Our Story Thus Far…

The Great Tree is an action game (for lack of a better word) that slowly tells a mythical tale of ancient fairies that get their power from a great tree with the help of these little creatures called the Swee… or something like that. Unfortunately, the Swee are dying or under a spell thanks to the evil Ixies and your job is to free them while collecting pollen to feed the tree… I don’t know. Watch the movie in the beginning and look at the beautiful sketch drawings. The narrator does a much better job than I do.

Gameplay

Fly the fairy around by moving the mouse and catch the brightly colored floating bits of pollen on the screen. Whenever you collect a bit of pollen, you can bring it to the bright pollen collection point (called the TRANSIENT STAR) in the upper middle part of the screen. However, you can collect more than one piece of pollen on the fairy’s ponytail and deposit more than one piece at a time to score greater points. When you fill the ponytail (with anywhere from 10 – 20 pieces of pollen, depending where you are in the game) you also have the choice to right-click with your mouse to unleash your ANCIENT FIRE. This sends out a radius of energy that destroys all creatures it touches. You’ll receive a combo bonus that goes from x2 up to x10 for every creature you zap and full tail of pollen you deposit. This bonus counter will slowly go back down to zero if you don’t keep depositing pollen or if you get hit by an enemy.

At the same time, you must free the enchanted Swee from their entrapment. The entrapped Swee are floating aimlessly around the screen in green bubbles. To free them, you need to fly under the larger Beetle-like bugs to retrieve a green symbol that they carry. This symbol surrounds your fairy in a green ring. Then touch the Swee to free them.
Once the Swee is freed, it will give you a bonus (read about bonuses below).

To clear a level, you need to fill up your pollen meter at the top of the screen. You don’t need to free all the Swee in order to move to the next level, but I recommend it since each Swee you free adds up to earn Star Points (explained below).

Bonuses (Power ups)

The game has many bonuses and each one is a different symbol and color. You receive these bonuses whenever you free a Swee or randomly when you destroy an enemy.

• Mega Pollen – This is a larger square piece of pollen that automatically fills your ponytail and gives you a bonus multiplier on your score.
• Freeze – Resembles a blue snowflake – This freezes all enemies (except background hazards… more on that later) for a brief period of time. You will see a countdown “clock” appear around the pollen drop-off site that tells you how long the spell will last.
• Magic Attraction – Bright Pink flower-like symbol. This makes all the pollen on the screen cluster around you, making it much easier to collect.
• Mega Lightning – Blue Triangular Symbol. This sends multiple bolts of electricity that zap and kill all enemies on the screen at once. NOTE: Does not affect Background hazards.
• Hearts – These add a health point to your meter in the upper left corner
• Star Burst – Orange Star. This sends five bursts of energy out in all directions and zaps anything in its path.
• Aura Shield – Bright Yellow Round Symbol. The aura shield surrounds your fairy in a big yellow bubble that zaps anything that comes in contact with you. You will see a countdown “clock” appear around the pollen drop-off site that tells you how long the spell will last.

Enemies

The enemies in this game are diverse and many… When an enemy hits you, you loose a health point and all the pollen you were carrying, but if you scramble, you can usually get most of it back. I’m sure there are names for all of the enemies but I have no idea what they are so I will describe them instead:

• Small “Beetles” – Easy to Avoid
• Large “Beetles” – Easy to avoid, they carry symbols needed to free the Swee.
• “Gnats” – These tiny bugs fly in groups of four (in a line) in a wave-like pattern across the screen.
• “Wasps” – These bugs fly up and down across the screen and track your movement so they tend to fly into you. Harder to avoid.
• Red “Dragonfly” – Larger that the Wasps, the dragonflies fly in the same manner as the wasps and are even harder to avoid.
• “Flies” – I actually am not sure what these bugs resemble because they zip very quickly in a beeline across the screen (Hmmmm… Maybe they are bees). They fly super fast and appear at anytime, making them practically impossible to avoid if you are in their path.
• Ixie “Spiders” – The evil little four-armed elves don’t appear until later in the game. They hang from one leg and dangle like a spider with arms outstretched. If you land on one, they snatch you up and you fail the level and must retry. The good thing about this game is that you get unlimited retries because by the time these guys show up; you are too busy avoiding too many things. Plus, their mono-toned bodies make them blend easily into the stunning backgrounds at times.

Star Power Attributes

As you free the Swee, you earn Star Points. These Star Points are used to increase your attributes below.

• Agility – Determines how fast you fly around the screen
• Health – Determines how much damage you can take
• Strength – Affects your ancient fire power and bonus. As your strength grows, the radius of you ancient fire grows as well.
• Magic – Determines your chance of getting a power up when enemies are destroyed

Wings

As you progress through the game, you will also earn new sets of fairy wings that will give you special powers.

1. Birth Wings – These are the wings you start out with. They have no advantages to them.
2. Wings of Strength – 1 Star Point is added to your existing Strength
3. Wings of Revenge – When you are hit by the enemy, you’ll still take damage but the enemy will die.
4. Wings of Luck – These give you a 1 in 3 chance to dodge an enemy.
5. Wings of the Wind – 1 Star Point is added to you existing Agility
6. Wings of Life – Slowly recharges your health
7. Wings of Wisdom – 1 Star Point is added to your existing Magic
8. Dragon Soul Wings – These wings create a radial spell that kills all surrounding enemies whenever you are attacked. So far, these are the best wings (in my opinion).
9. Wings of the Undead – Replenishes half your health when you only have 1 health point left.
10. Wings of the Elders – 1 Star Point is added on to your existing Strength, Agility and Magic
11. Soulfire Wings – Creates a radial spell every time you deposit pollen into the Transient Star

Levels and Background Hazards

There are a whopping 100 levels in this game that are broken down into two waves that take place on 10 different visually stunning backgrounds. In the first wave if the game, you must complete 5 levels on each of the first 9 backgrounds. When you reach the 5th level, you will see a new addition to the background that will cause you harm if you interact with it.

On the second wave of the game, you must go through five levels on each background with the additional hazard present at every level. This is also when the Ixie Spiders show up so each level gets more difficult.

The different backgrounds and Hazards are:

1. Ancient Castle Wall – Two tree frogs will hit you with their tongues to take a health point and scatter your pollen.
2. The Broken Giant – A Venus Flytrap will eat you if you fly across it and force you to retry the level.
3. The Stillness of the Serpent – A large snail will release toxic gas from its shell if you disturb it too many times. The gas will cost you a health point and cause you to lose all the pollen you are holding. NOTE: I’ve noticed that the toxic gas will follow you from time to time.
4. The Frozen Mermaiden – A large green ant will squirt droplets of green poison in an arc across the screen. If you’re hit, you’ll lose 1 heath point and all the pollen you carry.
5. The Petrified Goblin – Three Venus flytraps across the bottom of the screen will jump up and bite you, causing you to lose 1 heath point and all the pollen you carry. Since these guys move, you need to keep a greater distance from them.
6. The Slumbering Fungus – This is my favorite one! A giant mushroom with a face will wake up and follow you with its eyes if you disturb it. If you get too close, it will suck you into its mouth and force you to retry the level.
7. The Looking Branch – Three purple flowers will squirt what looks like blood at you causing you to lose 1 heath point and all the pollen you carry.
8. Guarded on High – A giant caterpillar will zap you repeatedly with red lightning, if you disturb it, causing you to lose 1 heath point and all the pollen you carry.
9. Lycan’s Den – A big ugly frog (that looks vaguely skull-like) will eat you if you disturb it and force you to retry the level.
10. Ixie Lair – This is the final board and each level alternates between easy and hard. On the hard levels, a lizard dominates the bottom half of the screen and can stretch it’s tongue all the way across the screen to grab you and force you to restart the level

Tips & Tricks

These are little things I picked up along the way. You may find your own strategy that works better (and if you do, PLEASE SHARE!) but this is what worked for me.

1. A little sacrifice goes a long way – Once you get in the upper levels and the Ixie start showing up, it’s damn near impossible to complete a level unless you wear the Dragon Soul Wings. When the screen if full of Ixie, hit a bug on purpose and kill as many Ixie as you can. Sure, it will cost you a health point but you are bound to pick up random bonuses from the bugs you destroyed and you’ll have a few free seconds to collect more pollen before the Ixie return.
2. At the beginning of each level, the pollen shows up before any enemies do or hazards are activated. If you fly around the perimeter of the screen in those first few seconds, you stand a good chance to fill up a ponytail of pollen before any enemies enter the screen.
3. Earning mega points – Once you get your bonus multiplier all the way up to x10, hover near the pollen collection center and grab the pollen one or two at a time. Sure it takes longer to clear the board but you’ll get 1000 points for each piece of pollen and your bonus counter will never diminish unless you get hit.
4. Mega Pollen - If your ponytail is nearly full when you get a mega pollen, drop off all your pollen first before grabbing it or it’s a bit of a waste. For example: If you need 10 pollen and you have 9, mega pollen will only add one more piece of pollen, but if you have 0 pollen and you need 10, Mega pollen will give you all 10.
5. Aura Shield - As soon as you get this, fly around and destroy everything you can as quickly as possible. Drop off pollen when you can but concentrate on zapping as many things as possible. This usually unleashes many of the other bonuses and can allow you to clear the board quickly.
6. Ancient Fire – After you unleash your ancient fire, you can still deposit all the pollen you collected into the Transient Star, however, you will not fill up your pollen meter as much as you would if you deposited the pollen without unleashing the Ancient Fire.
7. Try using the Soulfire wings on the last level. The lizard forces you to stay near the top of the screen anyway and it’s easier to grab one piece of pollen at a time and zap all the Ixie Spiders.
8. If you are having trouble clearing a level, try readjusting your abilities.

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