Min – Guide: Drop n’ Climb Explained

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We here at Cwerki are really excited to see how well you all do in our War of Min competition! To help you improve your times we are going to release a couple of guides for each of the competition levels. Today we’ll be going over Drop n’ Climb.

Warning: If you are the type of player that likes to explore and discover things by yourself then be warned, this guide contains some tips and tricks that might spoil your experience.

Overview

Drop n’ Climb will be the first real challenge to most of you. The level is longer than Prospector’s Reach and introduces a new obstacle type, the Spike Gauntlet.

The Spike Gauntlet

A spike gauntlet is a section of a tunnel that is littered with holes. Out of these holes, spikes will pop out and back in periodically. Each gauntlet has its own set of tricks and we will be going over how to best navigate this gauntlet later in this post.

As the name insinuates, Drop n’ Climb is all about playing with vertical space. You will make your way down a steep drop then gradually work your way back up towards the finish.

Level Difficulty: Novice

The Start

Making sure you start the level correctly can sometimes save you a good number of seconds. This is not very critical to Drop n’ Climb but before you fire the cannon and get the timer starter, make sure you line yourself up with as little obstacles in your way as possible, the less you need to turn, the better. As with all levels, firing the cannon and then immediately consuming a boost consumable will help you reach a top speed faster (provided you can handle Min at those speeds).

Lining up a good start

When you reach the indicators pointing you downwards, you might want to either release the thrust or press the brakes slightly. This will largely depend on how you customized your Tech-Tree.

Ease up on the thrust or apply some braking depending on your speed

The drop itself is relatively straightforward. You will find only static obstacles here so just make sure you avoid those sharp broken pillars as their tips may catch you by surprise.

Watch the broken pillar tips - top the right of Min in this image

When you reach the end of the drop and depending on how fast you are going you might need to apply some braking. The floor of the tunnel you are about to enter has a lot of static obstacles requiring you to level Min at a higher altitude. This is one of the common crash spots but luckily there is a checkpoint right after the drop.

Brake and turn sharply to avoid static clutter

Note: the timer does not stop if you crash

After you level you should come face to face with the Spike Gauntlet. The trick to avoiding the spikes in this particular gauntlet is to fly low. The line we like to take at Cwerki involves first going into the small gap in the bottom left corner (where the inspiration point is) then flying as low as possible until you break out of the gauntlet. You would need to be careful if you take this approach as the small gap is dangerously close to the tunnel and is wide enough to fit Min with only a little room for error. Alternatively you could fly low starting from the bottom right side of the screen.

Go into the gap in the bottom left corner

Go through the gap and stay low

Fly low...

...until you reach the end of the gauntlet


Be very careful on the next turn. The turn itself is a U turn followed by another turn. This section can appear misleading, if you go into it at full speed you might crash into the tunnel’s borders taking you back to the checkpoint before the gauntlet.

From then on you will have to climb your way up until you reach another sharp set of turns identical to the ones you just passed, and from there you should be able to see the finish-line in sight.

Watch out for those misleading bends


Tech-Tree

For this particular level I prefer to go completely down the Risk Takers tree since the level itself is not very long and thereby, depending on what Min you use, you should have enough capacity to get you to the finish line (with little to spare…).

Tech-tree setup for Drop n' Climb speed-run

Suggested Consumables

We strongly suggest you use your first slot for boosters, alternatively you could favor core-recharge consumables above boosts if you are running a core intensive build, but for the purposes of this guide, we recommend you favor boosts above core-recharges.

As for which of the boosts to actually take, we recommend either Booster or Booster II. Due to the short straight distances in this level it is generally not advised to equip an Infinity Booster.

Min's many booster consumables, accessed from the craft menu inside the Laboratory

Min Choices

When it comes to which Min you actually decide to use, the choice is largely based on your play-style and how your Tech-tree is used. Mins that work well with this build are the Chilly Min, Forest Min or even Desert Min.



We hope this guide helps you better understand Drop n’ Climb and helps you compete more aggressively on the leaderboard. Please remember that Min is strongly based on your play-style so if you have a better idea for a speed build go ahead and use it, we would also love to hear about it.

Good luck in the competition!!!

Here are a few more guides you might find interesting:

  • Serpent’s Cove Guide: Coming Soon
  • Min Guide: Coming Soon
  • Consumable Guide: Coming Soon
  • In-App Purchase Guide: http://www.cwerki.com/?p=224

Min – Guide: In-App Purchases

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In this guide we will briefly go over the different types of In-App Purchases that you can find in Min. To reach the In-App store, navigate to the Laboratory and you should find two buttons:

  • Get cMats
  • Level up

The buttons are located to the lower left and lower right of Min

Level Up

The level up button allows you to instantly unlock a Eureka Point to spend in the Tech-Tree. There are a total of 21 Eureka Points that you can gain by either gathering Inspiration Points or completing missions. This In-App Purchase is designed to help players unlock all the Eureka Points faster, allowing them to customize their Tech-Tree more effectively.


The Tech-Tree where you spend your Eureka Points

Get cMats

Pressing the Get cMats button opens a list containing several consumables you can purchase. There are two types of items you can buy:

  • Duplicators
  • Bundles

Duplicators

Min has two types of duplicators, cMats Duplicators and Inspiration Points Duplicators. Buying the cMats duplicator will duplicate the value of the cMats you gather during gameplay. If you finish a level with 20,000 cMats and you already own the cMats duplicator, then you will effectively finish the level with 40,000 cMats. Similarly, the Inspiration Points Duplicators will double the value of whatever Inspiration Points you manage to gather during a level.

These are permanent purchases. You only need to buy the duplicators once and they will apply automatically whenever you finish a level.

Duplicators in the Store

Bundles

cMat Bundles will give you a certain number of cMats in exchange for money. We have 5 different bundles available for purchase:

  1. cMats Pack: gives 800,000 cMats
  2. Adventurer’s cMats Pack: gives 2,000,000 cMats
  3. Ultra cMats Pack: gives 4,000,000 cMats
  4. Ultimate cMats Pack: gives 10,000,000 cMats
  5. One Pack to Rule Them All: gives 55,000,000 cMats

Bundles in the Store

With each purchase inside the In-App store, you will also gain a certain amount of Cwerki Gratitude Points. These points can be spent to buy certain unique consumables and can later be redeemed for special gifts and prizes!

War of Min – Competition Announced

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War of Min Begins


Cwerki Studios is pleased to announce our first ever War of Min competition! Starting September 25th players can compete on the leaderboards of two levels for the fastest times. On October 10th at 12:00PM CST the competition will end and our two winners will be announced shortly after. The winners will receive an iTunes gift-card! and a chance to be eternally immortalized in the Min-verse in our next update!

Rules & Regulations

The competition will take place over two levels:

  • Level 2: Drop N’ Climb
  • Level 4: Serpent’s Cove

On September 25th the leaderboard state of these two levels will be saved and the competition will commence. Over the next 16 days players will be able to compete for the fastest times on the Drop N’ Climb and Serpent’s Cove leaderboards. On October 10th at 12:00PM CST the leaderboard state of these two players will be saved and stored. The winners of the competition will be announced shortly after.

In the final countdown we encourage you to submit your scores well before the deadline as it could take gamecenter a good few minutes to update your score, care would be taken on our end to make sure the correct winner is selected

When the winner’s names are announced, they would then need to send us an email with two screenshots for verification and shortly afterwards, the iTunes gift-codes will be sent to the winners. Submissions will only be accepted on the 10th of October and only for the announced gamecenter tags.

The email address, submission process, and prize value of the gift-cards will be revealed at a later date.

We will be posting guides on these two levels to help players navigate the many obstacles

Cheaters

We will be keeping a close eye on the leaderboard to make sure no attempts at cheating were conducted. We know our game well, and we know our levels well. We know what score ranges make sense for each level and we will be comparing scores against those values.

Guides

To help our players out we will be posting guides of these two levels on our website while the competition is being held, we encourage everyone to like us on Facebook as we will be making our announcements there.

Best of luck!

Min – A Space Adventure Patch 1.21

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A minor patch went live last night. Patch 1.21 includes a couple of UI related bug fixes. We continue to improve thanks to your awesome feedback so keep them coming!

Download Min – A Space Adventure today!

1.21 Patch Notes

-Fixed a bug that kept the mission complete overlay from appearing for early levels

-Fixed the text description for the cMat Duplicator and Inspiration Points Duplicator in the level complete list and re-enabled the buttons allowing players to purchase the upgrades directly from there.

Posted in Min

Developer Origins – Post 01: The Origins of Cwerki

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As some of you already know, Cwerki Studios was officially “founded” (we use the term lightly) some time in July 2011. Back then, we didn’t really have a name and we were finding a hard time picking one. So where did the world Cwerki come from?


Cwerki: cwer-ki
adj. The quirky way of writing quirky.

The story goes something like this. We knew from the get go what type of games we wanted to make; whimsical, lighthearted games that leave an impact on our players. We weren’t talking about a lasting, life changing impact here, but a small one, Min itself is a perfect example of that. Min is a tiny planet, with a giant rocket attached to it full of giggling little Minimar with a need to explore the cosmos, that feeling you get when you first see Min is what we hope to capture and build upon. But we needed a name to define the experience.

Fortunately, at the time of conception, I had just been introduced to one of my cousins. We went through the paces of getting to know each other and it became quickly apparent to my younger cousin that I was a quirky individual. I liked quirky things, and I acted rather funny, and that was when it occurred to me. Quirky could possibly be one of the better ways to describe our games and so we decided on Cwerki… the quirky way of writing quirky…

Developer Origins – Post 02: Ol’Min & Min’s First Flight

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For those of you who do not know, Cwerki was formed sometime in July 2011 and shortly after that development began on what eventually became Min – A Space Adventure. In this Developer Origins post we talk about the very early days of Min and share some of the first screenshots of what we now call “Ol’Min & Min’s first flight.

Ol’Min

During those days Cwerki did not have an artist. It was just myself (Design & Programming) and Michael (Sound Effects & Composition). The problem was, we needed artwork, at least temporary artwork, to use with the systems I was going to program. Initially I spent a couple of days modeling and texturing a planet with a rocket. This was the outcome:

What happens when a programmer attempts game-art...

It looks horrible, but it served its purpose… I rigged it and was able to code the early versions of the propulsion system, socket manager, physics, and touch interface with basic UI…

With all that up and running it was time for Min to take its first ever flight!

Roaming around the UDK template

Min took her first flight on August 24, 2011 at 11:49 AM CST. From there Michael began designing the “earthy” thrust, brake, and loop sounds while I continued coding and started searching for an artist.


Developer Origins is a category of our blog that talks about the foundation of Cwerki and the development of Min - A Space Adventure.

Migrating Content to New Site

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Hello Reader!

We are currently migrating all our old posts to our new website here, what does that mean to you? Well, it might be a while before you can read some of our older posts. We’ll be working as quickly as possible to bring them all back in though.

Thanks for your continued support, we’ve got plenty planned and we look forward to sharing everything with you our awesome community!

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Min – A Space Adventure Version 1.2 Breakdown

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We’ve got plenty to talk about in Min’s latest patch. In version 1.2, we have added over one hundred and forty missions to Min, a combo system, a couple of “Farewell To Summer” themed Mins for you to enjoy, new achievements, a new leaderboard, and plenty of other tweaks and fixes.


Read the patch notes below.




1.2 Update Notes







Missions:


We added missions to the game that are assigned to you when you start a level. There is a set of missions for each level. Missions come in 3 tiers; tier 1 missions are unlocked directly followed by tier 2 missions which are unlocked at level 10 and tier 3 missions which are unlocked at level 20, the higher the tier the greater the chance of getting a lucrative mission. There is a combined total of 142 missions in this update.


Missions will reward you with extra cMats and extra inspiration points.


We also added a new set of achievements based on the number of completed missions.









3 New Mins:


Say farewell to summer with three new Min skins! These skins are more cosmetic in nature and can be purchased from the Laboratory for 250,000 cMats.








Combo-System:


We introduced a chain-combo system that you can build up by playing several levels in quick succession without losing. Based on what level you complete you will gradually build up a cMat multiplier. The multiplier value affects the number of cMats you gather in a level, so if you build up a multiplier of x3 and you gathered 1,500 cMats in a run, the value will be tripled to 4,500.


Keep in mind that getting a "Game Over" by exhausting the core will reset the combo.


The multiplier value indicator can be found beside the cMat counter in the HUD when you are playing a level.


Skill Tree & Min Speed Revamp:


We were not satisfied with how slow Min was at the earlier levels (1-8/1-10). So in this update we are introducing a set of changes to the base speed values of all the planets and reducing your dependency on the Tech-Tree.


Every Min now starts with a far larger speed value. At level 1 you are at around 60-70% of the acceleration rate of the planets. As a result the values in the Tech-Tree were reduced and a maxed out Risk Taker tree should get you to that 100%. No changes were made to the "speed limit" of each planet, we changed how quickly you can get there.


UI-Tech Tree:


We noticed a lot of you were forgetting to update your planet after you leveled up. We introduced a set of indicators that will constantly remind you when you have unspent points in your Tech-Tree. We also added the Tech-Tree permanently to the "Level Complete" UI.


UI-Missions:


We added a new UI to keep you informed about the missions. At the start of a level during the flythrough phase, you can read what missions you have available. If you need a reminder in game, hitting the pause menu button will pause the game and list the current available missions.


cMats Gathered Leaderboard:


We added a new leaderboard that allows you to compete over the number of cMats you gathered. This board is actually based on the cMats you earn during play, buying cMats will not affect your score.


Lots of tweaks bug-fixes and more...


We hope you enjoy this update! For any feedback or issues please send us an email at feedback@cwerki.com.