Pixel Purge

Awesome game with lots of medals

Medals (20 for 490 points):
Evasion Expert (Bronze) - 5 points - Don't get hit for 30 seconds. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
High Score (Bronze) - 5 points - Acquire a score of 100,000 or greater. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Slayer of the Peon King - 5 points - Defeat the largest Peon. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Level Climber (Silver) - 10 points - Reach level 10. Basically, don't die for a while. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Slayer of the Grunt King - 10 points - Defeat the largest Grunt. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Slayer of the Miner King - 10 points - Defeat the largest Miner. An ironic medal, since there is only one size of miner. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Slayer of the Splitter King - 10 points - Defeat the largest Splitter. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Slayer of the Waver King - 10 points - Defeat the largest Waver. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Hardcore (Platinum) - 25 points - Don't spend any skill points and reach level 10 or greater. One of the harder medals. You'll probably want to use my strategy below in order to get this
Marksman - 25 points - Accurately land 50 shots without a single miss. Yes, it's as annoying as you think it is. Easiest to get with your first 50 shots
Mine Sweeper - 25 points - Destroy 50 mines in a single game. Honestly, you'll get this one without even trying
Platinum Chain - 25 points - Reach a kill chain of 1000. You'll definitely want to use my strategy below to get this
Slayer of the Fume King - 25 points - Defeat the largest Fume. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Slayer of the Seeker King - 25 points - Defeat the largest Seeker. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Slayer of the Shield King - 25 points - Defeat the largest Shield. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Slayer of the Vessel King - 25 points - Defeat the largest Vessel. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Terminator (Gold) - 25 points - Defeat 1000 enemies in a single game. You'll get this incidentally as you acquire other medals
Bestiary Complete - 50 points - Completely fill your bestiary by defeating 20 of each enemy in the game. There seems to be a bug registering Vessel kills, but otherwise this is pretty straightforward
Master Trophy Collector - 50 points - Acquire all Trophies. The hardest one is reaching level 20
Defender of Pixela-RT - 100 points - 100% the game (Acquire a gold star on the main menu for boht Trophy and the Bestiary buttons). Pretty self explanatory

In-Game Trophies:
Staged trophies; Format is Name: Description for bronze/silver/gold/platinum
Chain: Reach a kill chain of 25/100/500/1000
Terminator: Defeat 250/500/1000/2500 enemies in a single game
High Score: Acquire a score of 100,000/250,000/500,000/1,000,000 or greater
Level Climber: Reach level 5/10/15/20
Evasion Expert: Don't get hit for 30/60/90/120 seconds
Hardcore: Don't spend any skill points and reach level 4/6/8/10 or greater

Gold accomplishment trophies
1 each for maxing each skill
1 each for killing the largest version of each enemy

Silver accomlishment trophies
Balanced Soldier: Obtain a level 3 or higher in every skill within a single game
Turret Master: Remain stationary and fight off enemies for 60 seconds
Marksman: Accurately land 50 shots without a single miss
Mine Sweeper: Destroy 50 mines in a single game

Platinum accomplishment trophies
1 each for acquiring all trophies of each level (all bronze = +2 skill points when starting a game, all silver = +3, all gold = +4, all platinum = +5)
1 for acquiring all trophies.

Game Mechanics:
The point of the game is to kill as many things as possible, while taking as little damage as possible. If you kill several enemies in a row without taking damage yourself, the size of your Chain increases.

Each enemy has a set number of points they're worth, and if you kill them as part of a chain, then the size of the chain before that kill gets added to the value of the kill. For instance, medium sized peons are worth 100, and if you kill one while having a Chain of 7, you'll get 107 points for the kill, and 108 for the next one, and so on. It doesn't take very long for this to start adding up.

Whenever you kill an enemy they drop pixels for you, and you can collect the pixels in order to level up. Leveling up increases the difficulty of the game, and harder enemies drop more pixels. As you level up you gain 2 Skill Points per level, which can be spent in-game to improve your ship in various ways. So the faster you level, the faster you can make your ship better, and the faster the game difficulty increases. You can increase each skill 5 times, and the cost to increase goes up by 1 each time.

Enemies can also drop power-ups in addition to dropping pixels. The exception to enemy drops is the Splitter, which drops nothing as an effect of its specific mechanics. Power-ups have no effect on score or pixel count, they only affect your ship in the described way.

Except for when you're chasing the Marksman trophy, you will want to hold down your mouse button for a constant rate of fire. You'll also want to make sure you know where your mouse cursor is at all times, or else you may go through a period of extreme vulnerability. When your immediate area is clear, fire off into the distance to try to catch enemies you can't see, as that will increase your Chain and your score.

Power-Ups:
Red circle with white cross = Restores some of your health. Seems to restore about 20%

Green circle with white arrow = Increases your rate of fire for a short duration. The faster your fire rate already is, the faster it becomes with this power-up

Blue circle with white pear = Grants you a shield which will absorb one hit. If you take a hit with the blue shield activated, your Chain will not be broken and the duration of your other power-ups will not be affected.

Orange circle with 3 dots = Increases your bullet spread and damage. Increases bullet spread by 1 and damage by 2. Since your base damage goes from 4 to 6, your quadruple damage goes from 16 to 24 as well

Note: Power-ups of different types will exist at the same time, while power-ups of the same type will refresh themselves but will not stack. Getting hit will remove your power-up duration.

Skills:
Critical Hit: Gives each bullet a chance to deal quadruple its normal damage. 4% per level

Piercing: Gives each bullet a chance to travel through an enemy and hit anything else in its path. 4% per level. Odds are you won't see a bullet pierce, but its effect will still be evident. The easiest way to tell is when you tear through an entire swarm of chasers in a single shot

Pixel Drop: Increases the number of pixels dropped by defeated enemies. 20% per level

Score Increase: Increases score earned by defeating enemies. 20% per level

Rapid Fire: Decreases the delay between shots. 11% per level

Fire Spread: Increases the number of bullets fired with each shot. +1 bullet per level

Regeneration: Increases the speed at which your health regenerates. -half a second per level

Magnet: Increases the range at which pixels will attract to you. +16m per level

Enemies:
Peon: Green. Moves orthogonally (straight up and down, straight left and right) without changing direction.

Grunt: Purple. Follows you.

Splitter: Blue square. Moves diagonally, and defeating it makes it split into 4 more of the next size down. Does not drop pixels.

Fume: Orange. Follows you, and its explosion is harmful to you. It will also self-destruct if it gets too close, and that explosion will do you damage.

Miner: Grey circle. Moves orthogonally, but drops mines behind it. The mines are powerful, and can quickly fill up an impressive area of the screen. These guys are seriously annoying, but they only spawn on levels 8 and 9

Waver: Yellow cross. Moves in a sine wave horizontally or vertically.

Vessel: Dull yellow circle. Follows you, and carries several of the smallest size of Grunts ("Chasers"), which are slowly released against you. If it gets too close, it will self-destruct and release a swarm of Chasers against you; the more healthy it is, the more Chasers there are. If it self-destructs in this way you will not get any credit for its destruction. If you destroy it, wealth in pixels shall be your reward instead, so that is how you can tell whether you shot it down.

Shield: Red. Circles you, and blocks your shots from hitting other enemies. When you hit them their radius expands, and then over time it closes in again.

Seeker: Blue squid-like. It will get close to you, and then charge through you. At the end of the charge, hit or miss, it charges again.

Strategy:
The game mechanics are important for planning out your strategy. Since the enemies don't get any harder until you increase your level, but they keep coming at their current level, it's to your advantage to draw the game out for as long as possible when hunting medals, especially early. Basically, you want to move around as little as possible, specifically avoiding gathering pixels unless you absolutely need to. The idea is to carve yourself a safe area, preferably in the middle of the map as the edges will reduce your reaction time from edge proximity, and then keep it clear. The exception to this is the Marksman trophy, for which you will likely have to move around a lot. It will become progressively harder to keep this strategy up in later levels, so you may need to intermittently abandon it, but you should always return to it whenever possible.

This play style has some important ramifications for your skill point distribution. Since you're avoiding gathering pixels, the Magnet and Pixel skills are useless to you. Since the play style inherently boosts your score by allowing you to get a very large Chain, the Score skill is unnecessary. So you're down from 8 skills to 5.

That means the only skills you need to worry about are regeneration (later), fire speed, fire spread, piercing and critical hit. And because you're playing for the easy, long Chain, you don't need to worry about chasing power-ups either; the only one you need is the blue shield power-up, and then you can safely ignore the rest for as long as you're hunting that Chain. Once you have your chain of 1,000, though, you'll definitely want those power-ups, as they make it much easier to progress in the game.

You'll have to play the game at least a few times in order to be successful at it, and a few more times to get the in-game trophies for maxing all your skills. Your playthroughs will be as follows:

1) Setup. Your goal here is to get as many Silver trophies at once as you can. Stay put for the first 60 seconds, shooting only at enemies that are coming straight at you, until you receive the Turret Master trophy. Use the strategy outlined above to get a Chain of 100, and do not spend any skill points until at least level 6. Keep the strategy up for as long as possible, and spread your skill points out so that you get all 8 skills to level 3 (assuming you make it that far). You want to end this first playthrough with a score of at least 250,000 and a level of at least 10. Ideally you'll also destroy 50 mines, and depending how the beginning of the game went you may have the Marksman trophy as well from only shooting at enemies coming directly at you.

2) Setup Mop-up. Pick out the silver trophies you don't have, and play individual games specifically to get them. You want to have all bronze and silver trophies before continuing.

3) Chasing the Chain. When you have all bronze trophies and all silver trophies, as you should now have, you get +5 skill points to start the game (2 from having all bronze, 3 from all silver; later 4 from all gold and 5 from all platinum). Distribute them between fire rate, fire spread and critical hit as you see fit. Use the strategy above, spending skill points as you get them, to get your Platinum Chain of 1,000 kills without injury. If you fail, quit and restart, as it's much harder to get a 1,000 chain with the harder enemies. When you succeed, keep the strategy up until you get a score of 1,000,000. At that point, this playthrough becomes the first in step 4.

4) Building your Resume. You get gold trophies for maxing each skill, and for killing the largest of each type of enemy. The enemy killing trophies will take care of themselves, but you'll need at least 4 games in which to max out all your skills one by one. Each game, pick 2 skills and focus on them. I recommend picking one skill from the list to focus on and one skill from the list to ignore, to give you a chance to get them both in the same game.

5) Chasing the Dream. Play for level 20 until you get it, and all remaining enemy medals. Your bestiary will fill itself as you go. You should be able to kill one of each of the largest enemies by level 19, so odds are you will actually get all the gold trophies first, which is nice for continuity.