Chapter Zero Reaches out to fans...
GemCraft Chapter Zero: Gem of Eternity is a sequel to GemCraft Chapter 1: The Forgotten that was released by GameInABottle in April 2009, nearly a year after the success of the first game. GemCraft Chapter 0 is based on much the same premise as the first game, that is, a tower defense game with gems inside towers and so on. However, there are plenty of changes in the format and the gameplay itself compared to the first game which has led to a serious diversifying of gameplay options and hence has made the game that much more enjoyable. Here are some of the main features of this sequel:
Gameplay
There aren't all that many differences in the gameplay itself between Chapter 0 and Chapter 1 (again, just so you can keep track, Chapter Zero is the sequel to Chapter 1). You still have a campaign-based tower defense game with a branching map and individual battles which constitute one step on the way to achieving your goal, which in this case is to gain the ultimate gem which has all the powers of the world, or something similar. As for the battles themselves, they haven't changed too with the same "make towers, place gems inside them" format that was present in the first game still being used here. The types of gems haven't changed at all either, except for the prismatic gems.
The differences lie in the other departments then. For starters, instead of the water trenches, you have traps that can be placed on these paths in much the same way that you used to place water trenches. You can then place gems within these traps like you would place gems inside of towers. What these traps do is highlight the special abilities of gems while lowering their attack powers. So, for instance, if you placed a green gem inside one of these traps, its poisoning ability would rise (and every monster passing over one of these would get poisoned) while its attacking power would be negated. If you place one of these traps at a junction or a corner, some of those monsters might even get hit twice, hence doubling the impact of a trap. It is a very neat idea and one that's extremely useful in weakening some of those harder monsters before they come to your gem towers.
So, what stops you from putting a whole line of poison traps right at the beginning of the path so that most monsters die before they reach the end? Well, most of the maps in Gemcraft Chapter Zero Tower Defense game have special buildings on the map called "Defier Beacons" which do not allow you to place towers or traps in a given area depending on what type of beacons they are. The only way to get rid of these beacons is to use a gem bomb on them with the constituent gem being a grade 3 gem or higher. Otherwise, you're stuck with finding spots where you're allowed to build whatever you do want to build. Even beyond all of this you have some abandoned shrines in some maps, which can be activated for a limited period of time through gems. These may use lightning bolts or other types of attacks to kill monsters and help you out, though not for a long time. There are other buildings too which might heal the monsters that pass close to it or lend them a temporary invincibility against any sort of attack that you can muster. All of these serve to make the game much harder and even frustrating in some cases, but it's all in a good way.
If you didn't find all of this as good enough in terms of gameplay and want more variety or a different challenge, then the game also has different modes of gameplay for each battle level with there being up to 9 different modes of gameplay. These modes get unlocked once you've beaten the level on normal mode and after that reached a certain wizard level, depending on the type of mode it is. The modes range from Sudden Death, in which the game ends as soon as even one monster reaches the Wizard's hut, to Endurance, in which you're basically required to survive against infinite waves of monsters for as long as possible. The other modes include Heroic, Arcane, Bleeding Edge, Swarm, Time Siege and Carapace. With the exception of Time Siege, the others basically consist of the enemies having different hit points and other such stat differences with the odd change. They are all still highly enjoyable though, if a bit tough to unlock.
The basic tips for these games remain the same as for Chapter 1. The difference here is that Dual gems actually have better regular attack stats compared to pure gems, unlike Chapter 1 where combined or dual gems had lesser attack stats compared to a pure gem of equivalent grade.
However, combining gems reduces the potency of their special attacks, so that part is still there. Basically for maximum damage, place your pure gems in traps and dual gems in towers. Try not to combine gems with more than two base colors. Also, when you have all 8 types of gems available and combine them, you get a prismatic gem which is quite powerful. Try to get your towers to cover as large an area as possible. Placing them at junctions and corners should work best in this regard. Also, because firing speeds aren't all that high for high grade gems compared to low grade gems, more towers with low grade gems are likely to work better than a few towers with high grade gems. There's also this new trick called transmutation that allows you to create more of the kind of gem that you want provided you have at least one of those. Basically, place 2-3 gems of the same type in the same inventory row. Now, select the gem bomb spell and take the gem that you want to create more of (make sure that the gems placed in the row aren't of a higher grade than the one that you're using) on top of the line of gems. All three of those gems will automatically convert to the color you wanted them to be.
Do all of these changes work in Gemcraft Chapter Zero? They most certainly do. Chapter 1 tends to be slightly more enjoyable until about level 30, but after that it gets boring. Chapter Zero never gets boring and is even more enjoyable once you get the hang of it. There are some slight issues though, like the uniform skills point costs no matter how important the skill itself is, the extreme toughness of some of the levels and the really high focus on orange (mana-maximizing) gems to get stuff done. Color neutrality is very important in a game like this, but Chapter 0 fails to maintain it and there is a definite dependence on orange gems here.
Graphics and Audio
There isn't a change in either the graphics or the audio of the game. Everything is pretty much identical to Chapter 1, and seeing that Chapter 1's settings didn't need any fixing, this is a good thing. The graphics are still beautiful in terms of the little details and the audio is still mostly non-existent.
Conclusion
It wouldn't be right to say that Gemcraft Chapter Zero Tower Defense is definitely an improvement over Chapter 1, because this isn't strictly correct. Both games were enjoyable in their own right, but this game has a lot more complexity and is harder so this will definitely appeal to people who like those kinds of games. More complexity isn't always a good thing, but this game manages the transition with aplomb. All in all, if you like putting yourself through the virtual ringer, go for this game.