This is a collection of tips and hints that explain game basics and were either not present in game tutorial/in-game help, or were not obvious enough. It should help beginners to get started and enjoy this game.

Death by Game Show (DBGS) is based on the Idiocracy[www.imdb.com] movie (trailer). If you haven't seen it, it's very recommended that you do before playing this game, it will help you understand its setting and its humor much better. You'll also learn why the main character is called U.H.Wutt and why the arenas in the game are called rehabilitation :-)

The first 4 levels in the game have training difficulty. Since this game is pretty challenging in high (default) difficulties, it's important that you pay attention to the tutorial messages and also read the background signs (in all levels, not just the tutorial ones) - some of them are there just to amuse you, but some of them contain helpful tips. Activate the strategic camera (Tab) to pause the game while reading or shift the view without moving the character.



When you're in the arena, you can access in-game help from the main menu, or by pressing the H key.



If you die, there is a screen containing numerous helpful tips. Read them all! Unfortunately this screen is not accessible from anywhere else, you need to die to see it.



There are explanatory pop-ups on various parts of the UI (e.g. units/power-ups/buildings icons) if you hover your cursor over it. Be sure to do this to understand what a particular item does.

There's a lot going on on the main screen (similar to the rest of the game). Chaos, clutter and shining lights are the theme of DBGS. Some parts of it might not be obvious immediately, so here's a description.



On top, there's the amount of your hard-earned cash. You'll spend this when buying units/buildings/power-ups.

In the center, you see the currently selected level (use arrows to change it, play button to play it, d'oh!). The gauntlet bar shows the default difficulty. You can decrease the difficulty when starting the level, but not increase it. Below the level name there are spinner rewards listed. In some cases, it's All droids, All defensive buildings, etc. In other cases, there are pictures of units/buildings that you can win.

On the left, you see the objectives of the level, and the victory rewards for completing it (units/buildings). If you win a unit/building that you already have full number of, you'll receive money instead. Once you successfully complete the mission, the victory rewards section will change to Utilized stamp and you won't receive any further victory rewards by completing it again (however, some levels provide multiple diminishing rewards to incentivize you to do several playthroughs, and only then they become fully utilized). At the top of the section, there's a spin bonus number. Each time you should receive a single buzzer press in this mission, it'll get multiplied by the spin bonus (so that you receive e.g. 3 presses for x3 spin bonus). You can see your current number of available buzzer presses at the bottom edge of the screen. Each time you complete that particular level, the spin bonus increases. You won't win any victory rewards or have the spin bonus effect when playing on 50% or lower difficulty.

On the right, there's scoring bonus. There are 3 medals - bronze, silver and gold. If you collect X number of coins on 100% difficulty, you'll get a stated reward. (In the picture above, if you collect at least 6 million dollars, you'll get additional 5 million dollars as a bonus.) The bronze one is easiest, the gold one is hardest. Initially you see just the bronze one requirements, but it's possible to win even the gold one right away on the first playthrough of the level. If you lower your difficulty, you get nothing. Once you win all the medals, you'll see a global ladder instead and you can't receive scoring bonus again for this level.

Along the screen edges, you see units, power-ups and buildings. The basic units are free and unlimited, the more advanced units must be bought and their number is limited. That also applies to power-ups and buildings, they must be bought (or received as a reward), and their number is limited. Click any icon with the green dollar sign to buy more of those units/power-ups/buildings. Hover your mouse cursor over these icons to see a popup describing that item. The first line, even though it might not be obvious initially, is its name (yes, the units are really called Hammie, Wattu, Odee, iTCe, etc).

As a small easter egg, try clicking on any of those units below the podium.

Once you get into a rehabilitation procedure mission, you'll see a screen similar to this:



At the top, you see your character's health. You can restore health during mission by using Electrolytes (one of your power-ups, a syringe). Next, you see the countdown. In some missions you have to survive for some time, in other missions you need to complete objectives and leave until time runs out. Next is collected cash. You collect cash by collecting coins, either stepping on them or grabbing them with your hook. Coins are extracted from enemy droids by "grinding" on them and ultimately killing them. Next to that you see mission objectives.

Your main character is chained to a locker called G.I.M.P. GIMP produces droids if it has enough energy (a blue bar in lower left) and you haven't reached the maximum droid limit (bottom left corner). If GIMP energy gets really low, it falls to the ground and waits until energy fully replenishes. During that time you have to drag it around which is extremely slow, so it's recommended to spawn droid carefully and never get to this point. For the same reason, you should take care when adding droids to the queue, where they'll wait until energy is restored or some other droids die if you've already reached max droid limit. If many droids die at the same time, GIMP can spawn all your queue in a few seconds, which will deplete its energy immediately. You can remove units from queue by clicking on them. You can speed up replenishing of GIMP's energy by collecting coins.

You can tell apart your and enemy buildings by color, your buildings have real-world colors (haha), enemy ones have either light red hue (standard buildings), purple hue (10x health), blue hue (invincible) or full red hue (buildings without power). You buildings also have a blue arrow icon which allows to move the building (single click) or "pack" the building (move it back to your inventory, double click).

At the bottom there is a buzzer which allows you to spin the Wheel of Misfortune (described later), if you have at least one press available. You charge it up (lighting up bulbs) by collecting coins. Once it is fully charged up, the buzzer press counter increases by one times the spin bonus for your current mission. The maximum buzzer press number is 99, if you have more, be sure to use it up before leaving the mission.


If you hit Tab, you pause the game and activate the strategic camera. It looks almost the same as the gameplay screen, just an additional bar with your buildings appears on the right.



You can scroll around the level using the left mouse button, and zoom out (and back in) by pressing S key. It's recommended to use the strategic camera to look around in the level, place or adjust your buildings, manage your droid queue, or just get some breathing time when things become too chaotic and hectic.

Due to some weird design decisions the view scrolls back to your character every time you select a building to be placed, so if you want to place it further away than in your immediate surroundings, use the zoomed out view to do that.

You can also control your droids in here by using the yellow X icon . A single click turns the droid's directions (left<->right), a double click packs the droid back to your inventory.

If you see a red rectangle on the ground, it means a dangerous area, either because there are enemy droids nearby or because there's an enemy turret tower that will shoot at you (only completely visible in the strategic view).

At the beginning of each mission, you'll see a difficulty slider.



There are 11 choices and 11 seconds to decide. It's hard to even read the descriptions in such a short time, so here's the same information provided below:


If you pick 50% or lower difficulty, you won't get the spin bonus when receiving buzzer presses nor you get any victory rewards at the end of the round. If you pick anything but 100% difficulty, you won't get any scoring bonus, even if you collect enough coins.

This game is quite tough on default 100% difficulty, so don't hesitate to pick a lower one if you keep losing. It's advisable to stay above 50% though, to receive the victory rewards and the spin bonus.

If press the red button at the bottom of the screen or the Q key during mission, the Wheel of Misfortune will appear, and with another press/click, you'll stop the pointer and hopefully win some prize.



There will be always money and/or power-ups included on the wheel. But units and buildings will only be present if they were mentioned among Spinner rewards on the main screen for this mission (and even that is affected by randomness). So if you need specific unit/building, be sure to spin the wheel in those missions where they are listed among spinner rewards.

Please note the time does not stop during spinning the wheel, and after you win a prize, it will be dropped to the ground and you still need pick it up (either by moving over it, or grabbing it with a hook). So it's probably not a good idea to use the wheel in the middle of a fight. You'll see a jumping arrow to confirm that you've picked up the power-up.

You don't need to play a level in order to get some spin rewards from it. You can easily select a level that has the rewards you need, start it, and immediately after that spin the wheel (maybe several times), pick up the rewards, and select Quit challenge. As long as you have picked up the rewards into your inventory, you'll keep them even after quitting the challenge.


This is an extremely important mechanic which is never properly explained in the game. Your inventory is persistent across all missions (except for the first five units, which you have always an infinite number). If you use some units/buildings in a mission and want it to persist to the next mission, you need to pack it back to your inventory, otherwise you'll lose it! The only exception is a successful completion of a mission, in that case all your units and healthy buildings are packed away automatically when you enter the rocket. But if you hit Retry challenge or Quit challenge, all your units and buildings placed in the mission will be immediately lost forever. To prevent this, you need to pack everything away manually before retrying/quitting challenge. Hit E to pack away all your units. Then double click on arrow icon for each of your building (in strategic view). Of course doing this every time is very annoying and I hope developers will adjust get rid of this mis-feature in future updates. If you die in a challenge, it's too late, you've lost your items.

When you pack a unit/building, a jumping arrow will indicate that you received it into your inventory (it does not indicate the number of received items).



There are some other uses for packing away units:

• If your droid is getting close to an enemy unit/building which will surely kill it, you can return it back to your inventory - double click on its X icon (in strategic view). You'll not lose it (as long as it had above 50% health), and instead you get it back and can deploy it again.
  
• You can pack away unnecessary droids when you need to quickly spawn some other droid and you've already reached your droid limit - you don't need to wait for them to die.
  
• You can pack away Madichin droid, which performs a suicide after 12 seconds. You can let it fight as long as it can, and once it starts to perform a suicide (or when you feel nervous), pack it away, and immediately deploy it again, and again, and again, without losing this unit.
  
• The limited droids are very useful and expensive. If you deploy them to quickly perform a single job (e.g. Mogey to quickly destroy a flying unit, or PinkrTON to destroy a nearby building), pack them up immediately afterwards so that they're not harmed.
  
• You can pack away buildings when you no longer need them (to be sure it's not damaged accidentally), or when an attack is incoming.
  
• If your building is slightly damaged (but you can still move it/pack it), pack it back into inventory and redeploy it. It will have full health.
  
• If there's a mission in which you lose when a timer reaches zero, and you already know you're not going to make it, pack your buildings and units before the timer gets to zero so that you don't lose them.

You can pack away buildings only if they have more than 80% health. You can pack away units regardless of health, but only receive them back if they had more than 50% health.

If your unit hits an electric fence at the edge of the level, it is auto-packed away, no harm will come to it.

Here are some tips for earning money/items/buzzer presses:

• To earn money, try to win the scoring bonus. The gold medal is sometimes hard to achieve, but you can often help it by spinning the wheel a few times and getting money bags (if you're lucky) or least regular items (if you have already full inventory, you receive some money instead).
  
• You can also get a lot of money if you pick a mission that is reasonably easy to accomplish and you can destroy a lot of enemy buildings in a mission. Enemy buildings yield a lot of coins, especially when attacking them with Poundcake.
  
• Fast and weak attacks yield more coins that slow and heavy attacks.
  
• If you're sure you'll lose the mission, pack up all your units and buildings, and then fail it (e.g. kill yourself). You'll keep the earned money this way. If you quit or retry challenge, you won't keep the money.
  
• If you're high on buzzer presses, pick a mission which doesn't have too many spinner rewards, which means your chance for getting money bags is higher. Spin the wheel and try to get the money bags.
  
• You need to finish a mission successfully to keep money earned during the mission.
  
• To earn buzzer presses, select an early game mission, which can be finished quickly, and yields a reasonable amount of coin. With your advanced buildings and units, you'll blast through early game missions quickly. Repeat those missions to increase the spin bonus. Once your spin bonus is 3x-5x, your number of buzzer presses will skyrocket. (For example, I received 24 presses in a single playthrough of mission 9-1 with spin bonus 4x, when using Poundcakes).
  
• To earn items (units/buildings/powerups), pick a mission which lists the spin reward you need. Select 0% difficulty, defend yourself and spin the wheel until you have enough. Then quit the mission - you won't keep any money, but you'll keep all new inventory items.
  
• If you're absolutely desperate, start the game a few times and get some free loading screen wheel awards.

• When you start the game, you'll spin a wheel of fortune before reaching the main screen. This is not just a gimmick, you'll really receive that item once your character lands on the stage (you can see a jumping arrow confirming it). If your inventory is depleted and you're low on money, you can simply start the game a few times to quickly receive some bonuses.
  
• Money is useless (except for global ladder), spend it!
  
• You can control whether your new droid spawns going left or right. Simply click on its picture in the spawn queue to set a direction (the default direction is the same as you're currently facing). This is best done with the strategy camera activated.