KingsIsle's Rise & Destroy: Elemental Power

If you haven't heard, KingsIsle's new game, Rise & Destroy, is now available worldwide. To generate excitement and show you what the game's about, we're taking an inside look. I demonstrated some of the first levels, but let's look a little further!

The Monster Cup

As you can see in the beginning of this first video, you collect gold from past levels you've completed. The gold is based on how many stars and Monster Cup Challenges you've completed. It starts out as smaller amounts and scales up to 100 gold per star and challenge completed, so you have the potential for up to 400 gold per level. There are 90 total levels of gameplay. You must wait a certain amount of time before you can collect the gold, though. It starts at 20 minutes on the first level, then 40, 60, and so on, up to six hours. No level will require you to wait more than six hours to collect its gold.

The Monster Cup Challenge is like adding an additional objective to a level. Monster Cup Challenges not only award a large lump sum of gold upon completion, but also add 100 gold to what you can collect from that level every so often. Monster Cup Challenges require playing through a level more than once. First, you have to earn three stars on a level to unlock the challenge. You'll find that for some levels, this is very easy, and for others, very difficult. Then, when you replay the level, you'll have a new objective. This object is not required to complete the level again. You also no longer need three stars to win the challenge. Also, these challenges only award their gold once and do not increase prize crate loot, so you need only pay attention to them until they're completed.

Monster Cup Challenge requirements can be just about anything. Some that I've seen are "Don't let health drop below X%" (usually 50 or 75), "Never drop your combo," "Don't collect health buildings," "Only use X [monster]," "Get three stars using X [monster] only," and on some tougher levels, "No monster KO's," and "No swapping monsters."

Finding Your Way

In this video, you also get a look at a Waypoint. This is a check point in the story, and the one after level 5 is really only to familiarize you with them. You'll only experience two more in the whole game, and those are after 30 and 60, when you're transitioning between level themes. You may start out in a pleasant valley, but level 31-60 are in frozen wastelands, and 61-90 in a desert.

This checkpoint doesn't require much, but others will take a little more time or gold. Remember, there are only three, so you don't have much to worry about. Here's a shot of the one after level 30, however.

The Fire Within

As you'll learn, every monster, in addition to two powers, has an element. There are three elements: Fire, Storm, and Ice. Each one has its own SERVO to be unlocked in the cave. These elemental abilities enhance everything - your regular attacks, and both of your powers. Not only do they provide special additional benefits with the powers, but they're also designed to create chains of destruction. For fire, it's about explosives and widespread devastation. It requires building to be in close quarters but it very powerful when they are, able to wipe out whole setups with the right blow.

One important note on fire is that it's trigger by the destruction of a building. You won't do more damage with fire by itself, but once you've destroyed a building, fire spreads and destroys other buildings. Therefore, it is to your advantage to locate buildings which do not have to be attacked, but can just be stomped on, that are next to larger structures. This will start chains of destruction much faster.

Rampage Levels!

Level 10 introduces a new level type. The requirement is simply not to die, but that doesn't mean there'll be a particular difficulty with staying alive. Rampage and survival are two different things, and we'll get into survival a little bit later. For now, the goal is simply to do as much damage as possible. You'll notice a couple of things. First, I'm not very good at aiming just yet. Second, there are some gaps (on 11) which will make Trevor essential for levels where you must destroy everything, where other monsters could not complete them at all.

That's it for this time around! Stay tuned for more videos, screenshots, and information on Rise & Destroy. You can stay up to date on the progress of the game by following Rise & Destroy on Twitter, liking them on Facebook, or giving their Google+ page a visit. I'm hoping this inside look gets you as excited about the game as it does me!

What do you think of the game so far?

Thanks for reading and see you in the Spiral! NOTE: This post is based on the original version of Rise & Destroy.