Buggos is an auto-battler indie game that’s a chill take on the real-time strategy genre where the focus is almost entirely on the macro aspect of the genre. Your Hives spawn the titular Buggos, and you send them to where you want to wreak havoc, and they automatically fight humans and destroy buildings near where you send them. You can also make buildings, but most of the micromanagement is done away with or simplified.
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The game is a refreshing take on a genre that has a famously high skill floor, and it’s easy to start the game and direct your swarm towards those filthy enemy humans. However, the game lacks a tutorial, and while most of the basic mechanics are intuitive, there are a few things that can trip up a perfectly good Zen Zerging experience. If you want to control your endless bug swarm and scour the planet of any opposition, here are a few things you should know before starting Buggos.
6 You Can Freely Reset Evolution Points
The Buggo swarm is a constantly changing and evolving thing, so you shouldn’t pigeonhole yourself into any particular build, especially since you can refund any spent Evolution Points in the Evolution Chamber at no cost.
If a certain build isn’t working, a certain unit wasn’t what you thought it was, or you just find your units to be underpowered, you can reset to get all your Evolution Points back to reinvest and try for an alternate build. If you just need a little tweaking, you can also refund points individually, by clicking an active node as long as you haven’t purchased the node in front of the one you’re trying to deactivate.
5 There’s No Per-Unit Tutorial
Unlike more hardcore RTS experiences, you don’t really get the ins and outs of how units work and what situations they’re most effective in. In fact, all you get is a blurb in the Evolution Chamber about what they do in a general sense, a description of purchasable upgrades, and if you click on the unit in a level, some general stats. You can also see enemy stats this way.
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Buggos encourages experimentation with builds and units, which you’ll need to do if you want to figure out what works for you. You also shouldn’t write off a unit that gives a bad first impression, since you can upgrade them later, which could have a drastic effect on how they perform and what they do.
4 Builders Sacrifice Themselves To Do Stuff
Builders are the backbone of your logistics on almost every level, since they spread Goo, which harvests nutrients, and builds buildings, like more Hives and Nutrient Pustules. Unfortunately, doing either thing requires Builders to die, literally putting themselves into their work.
Practically speaking, they’re less a unit and more a resource, though you can also send them in the direction of the enemy if you want to bolster your attack by a small amount. If you need them to focus up and work on finishing some buildings, you should turn off the Nutrient Goo option so they don’t randomly blow themselves up to make a carpet of Goo instead.
3 You (Mostly) Can’t Control What Units Spawn
In most RTS games, you want to control what you build and when for maximum efficiency. However, in Buggos, you have almost no control over what units spawn or when they do. The Hives spit out units, roughly split up between what unit types you have available, at set intervals.
A notable exception is the Titan, which starts life as an Egg building and won’t hatch until you’ve spent enough Builders and Nutrients for them to hatch.
2 The More Units Types You Have, The More Divided The Spawns
You can't control what units spawn from your hives, but you can influence them. In general, the more unit types you have unlocked in a level, the more divided they are when units spawn. There seems to be a set logic in regard to what spawns and how frequently, to the point that some units don’t spawn in every wave.
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Practically speaking, the fewer unit type you bring into a level, it's more likely that each of the remaining units will spawn. There’s an ability deep in the Evolution Chamber, Selective Breeding Program, that allows you to more directly control the unit spawns, but adds to their Nutrient Costs as a result. It would be more efficient to just bring the smallest amount of unit types (exempting the Titan, which works differently) into battle, so you’re more likely to get what you need.
1 Toggle Hives To Direct The Swarm
The spawning of units seems to be roughly split between every existing Hive. In most levels, you’ll want to build Hives closer to enemy territory so your Buggos don’t have to travel as far to start their grim work. However, Hives from further back in the battle lines will still continue to make Buggos, clogging your resource cap and leaving your front lines underpowered as the backline Buggos travel to where the fight is.
This is easily remedied by right-clicking Hives that you don’t want to produce Buggos, which disables their spawning functions while leaving them intact. Right-click them again to re-enable them if your front line falls, or if you just want to get at your enemies from a different angle.
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