Alien Tears

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Earn a gold medal on every mission in Story mode.

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This requires obtaining a gold medal on the Prologue and all 20 maps in the Story mode. You can choose Easy difficulty if you find a map challenging, and the game comes with a rewind feature tied to the LB button so if you make a mistake you don't have to completely start over.

A gold medal is awarded based on your score, which is accumulated with each alien killed. The points are calculated based on the difficulty of the alien (boss aliens are worth more, obviously), the value of your turrets on the map, the amount of resources you have in your bank, how many orbs are in the core, and how many orbs are on the map but not in the core. To maximize your score you will want to ensure that no orbs are ever removed from the core and that you spend as little money as possible. On most maps, however, it is quite possible to get far more points than are needed for a gold medal, so your primary focus should be on protecting the orbs rather than keeping a higher resource balance. The developer has stated that it is possible to beat each mission in more than 1 million ways, and having played it enough I would tend to agree with that statement.

If you really get stuck (especially on level 7, which I feel is the hardest map to get gold on) go unlock other tower items and come back, or try it a few times in Practice mode to get a feel for different tower layouts that may work for you. After selecting the map and mode you will be on a screen to assign your Command Team and tower items...ensure that you actively choose your tower items as you play each map as they can dramatically increase your combat abilities. The items you unlock seem to be somewhat random, but all of them result in more effective towers.