Combo Crew Tips from the Developer

Choose your grip style

The default controls and tutorials have you hold the device with one hand and swipe with the other. But you can also play by holding the device in two hands, like a portable console, and swipe with both thumbs. (Your fingers can rest on both sides of the screen when you double swipe for triggering combos.) There’s an option in the settings to choose the control scheme you prefer. It’s a matter of style really; there is no absolute best here.

Don’t get hit, keep your streak alive!

At the risk of stating the obvious, getting hit will break your Combo Streak. The Combo Streak is essential for achieving high scores — the base score of each hit is multiplied by the Streak value, so keeping your streak alive is your top priority. The simplest way to do that is to counter every enemy attack by tapping the screen as soon as you see an exclamation point. Beware: don’t trigger a combo until you’ve blocked and countered, or you might cancel your counter before it starts and get hit while performing the new combo attack!

Learn to counter

The counter controls are quite simple, once you get a hang of the game flow : « one tap » anywhere on the screen when an enemy attacks you, and your character will block and counter-attack automatically. However, we have observed that sometimes new players button-mash the screen and start a new combo instead of countering. In that event, the character is triggering his next attack, and you can’t cancel it anymore! Therefore, when you see an enemy with an exclamation mark over his head, tap once (or multiple times like a maniac, if you want to be 1000% safe), but do never trigger a new combo! At the beginning, the safest way to avoid getting hit is to tap to counter once after each combo. However, countering all the time will not make your reach high scores, you’ll have to find your ways around the arena to stay on the offense for that. But learn the defense mechanics well first, is our advice to you. Take your time, breath, and everything will be fine !

Optimize your SUPER meter

Two players who manage to beat a round with a perfect Combo Streak can have a big discrepancy in their scores based on how well they use their SUPER meter. Each damage point inflicted by a SUPER is worth 40 points, where one inflicted for a combo is worth only 20. Furthermore, the score of a SUPER hit is then multiplied by the SUPER multiplier, on top of the combo Streak multiplier. No need to be a math genius to know that BIG x BIG x BIG = BIGGER. Therefore, optimizing your SUPER is the key to truly mastering Combo Crew. Here are a few tips for that:

• Use two fingers to tag enemies during the SUPER move. Both inputs are recorded, and you can score twice as many points using two fingers instead of one.
• Try to get the biggest possible multiplier. If you fill the SUPER meter several times, the score you’ll get for each hit during the SUPER will be multiplied. Triggering the SUPER every time the gauge is enabled will help you get rid of enemies faster, but you’ll most likely score higher if you wait for SUPER meter to triple fill before unleashing mayhem upon them all. Also, it is way more effective to trigger your SUPER when your streak is as high as possible, because each hit will be multiplied by the Streak value as well.

• Trigger the SUPER when there are a lot of enemies on screen. It’s better to tag 2 x 5 enemies than 10 x 1 enemy, simply because in the second scenario the enemy might die before taking all 10 hits, so some of your hits will be wasted.

Vary your moves

Style is rewarded. Using varied moves will fill your SUPER meter faster, which is key for reaching higher scores. There are eight types of attacks: the basic attack, the counter, the charged attack, the air attack, and the four Combos. Using one of them for the first time will fill 1/8 of the SUPER meter, and this will happen again each time you fill the meter completely. So, theoretically, you can fill the SUPER meter every 8 hits.

Use air attacks when enemies attack from behind

Using a combo that Juggles the enemy and then doing an air attack without getting hit is tricky, but it’s worth mastering it since more points are awarded for this than for Combos. The big risk with air attacks is that you’ll get hit by another enemy while jumping. Although you can sometimes jump over an enemy if the timing is right, the safest way to use the air attack is when the enemy is attacking from behind. When jumping, your character will move forward and naturally avoid the attack. If the enemy is coming frontward, don’t take the risk — counter or move away.

Moving away beats countering – Risk vs Reward

When an enemy targets you, you have two options: counter or attack (this enemy or another one). Countering gives you less points than any other attacks — even normal ones — so it’s better for scoring to move away from the attacker by attacking an enemy who’s far away, instead of countering. It’s way riskier though!

Always counter bombs

The previous tip works for physical attacks from regular enemies but bombs are the exception to that rule. Bombs might damage enemies when exploding (stealing away potential hits from you) or they might explode on their own (in which case nothing changes). So by countering bombs, you basically score “free points” that you couldn’t have scored otherwise — it’s always better to counter bombs.

Tagging enemies

When no enemy is attacking, you can switch the target enemy (enemy with the red circle below him) by tapping on the desired target. This will only “tag” him without doing any attacks on him. Then you can execute a combo on him or any other attack.

Tap and hold

If you just tap and hold, this will enact a charge attack on the currently selected enemy. If no enemy is selected, an enemy will be automatically chosen for you. *** Here comes a new challenger! Well, now that you have all the pro tips, the Bakers are throwing down the gauntlet. If you feel like losing all your crowns, you can add “combocrew (at) thegamebakers (dot) com” to your crew and face the true challenge of beating our scores.