can't stop playing geometry wars 2 lately, so tonight i'll stream it. come watch the video compression cry. https://twitch.tv/knutaf

i've been playing geometry wars 2 again, which means i'm staying up way too late playing "just one more round". there's a lot of strategy in this game, more than it would appear, if you're trying to push for a high score. i had something of an insight tonight, something that I only noticed after almost 20 years of playing this game

i think a lot about "acceleration" in deadline, and when i say acceleration I mean acceleration of your score, of the difficulty of enemy spawns the game is throwing at you. and importantly, how often the game spawns gates and black holes, which give a compound 5x multiplier on top of whatever your ongoing multiplier is

usually in early game you're racing towards getting those first few gates or black holes, because that gives a big boost to score and accelerates you towards the point where your screen is flooded with enemies--a constant source of points.

until tonight i never had a good handle on a method to consistently get that first gate spawn. now I think I do. you have to

1. kill enemies as quickly as possible. of course
2. make sure to kill the blue diamonds as quickly as possible, leaving none alive. anything else you kill is fine, whatever

and importantly, you can leave green and purple diamonds alive and following you, fodder for the gate. killing those or not doesn't seem to make a difference.

with this method, i was able to pretty consistently get over 20mil, which is pretty good for me, and especially for being out of practice.

Hit 31 mil in geometry wars 2 deadline tonight, close to my pb of 40 mil. Still probably the closest we'll ever see to a perfect game