Turbo Pudding
Greenfold Meadows is the first of Helicorn’s six worlds, and it’s the one you can play for free. It’s farmland with a problem: the Paver’s machines are laying asphalt over it, and Thistle, a retired seeding helicopter, is out to stop them. It’s Saturday, so here are five snapshots from its first three missions, most of them taken a moment before something fires.
That moment matters. In Helicorn, every attack winds up first. The machine’s beacon, its one glowing eye, turns magenta and pulses fast, and you hear it too. Nothing fires from closer than 14 meters or from off the screen. A machine that can’t fire doesn’t wind up at all, so magenta always means a shot is on its way. The timings below are for Trail, the middle of three difficulties. On Picnic, wind-ups last longer and shots come less often, and on Backcountry, it’s the other way around.
Cones that learned to fly
Fresh Tarmac, the first mission, starts gently. For the first ten seconds or so, there are cone stacks and sheds to break, and nothing shoots back. About 25 seconds in come the first Cone Drones: traffic cones tipped forward on four tiny rotors, with the beacon on the nose. They’re quick, at 11 meters a second, and it takes very little to bring one down.
In this mission, no Cone Drone is armed, and nothing at all fires until about a minute in. From Roller Rows on, about one in four carries a single shot.
The first Mixer, alone
Wet Gravel, the third mission, brings drizzle and Mixers. The first one comes alone, about 25 seconds in, so you can see how it works before there are more. A Mixer is a six-wheeled truck with a big yellow drum, and it doesn’t shoot at Thistle. It lobs concrete at the spot where she’s going. It winds up for 0.8 seconds, then a blob flies, and it does it again about every 3.6 seconds.
Later in the same mission, Mixers come in pairs, and one pair rolls in along the road.
A crane that lights its hook
Crane Turrets don’t drive anywhere. Each one stands on a striped concrete block: a yellow tower with black bands, a cab on the side, a long arm with a counterweight at the back and a hook at the far end with an orange load hanging from it. When a crane winds up, it shows it twice. The beacon on the cab turns magenta, and the load on the hook glows magenta too.
The wind-up takes 0.6 seconds. Then come three flak shots, 0.12 seconds apart, and the crane goes again about every 2.8 seconds. It takes a lot of hits to bring down.
The Depot Yard
Fresh Tarmac ends with the Paving Crew, and the next two missions end in a Yard. A Yard is a fenced compound of the Paver’s site buildings. It rolls in, stops ahead of you and holds its ground. A gate in the front wall shields the main building, turrets stand on the corners, and when the main building falls, the mission is over.
Roller Rows is where the Rollers arrive, and they take half damage from the front, so it pays to hit them from the side. At the end of it waits the Depot Yard, the first one, and it keeps things simple: four slow turrets, one shell at a time, and nothing else. Each turret winds up for 0.8 seconds and fires about every 3.2 seconds.
When the main building is down to half, the Yard roars for a second, and its turrets speed up to a shell about every 2.6 seconds.
The Gravel Yard
The Gravel Yard closes Wet Gravel, and it has more going on. Its two front turrets fire two shells each, a fifth of a second apart. Inside the walls stand two mortars built from a Mixer’s drum, and they lob concrete about every 4.4 seconds, with a wind-up of 0.9 seconds. In the back corner stands a tall gravel silo. Break it, and it bursts into a fountain of Scrap.
A Yard pays well, in Scrap, so the end of a mission comes down as a rain of cogs.
Fly Greenfold Meadows
World 1, Greenfold Meadows, is free to play in your browser at helicorn.com, with every machine above in it. The full game, all six worlds, is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on the Helicorn page.
