Guide hub

Spelunky, Mossmouth‘s gift to the platforming and roguelike world, is not easy. In no capacity is it easy, and in fact as of writing I have died ~600 times. Sure, a lot of that was just to find information, but we assure you the death counts for this game will be in the thousands for most players. While every adventure through Spelunky results in a score, and surely that is important, the real goal here is to make it to the end and get the treasure spoken of only in whispers in back alleys and on forums. This guide has a deluge of tips and tricks for you to employ in your journey through Spelunky, as well as an ever growing account of all the secrets and unlockables in this game. Here’s the disclaimer:

Spelunky is first and foremost about adventure. It’s about failure, about dying, about losing, about learning from each and everything you see that inevitably kills you. Part of the glory of Spelunky’s design is finding out how things work, the nature of the AI and of the ever-changing environments. You should experience that, and you should do so without this guide. We recommend you not look at this guide until you’ve died at least 100 times. That said, if you’re frustrated, or if you have to find the secrets right-just-now, we welcome you to enjoy our wealth of information.

We have no intention of spoiling the whole game for you, so the secrets and unlockables are on their own page, away from the tips and tricks. That said, there are plenty of spoilers in here as well, but we have separated each and every collection of tips by section of the game to which they pertain. Everything you’ll experience for the majority of your “newbie” experience is just below and none of it is entirely shocking, though there’s much useful information there. At the very bottom of this guide is our tips to completion, and they include information from every single thing, including the secrets, but they’re also our most comprehensive (and tested) tips for success. We wish you luck, adventurer. Read More

Welcome to our Challenges & Encounters guide, two of the key returning features in Magic 2013! This page is for the Challenges, Encounters can be found here. As they were in the past, these puzzles require you to solve intricate victory solutions from abysmal situations. Most of these puzzles require you to win during that one turn, making this a very small, difficult piece of Magic strategy. Since these are puzzles, however, we can solve them the exact same way every time! As such, each solution will be in step by step format, so you can’t possibly miss a beat.

Important: We strongly advise you either view every step before trying these, or you stop the timer after each move, as some steps are between individual card plays rather than entire turn phases.

Again, there are 10 Encounters to go along with the 10 challenges, so if you want solutions or help with those, head on over to the Encounters guide page. Read More

The Encounters are back in Magic 2013 and that means single-minded AIs following patterns until you win or lose. These patterns will be the same every time, but keep in mind that they will still block and attack logically regardless of the pattern. Since this is a card game and you still have to draw cards normally in Encounters, it’s important to remember that sometimes you can’t win without the right cards. That’s perfectly fine, these may take a couple tries no matter how sound the strategy is. The first three are pretty simple Encounters so their solutions are pretty straightforward, but as you progress you’ll find these Encounters get more and more difficult (and more and more unfair), so we hope you’ll find this guide useful.

Also back are the puzzle challenges. These challenges dare you to solve intricate Magic puzzles with a very specific setup and solution set. You can find our solution set to those challenges here. Read More

It’s dangerous to go alone! Read this guide to save yourself some anguish.
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Your one stop shop for Awesomenauts know-how both for new comers and seasoned players alike!
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Welcome to our gigantic Fez completion guide! This guide will take you from no achievements to 12, zero g to 200g and we’ll take you there… delicately. Thanks to community member MRX93 for helping us ever so slightly here and there. Without further ado… we have to explain some things.

[Editors Note: We highly recommend not using this guide until you can’t go any further on your own. Fez is about exploring and getting lost. Polytron put it best when they said “play like the internet doesn’t exist”. That being said, we know many people will become frustrated and want help. This guide is written for them.  Please use  it only as an emergency cheat-sheet.]

There are two ways to complete Fez. Complete it like you’re playing it, and to complete it for the sake of completion. We here at XBLA Fans are aware of this and have set up our guide in accordance with the different types of Fez players.

We have taken great care to separate anything and everything that would be considered a spoiler. Our policy follows that any puzzle that requires knowledge acquired outside of the area to which the puzzle belongs (barring basic knowledge and specific sections) will be posted in the SPOILER ZONE. Each area has one, and each zone is marked very clearly in text and with pictures. Each picture hints at what the spoiler covers. Once you’re done with many areas and have accrued much knowledge you’ll want to come back and check each spoiler tag to see if you can now complete that puzzle. Read More

Defenders of Ardania looks like a chaotic, busy, and very strategic game. However, we here at XBLA Fans have some tips to offer you in the hopes of you never lose a single mission. Ever. You see, luckily enough, the single player is pretty straightforward, despite the myriad of challenges the game hurls at you. Without further ado, enjoy some game breaking knowledge!

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Everything you need to slice your way through
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The darkness is near, but the guide to it is here.
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Welcome back to the regiment, marine! That’s right, our very first big guide is back for the DLC nearly a year since the original release. Five new levels, two new survival levels, and over 50 pieces of loot and we’ve got the how-to to all of it. Big thanks to our Andrew Crews, Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Saris and his friend Tyler for helping us get through this challenging installment of Iron Brigade DLC. The DLC is currently available for 400 MSP and you can check out our review if you’re not sure you whether or not you should be jumping back into this game after it’s been so long.

For those of you who are diving back in or already have, we’ve got level guides to each of the five levels including what loot is acquired on those levels (so you don’t have to check the loot-specific guide) and strategies for getting gold medals (though they aren’t necessary for achievements this time around) and of course a wave breakdown for each. On top of that we’ve got the traditional loot guide complete with images for all the weapons, chassis and emplacements including all the stats and unlock locations. Lastly we have our guides to both survival maps, both of which provide quite a bit of a challenge. On top of that, each level and survival level have videos accompanying them, so do feel free to check those out if reading is too much work for you (the link can be found in the actual page if you want both). Without further a do, enjoy your guide to the Rise of the Martian Bear! Read More