The Perfect Swarm is the 44th episode of Pocket God and was released on April 4th, 2012. The episode features the debut of the Chamber of Locusts, a room within the temple on Apocalypse Island, within which lies the Locust Queen and her swarm of locusts.
History
In the weeks leading up to the release of the 44th update, several clues and hints were given.
Dave's TouchArcade Hints
Dave released some hints on the TouchArcade forum a month before the episode's release:
- It will be biblical in proportions
- It has an aspect that is a shout-out to another app
- It will have a new god power
- It will include a new animal.
The assembled puzzle
The Puzzle
Starting at the beginning of March, the Pocket Blog staff decided to release pieces of a puzzle on the Bolt Creative blog which would represent an aspect of the new update. On TouchArcade, Dave Castelnuovo said that the image was an in-game picture. Bolt released eight pieces over a few weeks' time, then released the rest of the pieces in one collective image when the episode was submitted to the App Store. The day before the update came out, Dave finally revealed that the image represented the enlarged background symbol inside the new Chamber.
The promotional artwork for this episode
Overview
In this episode, the second chamber in the Apocalypse Temple is revealed as the Locust Room -- containing the bloated, insectoid Locust Queen. You can feed your hapless pygmies to the Queen, press on her belly, and get a swarm of locusts to do your bidding. Have them pick up a pygmy and bounce him around like a beach ball. Have them slice a pygmy like you're a Fruit Ninja! Have them infest a pygmy and turn them into a Mutant Pygmy or a Mutant Locust! Or just let them buzz around until they get bored and leave.
The Challenge of the Gods and the Battle of the Gods continue with the new Locust Queen idol! Find all of the ways to kill a pygmy, then conquer your friends in the Arena with a new agent of destruction.
Finally, the update includes the Mondo Skin Pack. The Meteor turns into a 20-sided dice. The Sand Island Statue turns into a video game machine. The coconut is a donut and the volcano is the Springfield Nuclear Plant. It's a nerd's paradise of objects.
Pocket God Update Message
The following text is from the official Pocket God Update Message. Please do not modify it.
Disaster of biblical proportions buzzes in this installation of the 'A-Pocket-Lypse' (ugh!) The Locust Room has been added to the Apocalypse Island temple and it houses a big gross Locust Queen! She just needs a little sustenance (guess what her favorite food is?) to to birth a swarm of icky locusts. Of your godly locust powers, you can now slice pygmies in half like a fruit in Fruit Ninja!
Yes, this is the ickiest update yet!
We are proud to present gues artist Josh Ellingson's Nerd Pack! Be a Nerd and Proud! 99 cents, cheap!
New Features
Chamber of Locusts
The Locust Chamber
In this added chamber, the Locust Queen has been added and is sitting on a pedestal. She is huge and unable to move, her only job is to create more locust babies which you do by feeding her pygmies. When you feed a pygmy to her, her stomach starts to bump around and make buzzing sounds and then you have to touch her belly to squeeze out the baby locusts.
The Locust Chamber is accessed from the second door in the Time Chamber. Furthermore, the Locust Chamber has two exits that will lead to different chambers in two future updates.
Locusts
The locusts themselves are an algorithmic effect, similar to the Double Rainbow and Lightning. Thus, they fly around randomly until you drag your finger on the screen and then they trail behind your finger. You can do many things to the pygmies with the locusts, including causing a pygmy to swallow a single locust which will turn him into a Mutant Locust. A pygmy can swallow a bunch of locusts, which will make the pygmy get large like a balloon. If you tap the large pygmy or the mutant locust, they go splat like a bug.
The player can also cause the locusts to eat the pygmies flesh and fly off with his skull and hair bone, and Dave Castelnuovo mentioned that this was a shout out to Ep 13: March of the Fire Ants. The player can also cause the locusts to pick up a pygmy and toss him back and forth in the air. When he is in the air, you can swipe through the pygmy and cut him in half with the locusts, in a manner similar to the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad app "Fruit Ninja". It has been stated that isn't an official cross over with the app, merely an interesting idea.
Mondo Skin Pack
The update comes with the Mondo Skin Pack, which is basically a collection of weird items, like the nerd Doodler, lava lamps for the islands, an old school video game cabinet for the Sand Island Statue, etc. The same artist that did the posters for Ep 40: Battle of the Gods and Ep 43: Killing Time did the pack for us. Bolt Creative has stated that they are going to try and have some guest artists that they admire help out with more of the skin packs.
Video
Pocket God Episode 44 "The Perfect Swarm" Trailer
Trivia
- This update fixed a number of bugs that had crept up over the last few months. The most notable was a continually increasing delay while playing the Battle of the Gods (Mini-Game) which would make the game unplayable for many people.
- The Pygmys in the artwork for this episode are shown using bug spray. Bug spray wasn't invented in the prehistoric times.
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