Hedgehog Launch Game New Guide (WalkThrough) by Eastpaw
Come on, who among us has never wanted to send hedgehogs to space? In Hedgehog Launch, you get to do just that! Fling happy hedgehogs! Bounce them off platforms! Collect coins! Upgrade your space programme! Send a spiky little fella into orbit!
Now, before we go any further, let me explain a few things about this game.
1. The goal of the game is to send your hedgehog into space in as few days as possible. I took more than 20 days in my first game, managed 8 days by game five or six, and finally hit 4 days after another six or seven tries. My strategy had been firmed up by trial eight or nine, but luck plays a part in this game and I had a few bad runs.
2. As I as just saying, doing well in this game requires a combination of strategy, tactics, and luck. Some games just go really badly despite your best laid plans. However, resist starting the game over just because you had one crappy or mediocre day. Having two crappy days would mess up your score rather badly though, so feel free to hit the refresh button then.
3. What is not immediately apparent - and which took me two games to realise - is that upgrades are not additive: each upgrade replaces all previous upgrades and no refunds are given. Therefore, if you buy Band Level 1 for $3.25 and later pick up Band Level 2 for $24.50, you will have paid a total of $27.75 for an eventual 20% elasticity bonus. You could instead skip the first band level and immediately buy the second band for $24.50, getting the bigger bonus immediately and for a much smaller cost. (Hoarding your cash for the ultimate bonus is not always the best move, however, as I will discuss in the strategy section.)
4. The Left Rocket upgrade affects the rocket that boosts your hedgehog to the left, which is the rocket on your right but the hedgehog’s left since he is facing you, which means it sends him to his right. Yeah, that one’s a little confusing, isn’t it? Just remember that Left affects your <– key and Right improves your –> button.
5. The E-rocket is a one-use device that sends you straight up at great speed. Don’t believe the 200-foot limit in the upgrade’s description: this little gem easily gains you 600 feet of altitude per boost.
6. The Parachute slows you down so much (to as slow as 4 mph, with a max speed of 25 mph) that you can nudge about to pick up most of the coins on your screen. Alternatively, you could boost sideways to max speed and hope that luck succeeds where skill may fail.
5. Yellow platforms are the best and send you upwards at greatest speed. Green platforms come next, and blue ones are the weakest (and most common). Hitting these platforms nets you $10, $5, and $1 respectively.
6. Red coins are worth $0.25, white ones $1, and yellow ones $5. Clearly, hitting platforms is more important than grabbing coins.
Strategy
Those of you who want to try this game without being contaminated by my personal play style shouldn’t read beyond this point. If you try things your own way, you may come up with a different strategy that works as well as or better than mine. I heartily suggest you make a few attempts of your own before reading any further.
Back already? How’d you do? If you did well, see if your method is similar to mine. If not, leave a comment and share your strategy with us! Ok, on to my game plan.
When I realised how upgrades work in this game, I was tempted to save all my money for a small number of big purchases rather than spend in trickles. While this idea is basically a sensible one, the trick here is that you have to invest a little first to reap rewards significant enough for this to work.
So how does one make money? Collecting the various coins scattered over the play field is the obvious answer, but there are two other arguably more important things you have to do: go up as high as you can and then stay in the air as long as possible. Take a good long look at the score chart below.
See how important time and elevation are now? By going high and staying in the game for 40 seconds, I magnified my $52 coin collection into a $3.3k profit.
Now, highest elevation is something you don’t have too much control over. You could buy a better band or a taller launcher, but that’s about it. You should also try and hit the better springboards, but as a rule they don’t send you too much higher up all told.
What you can influence from a very early point is how long you stay in the air. What you do is this: pull the hedgehog back as far as he will go, then launch him straight up in the air. On the way up, watch out for good platforms you might use. If there are some near the apex of his trajectory, use your left/right rockets in very short bursts to drop onto them. If there are none or when you run out of good springboards, jet sideways as hard as you can for a second or two. It doesn’t matter if you choose left or right unless you’re already falling more to one side; then go with the flow.
Jet sideways? But why? The answer is this: all springboards in this game are thin horizontal platforms. If you have a lot of lateral velocity, your chances of clipping a board increase significantly.
The first chance you get, buy a parachute. Better yet, buy two or three. These allow you to float in the air for a heckuva long time, and they slow your rate of descent so much that you could easily use your rockets to manoeuvre yourself into coin after coin. Note that the parachute disappears once you touch a platform, so be sure to steer away from platforms - particularly blue ones - unless you’re really near the ground or you have at least one more parachute waiting to be deployed.
Next, get some E-rockets. These awesome tools boost you into the air a significant distance. Remember what I’d said about not being able to affect maximum height very much once the game has started? Well, that’s no longer true once you get hold of E-rockets. Alternate E-rockets and parachutes (if you have more than one of each), or boost up as high as you will go before opening your first parachute. As a rule, fire E-rockets only at the top of your arc, and only if there aren’t any platforms just slightly below you that you can fall onto.
Finally, max out your Band and Launcher. These are crucial to the success of the space mission.You don’t really need them completely maxed out to win the scenario if you have E-rockets though.
If you don’t make it into space, you will eventually hit the ground. When that happens, don’t waste your fuel: burn all of it jetting sideways on the grass. It may look pretty silly, but it will buy you another valuable second or two.
Finally, upgrade prices do not follow a linear pattern. There are some pretty big price jumps within the various upgrade levels, so watch out for those when deciding how much to upgrade a certain feature.
To win with certainty, you need to reach Band 9/Launcher 10 or Band 10/Launcher 7 and have 3 E-rockets. Band 10/Launcher 9 with 2 E-rockets works too. Hitting 10/10 enables you to win with no E-rockets.
The maximum heights attained shown here were recorded after only
one trial in each case and are certain to represent some small
deviation from the true maximum achievable heights.
It is cheapest to win with 10/7 + 3 (total cost: $11,652.75). The best route to this configuration that I can determine currently is Launcher 3 –> E-rocket 3 –> Launcher 7 –> Band 10, with a Parachute in there somewhere (preferably right after day 1 if you can’t yet afford E-rockets).
Sample game
Here are screenshots from my 4-day game that might help to illustrate some of the principles described above.
Day 1: The biggest significant upgrade you can immediately get is Launcher 3, so I spent all your money on that. Not a bad deal at all, considering that the payout was more than $3,000. Don’t expect more than $200 - $400 on most first days though.
Note that another strategy is to buy Band 2 and Launcher 2 on day 1, which is counter-intuitively actually a little less effective than going Launcher 3 for the same price. With 2/2, I can get a maximum launch height of 381 feet, while 0/3 gives me 387. The difference is small, granted, but every little bit helps.
Day 2: With the money earned on Day 1, I had enough to grab Parachutes and E-rockets. These are crucial! I was also able to upgrade my Band quite a bit, which definitely helped too.
Day 3: I had almost enough to max out my Launcher. Almost, but not enough, drat it.
Day 4: With Parachutes, E-rockets, and a superior Band/Launcher combination, making more than $40k wasn’t that hard. I saw Roland exceed $120k on one single day during his very first game. With equipment all maxed out and cool shades on my hedgehog, the space programme was a go!
