So, this ends up being a pretty hard game toward the end (and really early on in classic mode). I thought we could use a thread to trade gameplay tips. I'm certainly no expert yet, so maybe some of mine are crap, but I figured out some stuff that helped me get further into Hollywood without losing bunnies (before I ran out of luck and the game refused to give me any of the colors I needed and I ultimately lost) and I thought I'd post it. Please post your tips if you have any!

- You can dump colors you don't need by going one step up the vertical side of the board and shooting crappy bunnies over it and into oblivion. During the arctic, jungle and beach levels you can do this liberally and dump more than half your bunnies and still have enough time to clear the level without losing any bunnies. On Hollywood, dumping too many loses its effectiveness. (Thanks for K4rn4ge for the tip.)

- On Hollywood, when dumping becomes sort of useless, I found that using the side-lines (there's an empty column on both sides of the board where you can place bunnies) became quite helpful. If I got a color I couldn't use just yet, I'd drop it on the side and wait. If I got another, I placed it on top of the previous one and so on. If you have two of one color there, you can just wait and eventually a correctly colored bunny will walk right into them and bunnies on the side-lines automatically turn into a combo if there's enough of the same color (unlike the rest of the board). It is not recommended that you dump rare colors (aqua and white, and whatever else is rare for you at the time) here because you might end up waiting too long to clear the side-lines. Best colors to put here are red and purple (especially purple can really save you).

- Never dump purples. These are your gods. Cherish and love them. Only sort them on the side-lines if you don't have any other accessible purples on the board.

- Keep chains in mind. Say you have a line of three blues right above a line of three oranges and you're holding a blue. You can freely put as many blues on top of the oranges as you like, just as long as you leave one spot where you can reach the orange to cause a blue combo reaction. This works with any number of any color, three was just a random example. This is especially useful if you have two purples hiding behind whatever color, and you're holding a purple.

- If you have a "tower" going, a column of bunnies that reaches further than anything else on the board, remember that you can shoot from the side and stick bunnies to the tower (as long as it's not the right- or left-most column, they will stay in the side-lines if you try). It's a desperate move, but it can remove a tower efficiently.

- Going for the "don't lose any bunnies" achievements? If you lose a bunny, just simply let yourself die and let the game save your leaderboard score and all that. Then you can just pick "resume game" from the main menu and you get to start over from the first level in the world you were in. It's better than restarting from the very first level anyway. (It is confirmed that achievements unlock using this method.)

I'm about all tapped out for techniques right now. Anyone got any others? I'm having trouble finishing Hollywood myself.

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85 200/200
05 250/250
01 235/235
01 215/215
01 150/200

I would just like to point out that on the later levels, the time increases in speed over time. You can actually lose a game without a single bunny falling over.

 

This just happened to me. Got all the way to what I guess is the final stage of the Hollywood level (hadn't lost a bunny yet), and played nearly a full hour until I lost the stage because the time was moving faster than I could possibly fill it back up. It did allow me to post a pretty hefty score on the leadboard though (well over 500,000).

 

I just thought I would post this under tips, because I didn't know it was possible. If I had known, I wouldn't have messed around too much.

Actually, that raises a question I have been wondering about.

 

Is the meter at the bottom based on the number of bunnies you match, or the score you earn? I know that you get multipliers for stringing matches, but I usually dismiss many combos to make a more efficient move.

 

If it is based on score, then it might explain my loss (as mentioned above), as I trying to keep the bunny rows low, but not concentrating too much on combos.

 

Thanks

 Johnny Sinister wrote:

I would just like to point out that on the later levels, the time increases in speed over time. You can actually lose a game without a single bunny falling over.

Oh, yes. That's probably the worst part of this game. Even if you're totally owning the board and clearing it all the time, which should be considered playing well, you can lose because the time limit is just way too harsh.

I think the bar only grows when you match bunnies. Score, long chains and long combos don't seem to matter at all. You seem to be better off just going for quick matches of three over and over, rather than setting up advanced chains. That's...kinda stupid, I think.

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85 200/200
05 250/250
01 235/235
01 215/215
01 150/200

yeah, this seems about right. When I lost, I was playing about half the level with the board cleared, Only having one row of bunnies at a time (A strategy I thought was pretty good). Anyways, i think this wasn't giving me the number of matches i needed. I guess i have to come up with a worse strategy. Go figure.

Ok, here is some clarification that may help some people from pulling their hair out.

 

I started playing Classic mode, and noticed that it was extemely fast. I was going for the same techniques I used on Arcade mode, but the board was filling up before I could make any progress. I checked the LBs, and at the time, noone had completed it.

 

Then I read the Classic mode description, which says something to the effect of "Play at your own pace". This just agrivated me further, because there seemed to be only one pace, and it sure as *** wasn't mine.

 

After putting the controller down after one horrible round of Classic, I noticed the bunnies weren't moving. It turns out, in classic mode, the bunnies move up one space for every three bunnies you throw out. So, it is more of a strategy variation.

 

I sure wish there was a tutorial that pointed these things out.

Classic Mode Tips:

 

- Opposed to Arcade mode where the rows of bunnies move up continously over time, Classic mode uses a different approach where the bunny lines move up after every 3 tosses.

 

- Throwing bunnies away off the side of the stage counts as one of your throws, so you will have to learn to play unwanted bunnies into the field anyways.

 

- Since there is no time limit, make sure your throws are accurate. Whichever bunny is directly infront of your line of fire will act differently than those on the rest of the stage, so it is easy to tell where your shot will land.

 

-The best strategy is to try to collapse the stage down from the sides. You will soon find that just picking matches on the top rows won't get you very far.

 

- For some reason, the White bunnies may or may not show up during your games. I found that these make the game almost unwinnable (at least on the Hollywood stages anyways). If you quit your game, you restart at the last location you were playing at (beach, jungle, hollywood, etc.), and the whites should be gone.

 

If I think of any more, I will be sure to post them.

 Johnny Sinister wrote:

I sure wish there was a tutorial that pointed these things out.

One of the first pop-up box "tutorials" in classic mode does say something about the bunnies moving forward after every three bunnies fired.

 DROGTURIST wrote:

I think the bar only grows when you match bunnies. Score, long chains and long combos don't seem to matter at all. You seem to be better off just going for quick matches of three over and over, rather than setting up advanced chains. That's...kinda stupid, I think.

When you make combos (by which I mean one bunny throw cascading into several matches), you get a bottom-bar multiplier. When you make chains (successive throws making matches without a matchless-throw in between) o get a score multiplier.
They don't talk about it anywhere I could see, but when the bunnies pop, you'll see x2, x3, x4, etc for chains (I believe) and 2x, 3x, 4x, etc for combos. Setting long combos is the key to finishing a level as fast as possible. If you keep a "clean" board (just a few rows of bunnies), you'll not get many combos, and your level bar will fill up exceedingly slowly.

A few more tips:

In all levels, try to take out Bunnies from the bottom as much as possible, so you can get multiple combos. 

Use the ability to move up the left or right side to get those side matches.

If you manage to clear the a specific color, that color won't appear for a few seconds, which means the other colors will come more often.  If you can milk this properly, you can get almost entire rows of the same colours coming in at the same time.

Blue, then Green are the most common colors in the early levels.  Since you can't tell what color is next, chances are it will be one of those.

Bunnies don't move forwards on the left most and right most columns.  Particularily in Classic, if you are getting close to dying, look at the sides.  Since you know the bunnies will march forward every 3 shots, you can sometimes place a bunny so that it will match something when the rest move forward. 

In Classic, I try and always put purples I get on the side (where the Bunnies sit down).  That way if I'm lucky enough to get 3, I've always got a combo ready and I can destroy the whole row and column from there.  Purple's are great, but if they are in the middle they can end up dividing the bunnies which can make it harder to get big combo's later...the kind that save you often and fill up the meter faster.

In Arcade, I always fill up one side of the grid where the bunnies sit right away.  I leave the other side for emergencies.  That way I'm often getting "accidental" combo's that help.

As mentioned elsewhere, just clearing 3 bunnies at a time won't work much past the Jungle levels.  You have to get combo's, ie. have one combo collapse, leading to another.  That's how you clear levels quickly.

If you own Guitar Hero, try out the game with the Guitar Hero controller (at least the corded one) for a different experience!  You can strum up and down to move left and right, and shoot with the green button or by titling the guitar.

Anyone find the beach level hard to beat?  I can get up to about level 17 & 18 and the bunnies get away from me.  Any suggestions?

I made it to level 28 yesterday in arcade mode and of course lost when the bottom bar drained. I played all but the last Hollywood level with a basically empty board. Constantly clearing out the last row, sometimes it would get a few rows larger, but not as often.

I played the last level like this as well and was doing awesome. Then all of a sudden the bar was draining fast, I mean faster then I could keep up. Even making a lot of combos I don't think would have made any difference. I am just curious how long can you play the last level before the game decides, well you've spent enough time on here?

I'll make another attempt today and if it happens again i'll make a note of the time.

 Snipah Loc wrote:

I made it to level 28 yesterday in arcade mode and of course lost when the bottom bar drained. I played all but the last Hollywood level with a basically empty board. Constantly clearing out the last row, sometimes it would get a few rows larger, but not as often.

I played the last level like this as well and was doing awesome. Then all of a sudden the bar was draining fast, I mean faster then I could keep up. Even making a lot of combos I don't think would have made any difference. I am just curious how long can you play the last level before the game decides, well you've spent enough time on here?

I'll make another attempt today and if it happens again i'll make a note of the time.

I had the same problems when I played.

 

The longer you stay in a level, the faster the bar fills up. There comes a point where the bar fills up much faster than you can lower it. The key is to be fast and accurate.

 

Also, as odd as it seems, keeping the board down to one line is not a good strategy. I used that strategy and thought to myself, "there is no way I can lose if I keep this up". Unfortunately, you don't get a lot of points for holding the lines back. This just causes the time to run and the bar to fill up faster.

 

The trick is to allow rows to fill up, and then try to cause callapsing combos that net you a bunch score. Oh, and there is always the luck factor.

My Tips: Dump your purple bunnies on a single sideline. This continuously drops your board faster than targeting purples in the cluster. Those bunnies in the middle can make for pleasant surprises later on, but clearing the bottom three rows at once gives you better chains and keeps the bunnies back. Use the reds to clear the nasty long columns. Only target the reds already placed when beneficial.