rymdkapsel Walkthrough

Game Introduction – rymdkapsel

rymdkapsel is a real-time strategy game developed by Martin Jonasson/Grapefrukt.  In this game, you’ll direct minion units to expand your space station and research monoliths while fending off waves of attacks from alien enemies.  Gamezebo’s quick start strategy guide will provide you with detailed images, tips, information, and hints on how to play your best game.

Quick Start Guide

Getting Started

• rymdkapsel can be downloaded and purchased by clicking the “Play Now!” button option at the top of this page.
• When you first open the game, you’ll be sent to the main menu.  From here, you can start a new or resume a current game, check Game Center leaderboards, view the options or credits, and see which of the three missions you have completed.
• From the options panel you can turn on/off color blind mode, music, and tutorial messages.  You can also clear your completed missions for consistent goals to work toward.
• Note that you can only have one active game at a time, and rymdkapsel auto-saves your progress.  Selecting “New Game” from the main menu will automatically and immediately overwrite your current game.

How to Play

• The three main goals in rymdkapsel are to expand your space station, research the four monoliths positioned around your starting point, and defend against waves of enemies as they persistently appear and attack.  You don’t have to do anything except defend your station to stay alive, but researching the monoliths is beneficial and part of the leaderboard missions.
• There’s no technical end point to each playthrough; the game will end once all of your Minions have been killed by invaders.

• Resources: There are four main resources in rymdkapsel: Minions, Energy, Materials, and Food.  Minions are the white dashes that act as your crewmen/units.  Energy, Materials, and Food are used to construct additional rooms in your station, and Food is used to create additional Minions.
• Rooms: There are seven types of rooms available to build: Corridor, Extractor, Reactor, Garden, Kitchen, Weapons, and Quarters. 
• Corridors are brown and connect the rooms of your station.  Every room and Corridor must be built adjacent to another Corridor.  This is where your Minions will walk.
• Extractors are pink and automatically provide the resource Materials.  Extractors must be built next to a particle field—the pink piles of squares floating in space.  Each Extractor will produce as many Materials as are available in the adjacent field.
• Reactors are light blue and automatically provide unlimited amounts of the resource Energy. 
• Gardens are green and provide unlimited amounts of the item sludge.  Sludge is useless until it is transformed into Food in a Kitchen.
• Kitchens are yellow and turn sludge into the resource Food.
• Weapons are dark blue and provide an area of defense for your Minions.  When an enemy appears, Minions who are assigned to a Weapons room will automatically attack the invading forces.
• Quarters are orange and provide additional Minions. Two pieces of food placed inside the Quarters will create a new minion; each of the Quarters can produce two new Minions maximum.
• Gameplay: Most of your time will be spent planning the construction of rooms and directing your Minions to perform tasks. 

• Building:Rooms are plotted by dragging from the upper list into the gameplay area.  Each room will be built in the shape of a tetromino from Tetris: the next shape to be built is visible in the dock area in the upper left corner, along with the next two shapes after that.
• You can rotate a room by tapping with two fingers, or selecting “rotate room” from the bottom-left corner.  You can place a room by tapping once or selecting “build room.”
• Once a room is plotted, it will automatically be built by any Minions assigned to Construction in the bottom list of tasks.  To assign a Minion to a task, drag the Minion from his current task to the new, desired one.
• Plotted, incomplete rooms will appear as empty shapes bordered by dotted lines.  Finished rooms will be a solid color.

• Tasks: There are five tasks available that Minions can perform: Engineering, Food Service, Construction, Defense, and Research.
• In the image above, one Minion is assigned to Food Service and is currently carrying a piece of Food.  Three Minions are assigned to Construction and each one is carrying a piece of Energy.
• Note: new Minions that have not been assigned to any task will be listed under the temporary task “Idle.”
• Each task will only be listed on screen if a relevant room is available.  For example, Research will only appear when an un-researched monolith is accessible.
• Engineering requires a Reactor.  If a Minion is assigned to Engineering, he will stand in the Reactor and cause Energy to appear more quickly, about twice as fast as normal.  Once the Reactor is full—at four pieces of Energy—having a Minion assigned to Engineering is unnecessary.
• Food Service requires a Garden and Kitchen.  Minions assigned to Food Service will carry sludge from the Garden to the Kitchen, where it will automatically transform into Food over time.  These Minions will also carry Food from the Kitchen to the Quarters whenever a new Minion can be created.
• Construction requires a planned but not completed room.  Minions assigned to Construction will gather resources and carry them to the new room until it is built.

• Note: you can prioritize rooms for construction by tapping on a room’s plan and selecting “Prioritize” in the bottom-right corner.  Minions will try to complete a prioritized room before any other planned rooms.
• Defense requires a Weapons room.  Minions assigned to Defense will move to the Weapons room, put on a shield, and automatically attack any enemy invader that comes within their weapons range.  Each Weapons room can accommodate two Minions at once.
• Research requires a monolith to be accessible—a Corridor must connect the space station to one of the four monoliths.  Minions assigned to Research will go to the monolith and scan it until its information is uncovered.  Up to three Minions can be assigned to research a single monolith at once.

• Monoliths: There are four monoliths positioned around your space station.  Each monolith provides a beneficial bonus once it is researched in full.  You can tap on monoliths even when they are out of reach to see what bonus they provide.
• Monolith 1: In the upper left corner of the screen.  This monolith makes your Minions walk faster.
• Monolith 2: In the upper right corner of the screen.  This monolith makes Extractors gather Materials much faster.
• Monolith 3: In the lower right corner of the screen.  This monolith extends the time between enemy attacks.
• Monolith 4: In the lower left corner of the screen.  This monolith extends the range of your Minions’ weapons, allowing them to defend a wider range of the station.

• Defense: After you have constructed four rooms, enemies will begin attacking.  The red bar above your task list displays the time left until the next enemy wave will appear.  The closer the red bar gets to full, the closer the enemy is.
• A warning siren will sound out once the enemy is almost upon you.  If you haven’t assigned Minions to Defense by this time, do so immediately.
• As long as you have a Weapons station built, you can assign Minions to Defense to automatically shoot down enemy invaders.  However, as time passes, waves will appear more frequently and with more enemies: you’ll need to have more Weapons rooms and Minions to man them as the threat grows.

Tips

• Think before you build: At the beginning of the game, no enemies are attacking you.  And no enemies will attack until you’ve built your first four rooms.  Take time to think about the best path and which rooms you want to build.  Plot out a few of them while there is no timer.
• …but don’t over-plan: At the same time, don’t plan out your entire station in this early stage.  Minions don’t always follow construction priorities and may waste precious early resources on rooms you don’t actually need yet if there are too many construction options. 
• Follow the tutorial: The tutorial provides valuable gameplay lessons, but it also tells you the first four rooms you are required to build for survival: Extractor, Reactor, Garden, and Kitchen.  If you skip the Garden/Kitchen stage and move straight to Quarters and Weapons, you’ll run out of Food and be stuck until the emergency rations replenish—which takes a very long time.
• Shapes can be changed: You don’t have to use the next tetromino shape on dock.  If you really don’t want to use a certain shape, plot a room, select “build room,” and then cancel it.  It will not cost anything, but the shape will count as “used,” allowing you to build with the next shape (or continue building and cancelling until you have the shape you want).
• Monolith usefulness:   The order of most useful to least useful monolith is generally as follows: 1, 3, 4, 2.  Faster-moving Minions and slower enemy attacks will allow you to build more and faster, so these two should be your first focus.

• Build Weapons rooms as close as possible to each other:  Weapons rooms have an area of effect that is visible when plotting them or by clicking on any already-built Weapons room.  You cannot build another Weapons room within the active area of effect.  Yet you do want all of your Weapons to be as close as possible so they can provide support to one another.  Build all of your Weapons rooms on the immediate border of the area of effect, and do not take up this valuable real estate with other rooms.
• Build Quarters near Kitchens: As enemies begin pounding your station more and more, you’re going to face casualties.  The only way to recoup your losses is by putting Food in the Quarters of whichever Minion(s) were lost.  At later stages time is extremely scarce, so your Minions should have the shortest possible walk to revive their friends.
• Most of your rooms should be Weapons and Quarters: Don’t over-build Gardens and Kitchens; one of each can easily feed four Quarters until extremely late levels.  The majority of your station, especially once construction slows down, will be made up of Weapons rooms and Quarters.
• Sell off unnecessary rooms: Once a particle field is dried up, get rid of its Extractor.  These are usually taking up prime real estate in the station that could be used by Weapons rooms or anything else more useful.
• Keep your Minions working: Minions will lay down when they have nothing to do (becoming horizontal dashes on the map and task bar).  Sometimes this is temporary, like a Construction Minion waiting for resources to become available.  Most of the time, however, they should be reassigned immediately to a new, more important task.  And if the enemy bar is nearly full, don’t hesitate to transfer any idle Minions to Defense.
• Prioritize rooms: Be sure to use the “prioritize” function on rooms when you’re building more than one at a time.  Minions have unpredictable building habits when not focused on a specific room.  You can only prioritize one room at a time, so be ready to tap a room and select it for priority as soon as the current priority is finished.

• Feel free to change direction: Corridors cannot be deleted once built, which may make it seem like you have to keep following a certain Corridor once you’ve placed it.  Don’t—sometimes you’ll build a Corridor heading west and then realize going south would be faster for your Minions.  Leave the dead-end Corridor where it is and build in the most efficient direction; wasting a couple of resources is much better than wasting tons of time with excess walking.  Your Minions will also leave the dead-end alone as long as there’s no room adjacent to it.
• Mission 1: Research all monoliths: The first mission objective is to research all four monoliths.  Since you have an unlimited amount of time to do so, feel free to approach this any way you like.  However, the advice for the two missions below can be used successfully for this one as well.

• Mission 2: Survive 28 waves: First, you should still research all four monoliths for this mission, although you can skip monolith 2 (Extractor efficiency) if you’d like.  The other three will be very useful.  Focus on building your Weapons stations as close as possible to each other, and your Kitchens and Quarters near one another, per the advice above.  You should ideally have most of your critical rooms built by wave 15—this includes Weapons, Kitchens, and Quarters.  By wave 25, enemies will be appearing so quickly you won’t have time to build any new rooms.  Try to have at least 16-20 Minions on deck and enough Weapons rooms for each.  Before wave 25, be sure to send some Minions to recoup any losses in the Quarters.  After wave 25, all Minions should be assigned to Defense at all times.  With Weapons rooms built close enough together, you should be able to survive through wave 30 at least, as in the station pictured above.
• Mission 3: Research all monoliths in less than 45 minutes: Continue following the standard room advice from above, and be sure to build your entire station in a tight quadrant.  Do not waste time planning ahead; start your Minions constructing immediately, including Corridors that stretch to Monolith 1 and then Monolith 3.  Build plenty of Quarters and spawn extra Minions; focus less on Weapons rooms this time.  (You have to build a few, but you can survive with only one Weapons room for the first five waves alone.)  As soon as you can research a Monolith, send three Minions to do so.  If you have enough Minions to spare six, research two monoliths simultaneously.

Congratulations!

You have completed Gamezebo’s quick start guide for rymdkapsel.  Be sure to check back often for game updates, staff and user reviews, user tips, forums comments and much more here at Gamezebo!

Jillian Werner

• 

Jillian will play any game with cute characters or an isometric perspective, but her favorites are Fallout 3, Secret of Mana, and Harvest Moon. Her PC suffers from permanent cat-on-keyboard syndrome, which she blames for most deaths in Don’t Starve. She occasionally stops gaming long enough to eat waffles and rewatch Battlestar Galactica.