Volcanoids
is a 2019 survival game set in the steampunk era, developed and published by Volcanoids.
Not to be confused with Vocaloid, which is a line of Japanese synthesizers best known for flagship character Hatsune Miku.
Volcanoids provides examples of:
- And I Must Scream:
- Destroying a drillship's drill means it can't go underground, leaving it at the mercy of the volcano unless the drill is repaired or the rest of the ship is destroyed.
- Destroying all of a COG tank's treads means it can't move. Destroying all their guns means that it can't shoot you. Do both, and it can't do anything except glare at you.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- If you order your drillship to go underground while there are COG soldiers aboard, but you yourself aren't, the COGs that are trapped inside will stand down until you call it back to the surface. Inversely, if you board a COG drillship, it will not go underground until you leave, and if you enter one that's about to leave, it will abort the process and redeploy.
- If a drillship's drill is destroyed, it can't go underground, but if the drillship is attacked while packing up, and the drill isn't destroyed until after the 'ship starts to move, it will work perfectly fine until you surface again, and only then will you be trapped. The update that allowed the boiler itself to assist in resource production made this risk trivial by letting the player use hubs and online storage while underground as if they were on the surface, allowing the player to produce repair kits without either surfacing or running around the entire vessel in search of the resources needed to build them by hand, allowing you to repair the drill from the safety of the underground layers.
- There are blast shelters all over the island that can help a stranded player survive the eruption: Each city has a cellar under one building; the various mines in each area are safe if you stay in the lower level, and a certain fridge can help the player in a pinch if they find themselves in the vicinity at the wrong time.
- The Support Drone isn't just a portable bulwark. There are ammo and health stations on the sides of the main body, and while both the Turret and Support Drones can be used to bring loot back to the drillship, the Support Drone can also ferry resources from the drillship to the player if they don't want to go all the way back to the 'ship to resupply. The Tesla update upgraded it further by adding a tiny tesla turret to its top, allowing it to ward off encroaching foes.
- Airborne Mook: COG Drones come in two varieties, the common light drone is a Fragile Speedster, adept at harassing the player. They tend to only levitate above the ground a slight amount, but they are fully capable of flight, especially in the underground caverns. The rarer heavy drone rains death from above higher in the sky, but are much slower.
- Attack Drone:
- The COGs use both light and heavy drones to supplement their ground forces. The light variant is adept at harassing the player and speeding around, while the heavy drone rains death from above.
- The player gets their own drones that can be deployed remotely form the drillship. Emerging from the ground, the Support Drone unfolds into a bulwark to tank shots for you, while the Turret Drone uses whatever weapon you have equipped on it to shoot at COGs.
- Attack Its Weakpoint:
- Destroying a drillship's drill will prevent it from going underground.
- COG Tanks have glowing elements on their backsides that allow the player to bypass their armor when shot at.
- Shooting a COG soldier in the face will naturally do more damage than just shooting them in general.
- Bad Vibrations: Even if you don't pay attention to the timer, and fail to hear the air-raid siren, an easy way to tell when the volcano is about to erupt is the massive earthquake that precedes it.
- Base on Wheels: The drillship (not to be confused with the offshore drilling platform) is essentially a cross between a drill, a steam train, and a tank. Most of them are used by the COG, though the player commandeers one during the back half of the tutorial, and it immediately becomes their primary means of transport across the ash-blasted island of Adranos.
- Body Armor As Hitpoints: Armor Kits just add on additional HP that the COGs have to wear down.
- Car Fu:
- COG Tanks that are deprived of their turrets will attempt to ram the player as a last resort.
- Anyone, human or COG, that has the misfortune of being in the path of a moving drillship will learn first-hand why turrets aren't the only reason you should give those things a wide berth. Although it's practically impossible to do deliberately, actually pulling it off (on the COG, at least) will certainly elicit a few laughs.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Too many to list, but the main four are research, refinery, production, and military-related items being green, red, blue, and black respectively.
- Convection Shmonvection:
- Averted for players. Getting near lava pools will start to cause damage from the radiant heat well before they reach the actual lava, while actually touching it will be an instant kill.
- Played Straight for drillships that simply skirt the edge of a magma seam instead of plowing straight through, even though it should function similarly to how players handle lava pools.
- Downplayed for drillships without the tier IV hull upgrade, which can go through basic magma (but not hot magma) for a couple of seconds before taking damage.
- Exaggerated for drillships with the tier IV hull upgrade, which are completely immune to any form of heat damage, and even plowing through hot magma - a death sentence in any other situation - will simply slow it down instead of damaging it.
- Cool Train: Downplayed, in that it's not technically a train, but the drillship certainly bears plenty of similarities. The most obvious are that its main source of power is coal, and when running, it is shown emitting steam from exhaust pipes near the top of the drill, as well as letting off large plumes of steam when lowering the main blast doors along the sides. Additionally, the different segments will articulate like train wagons instead of being one solid unit.
- Critical Existence Failure:
- Downplayed. As a module receives damage, it will start to develop a black damage-like effect at around 80% health, but will still work perfectly fine. The drill itself will be completely intact down to 25%, but after that point, it's considered destroyed, preventing the drillship from going underground until the drill is repaired.
- Double subverted with the drillships themselves. As a drillship starts to lose modules, the subsequent hull breaches will gradually reduce it to nothing more than a bare frame, but as long as just one panel of the hull is intact, regardless of which segment it's in, the whole 'ship will remain fully operational. However, once that last section is gone, the drillship will sound a brief alarm before exploding outright, irrevocably destroying it and anything still aboard, including any hapless players or COGs not fortunate enough to bail out before boom-time, leaving a destroyed husk that can only be mined down for any now-destroyed upgrades it may have had.
- Averted for COG tanks: They have a layer of armor that must be destroyed to access their soft weak points; destroying one of their treads makes them unable to flee the player by limiting them to moving in circles and reduces their move speed; destroying both treads immobilizes them completely; destroying their turrets will prevent them from being able to attack at range, not to mention that each component has its own armor, instead of having the whole thing break off at once like the player's armor.
- Death from Above:
- Mortars are perfectly capable of making high-arcing "indirect" shots that sail over any defenses.
- Light drones normally hover at about eye level, but are capable of going higher in the face of uneven terrain.
- Heavy drones soar high above the ground, making them immune to pickaxes and close-range weapons.
- Inverted for player-deployable drones, which can be summoned under a COG for a One-Hit Kill.
- Death Is Cheap: Following the Co-Op Update, players that died were simply respawned at the drillship, while their belongings were dropped in a backpack that could easily be retrieved. Averted when it comes to losing your drillship, since unless you can capture a new one, you'll have to either start over from scratch at the sub, or load a previous save.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Generally speaking, trying to stay out on the island's surface just before the volcano erupts will likely lead to plenty of lost resources.
- Trying to attack a COG drillship without adequate preparations will typically end with them killing you in minutes.
- Thought you could be cheeky by pestering far-off COGs with a Sniper Rifle or Turret Drone? The survivors will make a beeline for your location even if they have to cross the entire breadth of the area to do so, leading to quite a surprise if your drillship doesn't have any turrets deployed. On top of that, if the forces you attacked have mortars or a large squad, they could destroy a drone before it can flee, costing you the weapon it was equipped with.
- Drill Tank: The drillship looks like a cross between a tank, a train, and a worm, but it is nonetheless a durable machine that, with the right upgrades, can No-Sell any terrain, and shrug off attacks that would cripple even the toughest COG footsoldiers.
- Easter Egg: In area three, a short jaunt due west of Flat Trail, is a refrigerator that can be climbed into to serve as an improvised shelter, a clear and obvious reference to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that is only reinforced by the achievement you get for using it for the first time depicting a fedora and bullwhip.
- Exact Time to Failure: One of the most important items on the Heads-Up Display is the timer at the top. Ranging from five minutes to an hour, when this timer hits zero, the volcano erupts, and any players, COGs, and drillships still on the surface when this happens are instantly destroyed by the rolling wave of ash that results. Thankfully, the drillship sounds an air-raid siren from 1:20 to 0:40, an earthquake goes off at 0:30, and you have until about 0:20 to send your drillship underground unharmed, while those that chose to bunker down in a blast shelter or mine only need to get there before the ash-wave does. Additionally, anyone who does survive simply needs to spend one additional minute underground before the ash storm dissipates, at which point you're free to return to your original task for the next 5-60 minutes.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The COG are implied to be the creators of the drillships. One of your first tasks in the game is to hijack one, and your ultimate goal is to drive it straight into the heart of COG territory and destroy the COG core.
- Killer Robot: An entire army of steampunk robots known as the COG. They're also the ones responsible for making the volcano erupt, and your main goal is to stop them.
- Lockdown:
- One device that takes the form of a large red wheel, when activated, causes all of your drillship's exterior modules to close, allowing them to withstand greater damage in exchange for not functioning. Smaller wheels built into some other devices also do the same thing for their specific module, like closing all of the Storage Modules, or closing all the Production Modules.
- While it's practically required due to the drillship's design, setting the 'ship to go underground causes the massive "wings" going alongside the hull to raise to a vertical position, rendering the modules along the sides impervious to external attacks. The drill itself and the roof modules can still be attacked, but since the 'ship starts going underground as soon as the wings close, the chance of actually destroying something is slim.
- To a lesser extent, installing doors on either side of your drillship's wagons means that if the COG manage to get inside, shutting a door or two will mean the COG have to either destroy the door(s) or make a new breach to get into that wagon.
- Metal Slime:
- COG Transport and Utility Tanks have no weapons beyond the weak pistol turret that serves as the "head" of the 'bot, flee when approached or attacked, and carry tons of resources, with just one of the former having enough loot to make you think twice about not having a Support Drone to carry some of it.
- Drillships themselves, once boarded and bereft of crew (and the means to make more), can provide mountains of materials that will more than likely require several trips to collect. Though unless you have a Support Drone or three to ferry all of it, you're going to have to either focus on what you need, or destroy the drill to prevent it from departing.
- Mook Maker:
- COG Spawn Tubes. The color-coded ones will only produce that color of COG, while the brown ones can produce any color of COG, but may be limited in ways the player can't see.
- The Heavy Machinery Update added full-size modules that are functionally identical, but can spawn a COG tank or drone. The tank-spawning ones can only be found on the sides of a drillship, while the drone-spawning ones can be found on the roof slots as well. Additionally, standard spawn tubes were made so they can spawn small drones in addition to standard units, adding an extra wrinkle to the player's assault.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Your main form of transit is a Drill Tank, it's called a drillship, looks kinda like a big metal earthworm (with a drill for a head), and has more in common with a train than an actual tank.
- One-Hit Polykill:
- Four of the available weapons in the game involve explosives, with another being the good ol' double-barreled shotgun, so you're bound to hit more than one target at least once.note
- Exaggerated example: Once you take out a laser, every single COG unit in the entire area will self-destruct en masse. Though you'll need to take out the COG core to eliminate them entirely.
- Outrun the Fireball: The volcano erupting does not immediately end the game for those in its path. Players have a few additional seconds (longer if you're on the beach instead of the cliffs) to outrun the rolling wave of ash that results. Whether that involves getting your drillship underground at the last second, or scrambling for the nearest shelter while your drillship goes underground remotely, is up to you. As a reprieve, players who try to hide in the submarine do not actually need to be inside to be safe, they will be perfectly fine as long as they're aboard, even if they're just standing on the outer deck.
- Piñata Enemy: Much like their Metal Slime counterparts, COG Combat Tanks are loaded with useful materials. Problem is, unlike the others, they're armed, and will not hesitate to shoot back.
- Spell My Name With An S:
- The COG are always referred to with their name in all-caps, as if it's an acronym. What it stands for has not yet been revealed.
- Downplayed with Titanium bolts, plates, and tubes, which are abbreviated to "Titan [part]."
- Stone Wall: Well, more like metal wall, but there are still several examples.
- A drillship's eponymous tool is substantially tougher than the main hull behind it, and can easily take several dozen explosives before being destroyed.
- COG tanks are significantly harder to take down if you keep aiming for their armor instead of the fragile hull underneath.
- The Support Drone that the player can deploy instantly unfurls into a literal bulwark that can't attack on its own, but is plenty durable. They can easily soak damage for you while you lob grenades over them, act as deployable cover, or just be a plain old distraction while you and your Turret Drones flank the COG. One rather cheeky strategy is to have a pair of Mortar-equipped Turret Drones pop up behind a Support Drone, at which point they'll unhesitatingly fire over the wall to hit COGs beyond it.
- Super Drowning Skills: you can walk knee-deep in the water around the island, but the moment your head starts to go underwater, you start rapidly losing life.
- Tank Goodness: COGs will occasionally have tanks patrolling around the area, which come in four varieties:
- Utility Tanks are the weakest, with only a single weak turret to protect them. Whenever they come under attack, they'll usually attempt to flee.
- Transport Tanks will also attempt to escape whenever they're attacked by the player, but have stronger armor. Destroying or damaging them enough will cause them to dislodge their cargo, giving the player access to the resources they were hauling.
- Combat Tanks, unlike their lesser brothers, will charge directly at player and will only stop until either you or they are dead. They also come equipped with much more dangerous turrets compared to Transport or Utility Tanks. While tough to take down, they have an absurd amount of munitions to scavenge when destroyed, easily recouping munitions spent taking them down. These are split into light and heavy variants.
- Wormsign: Inverted. An easy way to tell when a drillship has been on the surface is the massive, singular caterpillar track it leaves in its wake.
