Video Game / Grid Warrior

Grid Warrior is a game by Ironcommando and his two friends, as another Gaiden Game to Metaspace.

A strange Grid has appeared in a domain of Metaspace, spawning thousands of hostile Grid creatures hell-bent on taking over the domain. These mindless foes posess strange powers, which they use to destroy the inhabitants of the domain.

You are a Grid Warrior, an Enforcer unit sent down to curb the threat. At the same time, the Enforcers also want you to gather data on these strange foes, specifically their powers, so that they can replicate it into weapon technology.

Download the game here.

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This game provides the following examples:

• Airborne Mook: Some enemies have the ability to fly or float, which maks them unhindered by enemies/obstacles and also gives them immunity to ground-based attacks. Some of them can fly above your character, and are thus able to avoid most attacks until they get low.
• Always Accurate Attack: Quadran's Sea Mines, if not destroyed, will emit a wave attack that affects the entire room with no way to avoid. Ditto goes for the Giga Jelly if it is not killed in time.
  • If you're locked on by the Lightning-elemental enemies, be prepared to be hit with an armor-piercing lightning bolt that can stun you.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: At the endgame, you have to get back to the centre, while facing every single elemental and non-elemental Mook (save the Super Energy Capsle) along the way.
• Anti-Air: The Flak Cannon, which auto-targets enemies with a weak rapid-fire attack, but does 3x damage to flying mooks. Frozen Missiles, Proxy Shock and Holy Bullets will also hit air units just fine.
• Area of Effect: The Fire element specializes in heavy Area-of-effect damage. The downside is that fire attacks cost lots of energy to use.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted, armored enemies have armor that negates any damage lower than a certain amount and reduces the rest.
• Armor Piercing: Likewise, you have attacks that penetrate enemy armor and deal full damage to them. Armor also does not protect against the Virus status.
• Attack Drone: You have one that flies around you, and it can fire shots, ice beams, lightning, as well as a light that slows down enemies. It can be temporarily put out of commission by enemy anti-air attacks, though.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Drillium's tail is unarmored and vulnerable. Quadran's only vulnerable area is his head. Raivolt's leg joints are targetable, but he can regenerate all of them.
• BFS: You get to use one with spinning via Death Dance. Silent Knights also have one.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The Giant Mook of the Ice-elemental sector. They spam missiles and ice beams as well as charging at the player.
• Boss Fight:
  • Battleship Raid: Proto-Crabburn and Sky Fortress.
  • Boss Rush: The endgame. You have to get back to the centre grid, which is blocked until you beat the 8 bosses again, around it. And to make sure you can't save in-between, the game closes off the save areas once you get close to the centre.
  • Bullfight Boss: Drillium the Sand Worm. Most of its attack patterns consist of charging at you and firing anti-air shots at your drone. Wait for it to charge at you, then sidestep and attack its head with your sword to damage and poison it. Careful though- you do not want to be anywhere near when it does the earthquake attack!
  • Damage-Sponge Boss: Proto-Crabburn's main weak spot has the most health of any enemy in the game.
  • Dual Boss: The twin submarines miniboss, and the Serial Killers. Once you beat the game, some new areas open up- these have you fight 2 bosses at one go.
  • Flunky Boss: Sky Fortress, which can send out Spinners, Galewings and North Winds to attack you.
  • Ring-Out Boss: The easiest way to beat the Apostles is to push them out of their sanctuary (room), which instantly kills them.
  • Rush Boss: The Serial Killers, who have low health each, but are fast, can do heavy damage in short time and have the ability to poison you. The Apostles each have the lowest health for bosses and can be instantly killed by being pushed out, but their laser cannon attack can down you in at most three hits.
  • Wolfpack Boss: The Apostles consists of a Multi-Mook Melee against a number of angelic units. Crystaleyes consists of six ice-crystal things rotating around a central core. And each of those six have six smaller ice crystals around them.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience / Color-Coded Elements: Mooks are separated into different colours, which denotes their elemental affinity. (Non-Elemental: Grey, Fire: Orange/Red, Ice: Light Blue, Water: Dark Blue, Lightning: Yellow and blue, Earth: Brown, Wind: Green, Holy: Light Yellow/White, Corruptive: Black/Purple)
• Cool Plane: North Wind. A Fire/Wind plane was planned, but the idea was scrapped due to time constraints.
• Crosshair Aware: Ice Cars and Rocket Tanks will lock-on to you via a crosshair before they fire their homing missiles.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Your character starts out with a Non-Elemental machine gun and shotgun, as well as a dark-elemental melee attack. Yes, darkness is the first of 8 elements you start out with.
  • In-universe, darkness/virus is not evil, it's just illegal within Metaspace law standards.
• Deadly Gas: Virus Wave allows you to fire a wave of this, which causes the virus status on enemies. The Shadow enemies are cloaked in it too.
• Degraded Boss: The first boss Mega Commando, which can appear as a mini-boss and later on, a normal enemy!
• Desperation Attack/Turns Red:
  • Crabburn: Drops a nuke onto the battlefield, doing massive damage to you if you are caught in the large explosion.
  • Crystaleyes: Goes berserk and flies around the screen at high speed, while spamming missiles and firing ice beams at you.
  • Quadran: Dives underwater to avoid most attacks, while deploying Sea Mines that float to the surface. The sea mines explode into an unavoidable tsunami if not destroyed in time.
  • Raivolt: Jumps onto the "ceiling" grid above, and tries to hit you with a satellite laser. If this connects, it will stun you, and then he will jump on top of you for even more damage!
  • Drillium: Jumps into the air and smashes into the ground, creating a large area-wide shockwave that stuns and does massive damage.
  • Sky Fortress: Transforms its tornado into a flaming/freezing one, which then spews out projectiles that can burn/freeze you.
  • Apostles: One of them charges up a Wave-Motion Gun while the others attempt to slow you down via the Angle of Light. This does a crazy amount of damage if not avoided.
  • Serial Killers: Starts spinning around rapidly with both blades out, deflecting any shots you fire at it. Only uses this when one is left.
• Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: Subverted, tornadoes generated by Spinners will suck your character towards them. At higher levels, they suck you in faster.
• Dynamic Difficulty: The more you level up your weapons and skills, the more the enemies will level up. On the other hand, one can do a Low-Level Run by killing everything in sight instead of absorbing them.
• Elemental Powers: 9 of them, each of which also specializes in a different learnable skill.
  • Non-Elemental (Shot Gun and Machine Gun)
    • Enemies that specialize in this: Frog Gunner, Rapid Soldier, Gunship Drone, Rapid Turret, Rapid Cannon, Rail Turret, Super Commando.
  • Fire (Heatwave Rockets, Flame Thrower, Atomic Fury), specializes in energy recharge (a.k.a. mana regen).
    • Enemies that specialize in this: Rocket Tank, Salamander, Magma Demon, Nuclear Silo, Proto-Crabburn.
  • Ice (Frozen Missiles, Freezing Gas, Ice Beam) , specializes in status resistance (shortens negative status duration).
    • Enemies that specialize in this: Ice Car, Snowflak, Penguin Sub, Yeti, Crystaleyes.
  • Water (Wave Blaster, Hydro Cannon, Tidal Crash), specializes in Regenerating Health.
    • Enemies that specialize in this: Warfish, Starfish, Rain Frog, Giga Jelly, Quadran.
  • Lightning (Proxy Shock, Homing Bolt, Orbital Laser), specializes in Speed.
    • Enemies that specialize in this: Computer Rat, Magnetoids, Thunderbike, Thunder Tower, Raivolt.
  • Earth (Flak Cannon, Seismic Charge, Shock Tremor), specializes in Armor.
    • Enemies that specialize in this: Flak Cannon, Armordriller, Moledriver, Rock Golem, Drillium.
  • Wind (Tornado Shield MKI, MKII, MKIII), specializes in flight (allows you to fly over enemies and ground-based attacks)
    • Enemies that specialize in this: Air Spinner, Galewing, North Wind, Storm Swarmer, Sky Fortress.
  • Holy (Arc Angle, Holy Bullets, Judgement Beam), specializes in search ability (lets you see the health bars of nearby enemies, as well as detection of stealth units)
    • Enemies that specialize in this: Satellight, Photonic Bouncer, Solar Laser, Holy Knight, Apostles.
  • Corruptive (Virus Blade, Virus Wave, Death Dance), specializes in stealth (avoid detection from enemies and missiles more easily)
    • Enemies that specialize in this: Black Blade, Bandit, Shadow, Silent Knight, Serial Killers.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Mostly averted, in place of Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors.
  • As for bosses, the weakness cycle is:
  • Fire > Ice (Splash damage from Rockets and Nuke, as well as the AOE from flamethrower kills Crystaleyes easily)
  • Ice > Lightning (Raivolt is easy to freeze, and is pathetic when frozen)
  • Lightning > Water (Quadran takes big damage if you shock all his segments, and Proxy Shock is a Chain Lightning)
  • Water > Holy (The water attack easily pushes the Apostles out of the room, instantly killing them)
  • Holy > Darkness (The Serial killers are Weakened by the Light as well as slowed by it, the Judgement Beam will rip off a massive chunk of their low health)
  • Darkness > Earth (Armored enemies are weak against Virus, and Virus attacks are able to penetrate Drillium's armor)
  • Earth > Wind (Flak Cannon makes short work of Sky Fortress' turbines and Mooks, and the Seismic Charge and Shock Tremor stun it when it lands)
  • Wind > Fire (The Tornado Shield renders all of Crabburn's attacks useless, and the rapid piercing attack does lots of damage to him)
• Elite Mook / Giant Mook: Some of the larger Mooks are like this (Rail Spawner, Mega Commando, Yeti, Nuclear Silo, Giga Jelly, Thunder Tower, Rock Golem, Storm Swarmer, Silent Knight, Holy Knight).
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Lampshaded by the description for the Tornado Shield MKIII, which can take on a fire or ice elemental nature:
  "We didn't have time to put in a lightning version."
• Flying Weapon: Black Blades.
• Fragile Speedster:
  • Snowflaks, Bandits, Galewings, Computer Rats and a few other enemies cannot sustain much damage, but they are fast.
  • For bosses, Raivolt, Crystaleyes, and the Serial Killers. Raivolt has one of the lowest amounts of health, but he's fast and loves to dodge a lot. Crystaleyes's main section has even lower health, but it flies all over the screen spaming missiles and ice beams, while wrapping around the battlefield. The Serial Killers dodge attacks a lot, but each of them are fragile.
• Freeze Ray: Used by Crystaleyes.
  • There's also an Underground Monkey in the form of the Rain Frog, which shoots a large water blast instead of shotgun shells. They also have the ability to hop to the side to avoid attacks.
• Giant Enemy Crab: Proto-Crabburn, the boss of the fire stage.
• Giant Spider Tank: Raivolt, the lightning-elemental boss.
• Glass Cannon: Raivolt, the Apostles, and Serial have low health, but their strongest attack can down you very quickly. Raivolt's Orbital laser hurts a lot and stuns you, then he jumps on you as a finisher. The Apostles each have a Wave-Motion Gun that kills you in 2-3 hits. Serial can pull off fast attacks as well as a One-Hit Kill.
• Golem: The Giant Mook of the Earth-elemental area. Attacks with anti-aircraft guns, ramming the player, and earthquakes.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: Averted here. If an enemy at a certain level does a certain amount of damage to the player with their weapon, the player will also do the same amount of damage to them if his same weapon is at the same level. Your character may have more health than most opponents, but he will go down fast if you don't avoid attacks.
• Heart Container: The Super Energy Capsules. Grab these to increase your max hp permanently. 8 of them are placed randomly around the elemental areas, while 2 appear in the middle section after you beat three and six bosses. The catch? They don't appear on the radar, and you have to find them!
  • Also doubles as Invincible Minor Minion- they're the only enemies that can't be damaged in any way, aside from being grabbed.
• Heavily Armored Mook: Armored Soldiers. All the Earth-elemental enemies have some form of armor too, which is what their element specializes in.
• Invisible Grid: Despite being called Grid Warrior, this is averted. It is however played straight with the Air Spinner enemies, which travel on invisible grid lines.
• Invulnerable Attack: Seismic Charge allows the player to do a fast charge into a bunch of Mooks for lots of damage, while the player takes no damage from attacks. Be careful of the Earth-elemental units that use it on you, because they're nigh-unstoppable when to use theirs.
• Kill It with Fire/Kill It with Ice/Kill It with Water: The Dual Submarines Mini-Boss use all three on you. (Fire rockets, Ice Missiles, and a Water Spread Shot)
• Kill Sat: Averted with Satellights, whose only attack is to shine a light at you that slows you down. Until you reach level 8+, then they take a level in badass and get the ability to fire a Wave-Motion Gun at you!
  • There's also the Thunder Drones that the Thunder Tower sends out.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Most Wind-elemental units produce a tornado that sucks in and destroys all your missile/rocket weapons.
  • There are also units that travel underground or through the air, allowing them to evade most weapons.
• Lead the Target: Crystaleyes's six medium-sized crystals know this one- they will either fire an ice beam at your current position, or towards the position you are moving to. Having six of them firing at one go doesn't help either.
• Light Is Not Good: Most of the holy-elemental enemies count. The element-themed boss is a large group of angels, and they're hell-bent on killing you.
• Living Polyhedron: An early build of the game had all enemies look like polygons until the graphics were updated. Even so, certain enemies like the Starfish resemble these.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Frozen Missiles get upgraded to 14 shots at one go. Also, the Heatwave rockets get a clip of 10 at later levels.
• Meaningful Name: The boss names:
  • Crabburn is a Giant Enemy Crab that uses fire attacks.
  • The Crystaleyes are a group of ice crystal like units that have an "eye" as their core.
  • Quadran's name is a portmanteau of "aqua" and "dragon". It's also suggests the Quadrangle shape, which it is made out of.
  • Raivolt's name is made from "Rai" (Japanese for Thunder) and "Volt".
  • Drillium's a Sand Worm with a giant drill on its face.
  • Sky Fortress is a floating structure thing that sends out Mooks to attack you.
  • The Apostles are a choir of angels that attack you, many at a time.
  • Serial Killers are two guys with abnormally large blades, looking like villains from a slasher film.
• Mook Maker: Rail Turret Bases, Thunder Towers, Storm Swarmers, Sky Fortress.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Satellights are weak Airborne Mooks who sport a slowing light as their only "attack", and are more of a nuisance than anything... Until you reach level 8, then they get the ability to fire a deadly Wave-Motion Gun.
• Nuke 'em: The final charge of the fire weapon drops an A-bomb onto a group of enemies. Also used by Proto-Crabburn and Nuclear Silos.
• One to Million to One: The Shadow enemies can do this.
• Power Copying: Your special ability allows you to shoot a grapple onto a weakened Grid creature, draining their data. This allows you to increase your powers and abilities.
• Prequel: To Arc Angle. One of the enemies uses a weapon like Arc Angle's angle of light- it is revealed that its weapon data was used to create it. Also, the Defiance managed to obtain Proto-Crabburn's data to create the massive Crabburn.
• Punny Name: Silent Knight, Holy Knight... Groan...
• Regenerating Health: Most water-elemental enemies have this. You can obtain and improve this ability when you absorb them.
• Rush Boss: Raivolt can be this. It has low health, but its attacks deal strong, armor-piercing damage that stuns you (which it follows up with a leap), and its Desperation Attack can kill you at full health at higher levels.
• Sea Mine: Quadran deploys these as a Desperation Attack. If not destroyed in time, they will explode in a damaging, unavoidable tidal wave.
• Segmented Serpent: Quadran the water dragon and Drillium the Sand Worm.
• Shoot the Medic First: The Holy Knight (Tier 4) does a lot less damage than the Solar Laser (Tier 3). It's a higher tier unit solely because it can heal all the units around it!
• Shout-Out:
  • Computer Rats are small, electrical rodents. Just like Pikachu.
  • You have to fight the eight bosses again in a Boss Rush during the endgame, not unlike most of the Mega Man series.
  • One of the mooks is a car that shoots homing ice missiles. It's called Ice Car.
  • Another one is a Tesla-tower like unit that attacks with lock-on lightning, called Thunder Tower.
  • The Jellyfish enemies are based off the Jellyfish Virus from Mega Man Battle Network.
  • Raivolt's weakness to ice and freezing could be one to Spark Mandrill from Mega Man X.
  • One of Sky Fortress' attacks has it send out Galewings (bird-like unit) that charge at you, this move is named "Enraged Birds".
  • Drillium's a Sand Worm whose weak spot is its tail, similar to the Moldorm bosses from Zelda.
  • The Grabber is a claw/mouth like unit that can be fired out to steal an enemy's powers. This was inspired by the ability from Chimera Beast.
  • The Tornado Shield is based off the Aero spell from Kingdom Hearts (personal wind-element shield), except it nullifies all fire, ice attacks (and weak shots) instead of increasing defence.
• Sinister Geometry: Crystaleyes. A large hexagon surrounded by six hexagons, each of those six are surrounded by six hexagons. Yeah.
• Spectacular Spinning: Death Dance. Also, the Air Spinner enemies can create a tornado by doing... well, guess.
  • Spin to Deflect Stuff: Again, Death Dance.
  • Spin Attack: Death Dance. Starfish and Snowflak enemies do this on you.
• Splash Damage: Heatwave Rockets do this.
• Spread Shot: The Wave Blaster fires out water waves in a spread of three. As it gets upgraded, that number increases up to nine.
  • The Frozen Missiles have the same effect. With homing missiles.
• Status Effects:
  • Lag, a.k.a. Freeze, which slows a target's mobility and attack speed.
  • Bind, which does the same as Lag except being holy-elemental.
  • Infinite Loop, a.k.a Stunned, which prevents a target from moving/attacking for a short while.
  • Virus, which acts like a cyberspace version of poison.
• Swarm of Rats: Computer rats, which attack in large numbers. Interestingly enough, they're normally peaceful, but if you hurt any one of them, they all go beserk.
• Sword And Arm Cannon: The two primary weapons that you wield.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Some weapons work well against certain foes, others not so.
  • The Tornado Shield works wonders against missile-launching units, even more so when you get the final upgrade.
  • Proxy Shock is not recommended against the anti-air turrets, who will shoot your Attack Drone down very quickly.
• Taking You with Me: Thunderbikes will do a suicide charge at you when at low health. This only adds to their annoyingness.
• Tank Goodness: Rocket Tanks.
• Water Is Blue: Water-elemental enemies are blue in colour, so they can be Color-Coded for Your Convenience.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The charged up form of the Angle Of Light is this. It only lasts less than a second, but it rips through enemies and is the most damaging single-hit attack in the game.
  • Also used by Satellights (at level 8+), Solar Lasers and the Apostles.
• Wind Is Green: Wind-elemental enemies are green in colour, so they can be Color-Coded for Your Convenience.
• Wormsign: Seen against Drillium as well as the Moledriver enemies.
• Wrap Around: Certain enemies have this ability.
• Zerg Rush: Computer Rats, which attack the player in a large swarm. Thankfully, they are very weak.

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