Booster Boxes:
Booster Boxes were the original helpers in Two Dots.
A Booster Box is an item you can earn by watching videos, logging in daily, buying them, or playing Expeditions and getting them added to your inventory. Booster Boxes can be used at the start of a level, before you even see the stage and the way the dots are arranged. This can be especially annoying when you use one, and then the stage reveals several boxes just waiting to be made*… all of which are destroyed by whatever random Booster Box you were given.
Here are the types of Booster Boxes you will see:
- Bombs, aka “the useless one” — If you get stuck with this Booster Box, a little gray dot will start at the top-left and work its way to the bottom-right, row by row, leaving behind up to three total bombs (but usually fewer) that will either not work effectively or will destroy an existing square that you really want to make.
- Boxes, aka “boxes” — This Booster Box will ideally grab three 2×2 areas of your board and replace them with single-color dots (never the same three colors) so you can make an easy square — as long as you don’t trigger a lotus. If there aren’t enough dots on the board, you may get two, one, or even zero 2×2 areas (certain stages aren’t set up to have two dots in any direction), and that sucks. But usually this one is pretty good.
- Bullseye, aka “clear one column and one row” — I like this Booster Box because about 50 percent of the time it will clear out an annoying obstacle. Then it will replace everything it clears with dots of one color — which can often lead to an easy square, especially if other obstacles have cleared out more dots.
- Droplets, aka “paint all the dots one color” — This Booster Box is often the best one you can get, especially on a level with a lot of dots. Everything except wilds and obstacles will be painted over, and if you’re lucky you can make a very large polygon and turn everything inside of it into a bomb.
- TNT, aka “like bombs, but they don’t suck” — The TNT Booster Box will pick three random dots (of three different colors) and light them up. Make a match of even just two dots, where one is a TNT dot, and you’ll clear every dot of that color — and hit any beetles or gems of that color as well. Sometimes you’ll end up accidentally clearing one TNT dot with another, and that’s no fun, but it’s worth the risk.
Power-Ups:
At some point, the game developers decided they should add something else you can buy. Thus Power-Ups were born. Power-Ups can be used during a stage, at any time, and they are often quite useful. Here they are:
- Shufflers: These are the most frequently-awarded Power-Ups, and they do exactly what they say — when you use one, it will shuffle all the colored dots on the board (but not any obstacles or wilds) in hopes that you will get a box, or at least a better situation. I will say that if you start an Expedition level and the situation doesn’t look very good, use a shuffler. Don’t be shy.
- Erasers: Again, these do exactly what they say they will — erase one dot. There’s a caveat, though: they’ll only hit ice or slime for one, instead of completely clearing it away. They’re also the least-frequently awarded Power-Ups, so use them sparingly.
- Color Bursts (or Color Bombs): This Power-Up will clear one color from the board (of your choosing). It will also land one hit on anything that can take hits — gems, beetles, ice, and slime. These aren’t as frequently given as shufflers, but they’re more frequently given than erasers, so use at your discretion.
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Josh Roseman: Writer, Voice Guy, Dad, Human 