow ones, and good look in consistently hitting all 10 yellows on each spawn
- try to reach a nearby mine and stay near it before the pink signal will chime. When the red NUFO (s) spawns it (they) will travel to the point you were at that moment. When 2 spawn, they can travel from different distances so they will reach you at different times, thereby hitting both is quite hard sometimes
- red orbs will spawn roughly on the side of the screen opposite of your location. So if you were at the left side of the screen at center height, the red orb (s) will most likely spawn on the right side of the screen along with the yellow orbs. Obviously, the worst place to be at chime time is at the top or bottom of the screen because you'll have less time to react however don't be picky, and the best possible place is at left or right, near the center
- it's best to avoid blowing up the red of a wave (and yellows) and prepare better for the next one than to risk a likely death or a less favorable position for the next wave. This will be more essential once you reach the 2 pink NUFO's spawn time
- to get Phil's score you'll likely have to survive until the red block spawn's time. It's possible to achieve before that point, but you'll have to be pretty lucky with yellow NUFO's casual hits in the later waves when you'll have a larger multiplier from the pink supplied geoms, and not miss almost any pink ones
I eventually got the rhythm on the PS4 to get regularly 16-19 million scores but it still can get pretty frustrating as it can be seen by this screen snapshot:
Beyond this good luck is all I can say. You'll need it and some skill.
Nufo Flow is still a lot worse than the Gate Dash one. 10 million is 3 stars, you need more than twice that. Less luck is involved here though.
Information for levels
14 - Cubism - Rainbow - 3.500.000
Snipe here is king, he's a master at eliminating stray painters and enemies which is more crucial than getting geoms or attacking. This level is difficult as the sides of the rectangle are small and it's easy to land on a bad spot while changing to another side, so try to stay in the larger sides of the rectangular box. Super states are random, and they influence a lot the outcome of the mission. Getting at least 2 Magnet ones will be crucial to achieve the goal.
Due to the highly random nature and the bad view angles of the mission it's not a appealing one to make, so just aim to achieve the 3 stars.
16 - Pianola Roller - Evolved - 5.000.000
This one is hard. Very hard. I do think it's one of the only ones involving shooting that I never got the 3 stars on the Vita version.
Not only the pianola itself is hard as nails with cycling changes and red walls, there's tons of all kinds of seekers at the same time. It's crucial that you take advantage of the 4 super states to achieve this one. The super states spawn at roughly the same time and the same spot (something that can make them tricky to get if they're on the other side of the pianola from your position.
19 - Infected - 3.000.000
This level is mostly annoying for a few reasons. The bad collision detection will shine a lot, the enemies will instaspawn on top of your ship and instakill you and sometimes your ship just does not seem to stop if you stop moving. Even so, it does become interesting if you manage to get the whole idea and don't have the previous craps destroying the play. As in all infection levels, attack is the best drone.
Supers are set and crucial to achieving the goal:
- quad fire
- split fire
- quad fire
- split fire
- and zilch from the last one, no more candies
If you pick them all and grab a good amount of geoms (only cells with yellow center provide them) you'll either pass or be near the goal when the last super ends, if not use the bomb and turret and you'll surely get it.
One of the good techniques to learn and use here is to milk what is available instead of going immediately for the super. In the first one, a cell will spawn almost simultaneously with the super, then 2 cells. Try to get these before going for the super, which grated is not easy if they spawn on top of the super itself. Don't try to be greedy and go for the next 2 cells, you'll likely miss the super. Following this technique will enable you an almost continuous session of supers until the last one ends which will make this level considerably easier.
If you want to proceed the best way is to stay near the border shooting and moving either clockwise or reverse, only shooting towards the middle if necessary.
Neither the bomb nor turret are completely effective when used, but they'll help to clear a good area to pick a ton of geoms and give you room to breathe.
25 - Intensity - Evolved - 15.000.000
This one will get pretty intense like the title says. It's a favorite of mine.
You can get all supers here and they're random in time of appearance and which ones. So this is a level that is very luck based. There will be several phases in which a specific kind of dangerous enemy will dominate to annoy, in the following order which is set:
- rockets
- green seekers
- snakes
- pink splitting seekers
- red and blue berserk seekers
The last ones spawn around the 11 to 12 million range, these are the toughest to handle if the screen is too hectic, which is usual, so use a bomb (which hopefully you still have) or trigger the turret if you're in trouble. Remember that to kill red and blue seekers, avoid them, then shoot back at the blue part.
Try to pick the pink NUFO's loot it will help to increase the multiplier, but there's usually a gazillion geoms around to pick.
Most helpful supers will be quad fire, missile and magnet. But they're random, so you can't choose...
It's not hard to reach the 3 star goal, but you'll need some training, effort and luck
29 - Planet of Peace - Pacifism - 10.000.000
Red gates
50 points, 6 geoms
Yellow gates
500 points, 20 geoms (crap, took me more than 50 restarts to get the first yellow gate without any blue seekers to be 100% sure of this one)
Oh boy... This one is and was truly dreadful to me. I hate this, suck at this, what can I say to help... A few ideas:
- ALWAYS aim for the center of the gates
- never stress to get a yellow gate, and never aim for a blinking one, you can get a nasty surprise
- never stop when there are greens on screen
- AVOID as much as possible the equator line and the poles, as especially cyan seekers will instaspawn and instakill you (can't even grasp how many times I died because of this crap)
- never go through a gate if enemies are approaching for the other side hoping to blow them too, 80%+ of the time you'll die, so don't do it (how many times I did this stupid mistake too)
- green seekers always spawn in pairs (first time it's 1, second 3, third 2, fourth 1, fifth 1 (followed by smaller orange ones), and more waves), so count how many you killed to know how many are remaining
- try to play pacifism levels together, to help your brain focus on the task, as it's completely different from the shooting ones
To me, the worst is the yellow spinners as they seem to hog around gates or completely avoid them, which makes it really difficult to blow them. The difficulty spikes a lot once they show up between the fourth and fifth green spawns.
When you reach the 2 stars goal it's still a long way to the 3 stars. After this point focus on blowing up all gates you can with any kind of enemies. If you don't do it, the number of enemies on the map will become impossible to manage, and you'll find most gates blocked by them. Also, blue seekers start to become more streamlined and faster if you don't kill them, becoming more dangerous than green ones. Don't stop from the 2 stars announcement, just keep going to the less crowded areas and use all gates to kill whatever you can.
I eventually managed after 3 or 4 times within a few thousands.
32 - Titans Revenge
Titan levels all all a few issues:
- titan enemies can and will spawn over you and due to their size it's very difficult to avoid them as you either won't have enough time or can't because there are other enemies.
- when big titan enemies break up they'll spawn 4 medium enemies, and it's not unusual at all that one will spawn over you even if the titan was somewhat far from your position (this drives me insane)
- some of the medium titans will travel at a huge speed when spawned and they become VERY dangerous
- the best titans to break up and finish are the blue diamond ones as these will home on you, second red squares and violet stars which are easier to finish; all others are dreadful
- be careful using a bomb in these levels, as they will break up all big titans in medium ones and all medium titans in the small ones, and you'll likely be in a huge mess, so using the special after the bomb is always a bright idea (if you have enough time to do so 😂😑)
- obviously, the worst drone for these is snipe, attack is the best
35 - Endurance - Deadline 10 mins - 200.000.000
You'll have 3 specials, and 3 bombs.
This seems harder than it is. I got it on the 2nd time I tried on the PS4. Died more than 20 times (probably more than 30), at least 2 times 3 deaths in a row, but still managed.
The best drone is the attack one, but snipe can do it too (I've done it with both). But attack enables better scores and chances of reaching the 3 stars goal.
What is crucial is to try to pick as many geoms as possible, kills is important but secondary. Ignore the gates, they can provide a bigger score, but your goal is to survive and you can't by focusing on the gates. If your shots rebound on them great, if not no big deal. Also remember enemies go through gates. Black holes, will eat gate too (nice!...).
Supers are set and appear at certain times or as near the supposed time as possible. It's possible to miss the 30 secs one if you die too close to that time, all others seem to spawn anyway even if you die near their intended appearance.
9 minutes - missile
8 minutes - magnet
7 minutes - split fire
6 minutes - reverse fire
5 minutes - shield
4 minutes - quad fire
3 minutes - shield
2 minutes - quad fire
1 minute - shield
30 secs - quad fire
Just before each super, a blue and red berserk seeker will spawn, and you can expect other ones around the 30 secs time towards the end.
It would be fantastic if you could take a huge advantage of the 3 turrets near the end of the level, but enemies spawn in waves and the game does seem to even slow wave spawning if the turret is active, so it's not as good as I expected. Anyway picking and using the quad fire is a really good option, so don't hesitate to use a bomb, or the turret in the 2 last ones to get them, as usually the screen is so hectic that even getting the supers is tough. The magnet is good, but you need a reasonable mess in the screen for it to be awesome, but if there are tons of enemies on screen use a bomb when it shows up.
The game goes in a crescendo depending on how long you'll survive. Around 1 minute without dying you can expect things to be really tough. So to help on this when the level starts it's a good idea to die around the 30 secs, so that when you reach the time for the super it's still manageable and at a timing where there will be a reasonable number of enemies on screen. If you die just before a super spawns you'll see that it will be wasted as you can't take adavntage of it due to the miserable number of enemies. Of course a better options is simply to not die at all for 10 minutes :-) ...
The best I could do was slightly more than 3 minutes alive but it's absolute chaos and there's a lot more enemies than blank space on screen (still used 2 bombs to pul that trick and yes I was quite lucky)
39 - Hexend - Checkpoint - 7.000.000
Yuck. One simple solution. Try not to die. Period.
In all checkpoint levels, you can die all the times you want. This is not serious if you die at the start of a wave. But if you die near the end you'll have lost precious seconds and get a whole new wave to handle, and no time back. For example, if you take 12 seconds in a wave and die, and then take another 15 in the next one when you revive you just spent 27 (plus respawn time) on a single wave. So if you die near the end of a wave, abort and retry, as you will probably won't make it. Better if you don't die at all until the 7 million 😂 ...
The royal PITA will be the pink seekers waves. The area is too small and you can't exactly choose where you'll be in the maze when they show up. The first wave is after you pick the magnet super, it will be the last one with it still active. This one can usually be handled without many issues. But slightly after this waves seem to be random, so it's difficult to say when they will present an issue. Just be ready to use the bomb or turret (terribly inefficient here) to help. I also played levels where I had consecutive waves of smaller triangle seekers, as waves seem to be random after the second super.
It's not very hard, but will require some work.
41 - Limit Twist - Snipe - 1.000 bullets
The biggest error here is being Uncle Scrooge and try not to use the weapon to save bullets. Collect will be useful here, but it's bloody incompetent as expected so will need some help. Shoot without using your weapon like a machine gun, don't let the seekers and rockets stay alive too long. Getting the pink NUFO's loot will help. Try to reach close to 1.000.000 points, which can be done with around 750 bullets, then use bomb when there's enough enemies that you're almost in trouble on screen, pick all possible geoms and trigger turret when in trouble again. You should have now well over the required goal and still more than 200 bullets to use.
42 - Running in the Family - Evolved - 10.000.000
Probably the best, most fun and rewarding of all levels. Attack drone is crucial here. The only point is understanding the mechanics. A wave of rockets will spawn from the last point you were. The idea is to go out a bit and shoot back and pick all geoms. Ignore most of the other enemies just shoot in a shower fashion to get rid of them. Rockets provide a lot of geoms and you'll get a huge multiplier here. Don't let the spawn center of rockets be very far from the middle center of the screen. The level is generous with supers, use the shield super to reposition the spawn of rockets in the center if necessary by staying there. Once you get how it works it's really easy to make huge scores. This level is good for geom farming, you can get 2000-3000 in less than a minute. Thinking of it, it's probably the best one for that.
Have fun on this one, it's a blast (I hope...)
44 - Turbine Cube - Evolved - 3.000.000
A hard level.
The better drone is snipe, as it will help you survive longer. Be prepared to use the bomb when a large cloud of small yellow or pink seekers that divide into smaller ones spawn, as these can be tricky to escape. Use the turret a little after that when any tough wave spawns and you should get the 3 stars.
46 - Super Rock Crust - 1.500.000
This one is insane without the snipe. As the level progresses you'll have enemies in such bad spots that only the drone will get them. Progressing as fast as you can is the key and the snipe helps a lot on that too. Try to pick as many geoms as possible. The only super will be a single quad fire, really useful on this level... Dying will somewhat clean the map of red blocks for a while but you'll lose precious time if you had almost finished the previous wave. Don't hesitate to use the bomb if you're taking a long time to find an enemy to progress. Not terribly difficult, but annoying.
47 - Royal Disease - 1.000.000
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Use attack. It's tricky to get to the 3 stars, and very hard to go beyond 2 million. There's only 1 super, a quad fire, and you must use it well. The trick here is to shoot 1 or as many cells as you can near your bubble then pick the geoms before they disappear, as you can't grow your multiplier otherwise. Do the same when the super shows up, which you can't miss, kill a few cells, pick geoms, return to bubble or go to a new one. After this try to survive and pick all geoms possible until trapped then trigger the turret which is not very effective here. Pick all geoms possible while the turret is active. Try to survive longer, but it becomes really hard. Luck in the position of the bubbles will help a lot, but this is a short tactical level I'm enjoying now more than I expected (same with 21, King Pond).
49 - Super Sequence - Evolved - 150.000.000
This seems hard but it's not. It requires above all patience, lots of it. The sequence is always the same:
- purple spinners
- red squares
- yellow spinners
- cyan seekers (quad fire super at start)
- orange rockets
- white disks
- pink NUFOs (split fire super at start)
- orange seekers
- green seekers (quad fire at start)
- snakes
- red and blue berserk seekers (magnet super)
- pink splitters
You should aim to get your multiplier at least until the 1.200 in the first 3 waves (better if you reach 1.500 of course) Check videos on how it's done, not difficult just boring and methodic. In the cyan seekers wave circle around the center, roughly halfway to the border, creating a huge bubble of seekers following you in the end (this is fun), shooting them back and picking geoms. In the rockets phase you'll have to stay in the center or one of the corners when the waves become full border, the center is a lot easier than the corners. The white disks moving at 45 degrees angles are always unreliable, the better place to stay is in the lower right corner. The pink NUFOs wave is essential, you can get 500 geoms here, and put your score well over the 100-120 million (even a lot more if you're good). The next wave, the orage seekers, you'll start with the split fire still active, handle in the same way as the blue seekers, circle around screen and create a huge wave of them in the end. If you have done it really right until now you'll have the 3 stars on this wave. The green seekers are not as difficult to handle as it seems, also you have the 2 bombs if necessary. The green seekers are easily handled by going on one direction then turning back and shooting in a shower fashion. Then will come the snakes, which are not awful, just don't be greedy with picking geoms like with white disks, stay near a corner to be safer. Next wave is the berserk seekers and you'll probably die. Not an issue, you have 3 lives (hopefully you did not die until now :-) ). The last wave is the pink splitters and you'll probably won't make it beyond this one. Try to survive the first single side waves, then use the turrets when you get surrounded from the 4 sides, the score will literally skyrocket. Even if you got here in your last life, you'll surely have the 3 stars.
This is mostly patience and coolness, not my strong suits. There are more than 10 levels much harder than this one to get 3 stars.