Stealth, finesse, efficiency.
When it comes to scoring assassinations on well-armed guards, only the best of the best can pull off the cleanest hits. Hopping from corner to corner, you must be akin to a deadly shadow that spares no quarter onto its prey but one false move can end your career in an instant. Imagine having to find yourself cornered and on the opposite end of several gun barrels. Speed kills, and thus you have to be swift or be dead. Are you brutal enough to become the best there is in Hunter Assassin?
Ruby Game Studio, the same folks who brought you titles like Gym Flip, Riddle Master, Novice Driver, and Brain Puzzle: Tricky IQ Riddle, up the ante in this high-adrenaline, high-speed stealth game: Hunter Assassin. Take the role of the titular assassin and clear out installations of armed goons that protect Gem hoards.
The only way to win is if you’re the only one left standing, but your biggest hurdle would be your own skill as an assassin. How will you fare? Will you make it through your missions alive or will you come home in a body bag? Read our Hunter Assassin beginner’s guide below and prepare to rack up your body count!
Hunter Assassin and Stealth Games in General
The stealth genre is nothing new in the gaming landscape. Though, in recent times, we haven’t been seeing too much of it.
For the unfamiliar, a stealth game involves your character sneaking around various areas in order to achieve an objective. Most of the time, each of the areas are crawling with armed enemies that will give chase and/or attempt to kill your character. In some cases, the objective would be to annihilate all enemies in the area but otherwise, most stealth games follow a storyline.
Occasionally, some assignments would involve taking out a high-priority target such as a boss or an official surrounded by elite guards. The mechanics of each stealth game vary, but in most cases, scoring kills can involve the creative use of gadgets or items at the player’s disposal. Famous stealth game franchises are Metal Gear (except for Rising: Revengeance which is a hack ‘n slash), Tenchu, Shinobido, Syphon Filter, Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed, and a few others.
Hunter Assassin is quite similar in this regard. Your main objective for the most part is simple: the total annihilation of anyone that moves. If you manage to kill all the enemies in the map, then you’ve won the level. There is no time limit, but if you stick around for too long, the enemy might find you and kill you.
Just like each level’s objective, the controls are also quite simple. Tap anywhere on the ground to move. Conversely, you may also drag your finger across the screen to direct your assassin, although we advise against this since you might ruin their pathing. Walk into an enemy and they instantly die.
This especially is best done from behind the enemy. If you happen to be in the enemy’s line of sight (the cone-shaped area that is always in front of them), they’ll spot you and shoot immediately, so killing them up front is a big risk for the most part.
Each time you kill an enemy, you are rewarded with Gems which you can spend on getting new assassins. Each assassin varies in stats, but we’ll get to explaining the importance of these in a bit. Despite the game being a rather simple member of the stealth genre, Hunter Assassin does have its fair share of nuances that have to be pointed out.
If you find yourself stuck in a particularly difficult level or if you think you’re doing something wrong, let’s refresh you on the basics of performing quick, easy, and smooth assassinations. Have you been getting your assassin killed a lot lately? Are you trying to figure out what you’re doing wrong?
Give our beginner’s guide below a read and maybe you’ll be back in top form in no time!
Hunter Assassin Tips and Tricks
A good assassin never gets caught. If they do, they’re dead. The key to successful assassinations is not how quickly you kill off your prey, but it’s the efficiency that counts. Scoring successful kills may even involve the usage of different traps or making noise in maps that allow these. So strap yourself in, because we’re about to turn you into an assassin on a whole nother level.
1. Patience is a Virtue
Never rush into anything.
This means that you shouldn’t just throw your assassin into any situation. It could spell death and you’ll be stuck repeating the level several times because you’d be easily caught if you act on impulse. However, your greatest weapon in this game isn’t the weapon that your assassin is holding; it is patience.
To assess a situation before you make your move will already make you a better assassin. This means taking note of what your enemies are holding, the range of their vision, where they are moving, etc. But patience and observation don’t just stop at the enemy. It also pays to know what’s in your surroundings. There could be traps littered about that could be your undoing if you’re not careful (more on this later).
This is the first step to being an efficient assassin. Wait before you strike… but don’t wait too long. This could mean death, too. Sometimes you will have no choice but to flee the scene since whenever you kill someone, nearby enemies will have heard the commotion. The approaching enemy will be much quicker and you could end up getting surrounded easily.
That said, when it comes to picking an assassin, don’t just pick any!
2. Choose Speed Over Health
As we’ve said earlier, a good assassin doesn’t get caught. This is why speed is more important than health. But what is it that we’re talking about, exactly?
Playing an assassin, any assassin, is like playing a character. Each of them have their own set of stats but some assassins have better stats than others. For instance, you’ll notice that one assassin has 60% more health than an assassin you unlocked earlier with just 20% more health.
This plays a very important role in the game since these stats greatly affect your performance during each level. While being able to survive shots sounds quite awesome, movement should be valued more since it gets you out of hairy situations rather quickly. That said, we highly recommend that you forego assassins that have health as their stat focus for the ones who utilize speed.
“But health provides better chances for survival,” you’d say. We’ll tell you why this isn’t always a great idea. As the game works, the enemy has a lot of guns at their disposal and many of them can dispatch you in a matter of a few shots. This gets even more ridiculous when you’re introduced to guards with shotguns. Once your assassin is caught, their innards would immediately become outards and the rest is history. Reiterating our point earlier: the best assassins never get caught.
With speed on your side, you are more agile with more room for error. You’ll be able to zip through corridors and slip into cracks between walls without difficulty. You may even get out of the enemy’s sight almost instantly, causing you minimal damage if they happen to fire at you. By the time they’ve pulled the trigger, your assassin will already have left them a trail on a wild goose chase.
Running around corners and catching your pursuers from behind will also be a piece of cake. This should make you score multi-kills more efficiently. Thus, speed is superior while health won’t do you much—pick the assassins that use speed more than health. Even if you have an assassin that has a small speed bonus, it will still make all the difference.
Having a speedy assassin doesn’t mean you should be hasty, though. It pays to slowly follow your target. Haste is required when you need to flee the scene.
3. Adjust Your Assassin’s Speed to Fit the Situation
You find a target of interest—a particularly strong enemy bearing a shield. But there is one problem: they’re close to their friends.
You can try immediately zipping toward them and slaying them on the spot. The catch here is that the enemy could end up surrounding you and you’ll only fail the level. Maybe you’d try a different route and find a better way to kill them only to find out that you might just be a little reckless in your decisions. It really helps to take small steps while following your chosen enemy.
Take for example you’re following an enemy through a corridor and you see them turn the corner. As long as they don’t turn around, slowly make your way toward them and then assassinate them immediately. If your target has some friends nearby while you kill them off, expect them to hear your kill and that they’ll be over very soon. Get a move on!
This is the best moment for you to find a good place to hide. Move far enough from the
scene, but don’t let the enemy out of your sight. Just in case they leave your vision, check the edges of the screen for red blips; these signify the directions in which certain enemies are.
Though, with regards to finding a place to hide, we don’t mean to just hide anywhere. The worst place for you to hide is in a corner.
4. Avoid Corners, Keep Moving
You’ve scored a kill, but here comes the enemy!
You dart from corridor to corridor, yet the enemy troops zero in on your location. The last place left to hide is a lonely corner in the room, but this mistake quickly becomes your undoing. Congratulations; you’ve had another assassin put to death. The best way you can avoid this mistake is by moving around constantly and never sticking to one place, especially corners. Let’s address the corner issue first.
Corners are definitely the worst place to go. Once you’ve hid yourself in a corner, there’s no other way out but forward. It’s moving forward that will get you killed since, if the enemy’s approaching, their field of vision will put your assassin within shooting range. You’re very unlikely to survive the hail of gunfire that follows. It’s even worse if you happen to be caught in a pincer attack as pictured above.
As for moving around, this should be your best bet in laying low. We don’t mean to move back and forth in the same corridor; we mean that you should get out of your current location and find a place to hang around on the other side of the map. Not only does it put you in a better position to study your enemy, you’ll also be leading the enemy around in a panic.
This won’t make them any less dangerous, however, since panicked enemies tend to change their direction a lot. Wait for things to die down and you’ll be able to score your next kill. Just don’t forget to move around again.
As easy as it looks with scoring kills, there is a technique that you can exercise to make sure that your efficiency makes the level easier to complete.
5. Score the Perfect Kills
Your assassin can’t possibly be an ordinary person. Granted that the game’s cast of characters would involve murderous animal folk, cyborgs, the undead, artificially-enhanced criminals, and the occasional demon clown, this is a given. But when you want to be efficient, sometimes killing the enemy one at a time won’t cut it.
The enemies have collision built in the game’s coding. This means that they will not be able to pass through each other. This is something you can take great advantage of, especially if they’re all stuck in a corridor. Whenever all the enemies are walking in a straight line down an isolated corridor, this is the perfect time for you to score a multikill.
A multikill is as its name implies—killing multiple enemies within a very short span of time. To achieve this means to walk through several targets at once and this is why we suggested setting them up in a corridor altogether.
When this happens, do not target the person at the tail end of the line; target the person in the very front. If your assassin walks toward the line as planned, they will kill the lined-up targets in quick succession. When done successfully, the game will give you a multikill counter for that moment.
That is to say, while the rush of getting a multikill is indeed exciting, don’t get too carried away in an attempt to score more. Your job is to take out all the remaining targets with the best of your ability. Besides, landing a multikill should make the rest of your job easier; you’ve brought yourself even closer to your goal within that moment.
Though, the enemies will still try to stand between you and your goal. It really pays to identify who is who.
6. Know Your Enemies’ Uniforms (or Guns)
The uniforms of each enemy aren’t just for show!
Sure, you may think that they’re a group of armed mercenaries that banded together to protect the installations, but the truth of the matter is that they all signify something somehow. In most video games, enemies can be color-coded for the player’s convenience and Hunter Assassin is no exception here.
One way you can observe the behaviors of each enemy is how they kill you. Get yourself cornered first or get yourself spotted on purpose just to see what the enemy can do. If you notice that their guns fire at a rapid rate, they can be quite dangerous from a distance. Enemies armed with shotguns will most likely kill you instantaneously since the spray of bullets will count as multiple hits at once. Though, there are certain enemies that stand out among the rest:
- Orange Uniform — Out of all the enemy types, these are probably one of the most dangerous ones. Armed with an automatic rifle, this type of enemy can destroy cover. If you happen to outrun their shots and hide behind boxes, consider those boxes destroyed.
- Red Helmet — These guys stand out well in a crowd. Their red helmets almost look like football helmets and they’re armed with powerful shotguns. Never get in their faces or you’ll be turned into Swiss cheese. The one pictured above is this enemy type.
- Blue Tracksuit —Introduced early on, these guys are no slouch in a fight since they occasionally toss high-damage grenades. Kill them when you can.
- Muscular Man with Big Gun — While these guys may be a shoutout to popular action movie stars, encountering them is nothing but a losing fight for you if you don’t sneak up behind them and kill them immediately. They are equipped with a powerful automatic shotgun that can kill you even quicker than the regular shotgun.
Be observant of the types of guns they are also carrying. You might notice that some of them are holding longer guns; these are most likely sniper rifles and their field of vision is greatly increased. Regardless, all of them can be killed with a carefully-timed dash from behind. Make it count!
This especially goes for shielded enemies which we will talk about next!
7. Beware of Shielded Enemies
Shielded enemies are a pain in the neck.
Unlike enemies without these, they cannot be killed from the front (though, killing the enemy from the front is a tricky maneuver to begin with). There is no way you can break their shields and they will constantly fire at you to keep you at bay.
If you happen to see a shielded enemy being followed by a group of non-shielded enemies, you may attempt scoring a multikill by targeting the enemy at the very front of the line. However, if the shielded enemy is the one leading the charge, try not to attempt this since shielded enemies may occasionally turn around and stop your advance. You will be shot dead in no time. If you can help it, shielded enemies might as well be your priority targets since they can be a nuisance in most situations.
There are ways you can instantly have them killed off, however…
8. Utilize Traps and Terrain
No stealth game is complete without traps!
If you really think about it, a complex with a bunch of armed guards running around shouldn’t be without traps just in case intruders try anything stupid. Thankfully, there are no such things as surveillance cameras. Though, if we were the villains of this story or the ones trying to keep the complexes safe, we’d have them installed immediately. Activating any trap in the game will cause enemies to move toward the source of the noise if they happen to be nearby.
There are at least 3 types of traps in Hunter Assassin:
- Bomb — The most rudimentary of traps. How it works is that you’ll set off a short timer if you happen to pass through its laser detection system. Enemies cannot be affected by this, but those caught in the blast, regardless if they have shields or not, will die instantaneously. The explosion will also destroy nearby obstacles.
- Cryo Mine — Similar to the bomb, the cryo mine requires some interaction to be activated. In this case, you’ll have to step on it to activate it. Once the mine is active, it will go off after a short timer and anyone caught in its blast will be temporarily frozen in place. This will make kills easy for you and, if you’re the one that got frozen, an easy target for the enemy. Despite being one of the more quiet traps, this still makes a great deal of noise that’ll attract nearby enemies.
- Spotlight — Probably the most dangerous trap in the game. The way the spotlight works is that it floats silently over the map, occasionally blending itself with the enemy’s field of vision. Once you have been spotted by the spotlight, a rocket will be fired from the sky and into your immediate location.
You’ll have a very short window for reaction; getting hit by the rocket will deal serious damage. Much like the bomb, this can instantly kill enemies with shields, but you will forfeit any “no detection” challenges you currently have on hand with you. The rockets won’t destroy nearby obstacles, but it will destroy bushes.
Speaking of bushes, you may also use your terrain to your advantage. Bushes are quite powerful since you may repeatedly kill your enemies in them. However, the catch is that, while they won’t be able to see, neither will you. If you happen to run into a shielded enemy inside a bush, you’ll be shot at and recovering from this incident will require you to leave the bush immediately or find a way around the gunfire.
Other things you can take advantage of are items in the map that make noise. For example, glass panels can be broken to cause noise. Barrels that contain health or Gems also cause noise when used, so be sure to activate these when you’d like to have the enemy’s attention drawn in this direction.
We’ve mentioned challenges earlier. What are they, exactly?
9. Complete Challenges Diligently
Challenges are what keep only the best assassins on their toes.
While some challenges are mundane such as completing a set number of levels, other challenges involve killing all enemies without getting seen or getting hurt. This is easier said than done. However, from what you’ve learned in this guide so far, you should be able to get a good idea on what you have to do in order to beat them.
Beating a challenge rewards you with Gems and these will help you unlock newer, better assassins. Be warned that the more times you unlock an assassin, the more Gems will be needed for the next assassin to be unlocked.
While this can get grindy, you can try taking a break by watching even more ads.
10. Watch Ads for Bonus Gems
While it’s unfortunate that Hunter Assassin is a game riddled by ads, it’s actually quite advantageous to view these when you get the chance.
At the completion of a level, you will be given an ad multiplier. You can get up to 6 times more Gems by tapping the Collect button at the perfect moment. Doing this will amass Gems more quickly, but if you feel like you might be doing something else at the moment, you may try out the Fortune Wheel in the main menu.
Watching ads to spin this wheel is at no cost whatsoever (just your time). Like we suggested, you might as well do this while you’re doing something else since it will be nothing but ads from here on out. After watching an ad, you will be prompted to spin the wheel either clockwise or counterclockwise. If you’re lucky, you might win a special assassin!
Hunter Assassin is a simple game but its nuances begin to show in the higher levels. Just remember what you’ve learned from reading this guide:
- Never rush into anything, be patient.
- Speedy assassins are superior to healthy assassins.
- Take small steps towards your enemies or run far away depending on the situation.
- Move from your location after scoring a kill and avoid corners—corners are a death sentence.
- Multikills save time and effort.
- Know who your enemies are before engaging them.
- Shielded enemies are the worst, take them out first!
- Traps and terrain go hand in hand. Use them to confuse the enemy!
- Challenges reward you with Gems.
- Ads are good for you. Watch them for prizes.
This concludes our guide for Ruby Game Studio’s Hunter Assassin. Kill well and often, and trust your instincts. Game on!
Are you a veteran assassin? Do you know how to get past levels with ease? Have you scored a really high multikill? Leave your thoughts in the comment area below!