Creeper World IXE

fun

These kind of games are so much fun. I love it

Easily my favourite puzzle game. It plays great, and you're often allowed to iterate your solutions on the go. There's almost always a fair few ways to get really good results. It plays great, and it looks absolutely stunning. Great game.

Played creeper world sine I was kid, was unsure about this one for months but my partner got it for me as an anniversary gift.
I love it. it's a unique take on creeper gameplay and i love that the story is another civilization that got to advance much farther in space than CW4, it seems this one has had the rift tech for a few centuries before, but this also makes me wonder if the creep allows different kinds of progress in technology before going to war as they lived along side the creep and even talked about diplomacy or at least existing close enough for the people to study it without reaction.

It could be argued that all the Creeper World entries are puzzle games in disguise, but IXE makes this so readily apparent that it takes away any sense of agency. Once you discover the right order of things to click, the level is over, even if it takes 30 minutes to sit through.

The physics/dust elements feel secondary and poorly integrated with the rest of the game play: if you weren't forced to use them to defeat specific obstacles you'd probably never interact with it.

As a longtime Creeper World fan, I'd say that you could get away with not playing this one. (Play the others they are amazing!)

I liked Creeper World 3, but others in the series didn't interest me. This one's grabbed me again though. In some ways it's "More of the same" with slight variations, but that's not a bad thing for me.

Instead of a command center, you have a capital ship. Other ship types are basically turrets. You move them around, and your capital ship sends packets to construct them and supply them with ammo, but you do need to think about supply lanes to the flagship a bit as well.

You can dig in this game but you can only place back temporary barriers, so you do have to be somewhat careful about what channels you open up for the creeper as well. Each level's had me thinking a bit about which way I want to attack from, which strategies and so forth, yet it's still the "chill strategy" I liked from CW3 without time limits. Other differences include gravity affecting fluid flow and compression, and dealing with things like sand, and the ability to mix certain reagents for various effects - such as acid to eat through metal.

If you like strategy but prefer it to be chill and relaxing compared to what you'd normally expect from strategy, if you like turtling and slowly considering how to move and expand, I recommend this game.

First playthrough is just fine, at the second the mechanics were unforgetable. If you've been a fan of the series play it and support the developer but dont expect anything groundbreaking.

It's like he took all the parts people liked most about the previous creeper world games and put it into one game. Still a little slow paced but a lot of fun for fans of the series.

when people see me play this they say it looks like competitive MS paint

yeah it good

At first, i was sceptical. But now, it's just as addictive as the previous ones, meybe even more.

An enjoyable game.

I dont usually do reviews, but I have been a fan of Knuckle Cracker games ever since i saw Particle Fleet Emergence before i had a decent PC. I CANNOT recommend this entire series enough. All of the solo developers' games are fantastic, and i was looking forward to the release of this one ever since its steam page was available. He has managed to keep all of his games within the same universe. IXE is like a perfect mix of creeper world 2 & Particle Fleet Emergence. Basically, blue-ish sentient goo is controlled by an alien race focused on universal domination, and you [the commander] lead a fleet of recovered vessels from failed expeditions, along with lore of the lost civilization, to eradicate the goo and save the multiple universes. The entire series is clearly a passion project, and Knuckle Kracker has done so well on ALL of them. My favorite series, and 6 OUT OF 5 RATING. If you enjoy IXE, PLEASE consider checking out the rest of his projects, especially Particle Fleet Emergence.

Perfect next part of this series. Moving from top down to side was right idea. More of a puzzle now which is perfect. If U r fan of Creepers - just buy and play.

Really disappointing addition to the creeper world series, all of the worst bits of the previous games with a terrible soil mechanic

I really enjoyed that game

Super excited for the game in concept, but within the refund period I’d gone through 10 levels that were just slogging against heaped up creeper without any real strategy besides “do something slightly faster”. Felt like all of the magic of the series was drained to allow for a sand particle. It’s like Creeper World 2, but I can only build 2 of each turret limiting options. It’s like Particle Fleet but the map is so small and static I don’t feel like I’m taking over areas and building a logistic grid. Upgrades boiled down to a single multiplier instead of any strategy. Particle system exists but felt largely unused. I’m excited for what creeper world comes next, but this was unfortunately a deep disappointment for me in the series.

I was worried to buy due to the negative reviews and lack of updates.

The dev is doing a terrible job communicating that he is implementing features based on player feedback every week. I would have bought 3 months sooner if he had published "News & Announcements" instead of simple updates (as we can't see all updates on the game page). You see, if you click on "See all updates," you'll see that all the problems people complained about in the reviews are already fixed, and the dev is relentlessly improving.

Summary: people complained, he added new features (quickly). The game is great.

By the way, I also played all the Creeper games. I started with Creeper 3, then bought 2, 1... 4...
By far, this is still the game series that I love the most. So yeah, I am not a "new player that haven't played the old titles". I played all of them: campaign, custom maps, dailies, etc.

Is it worth it? Definitely.

No Creeper game had a "pattern". This is what makes it so amazing. Every new title only has one thing in common: The Creeper. Mechanics, strategy, graphics (we went from 3D to 2D), units... apart from some core elements, we are playing an entirely new game. Do you know the effort it takes to build something NEW every time? This is not Kingdom Rush 5 using the same everything as Kingdom Rush 4, 3, 2, and 1.

Cheers to the dev, and my deepest apologies for not buying sooner.

If you, player, are reading this review, please go buy the game. Want a new experience? Buy the other titles in the series as well.
If you, Dev, are reading this review, please use the Steam Announcements feature a bit more. And thank you for all your hard work and your passion. You gave me so many challenging and fun moments.

Thanks.

P.S.: I will be giving away prizes I've accumulated over 4 years to any positive review within the next 30 days. This is because I’m sick of people writing reviews just to "conform" to what everybody else is doing. Publish yours, comment here, and I’ll send you a prize. Simple. Let's support the dev, he deserves it.

Its not a bad game by any means, but given its lack of multiplayer it really needs more content to be worth recommending.

Another amazing addition to the Creeper World series.

Decent game. Completed the campaign. Last mission turned into a platformer which was in essence an entirely different game stapled onto this one. Could have done without that one.

Otherwise, if you enjoy towerdefence games you'll most likely enjoy this one. I gave €20 for it which I think it's worth.

I really loved playing Creeper World IXE with its tactical challenge of commanding a fleet. Since there's no traditional base-building the focus is on dynamic combat scenarios. Harvesting different types of resources/terrain and combining them to achieve the desired effect also added a layer of complexity to the game. I've played through the entire game story, the side chapters and the original demo missions in ~ 2 weeks.

yknow I could go on and on about how mediocre the game is... but it uses both AI art and AI voice acting which is more then enough of a reason not to buy this game

More Creeper World! What else do I need to say? What's new in this one is the chemistry element which is really entertaining. I'm sure you can do a lot more with it than I did, but I managed to get by on brute force.
And once again you can build yourself to glory and victory. Never forget you're fighting a fluid.

I love this game, co-op would be cool.

Particle Fleet: Emergence meets Creeper World 2. Promising in theory, disappointingly tedious in implementation. I wanted to enjoy IXE, but it just didn't click for me like previous installments did.

Sadly cannot recommend.

I have played all the creeper world games so far, and bought this new one before even reading the reviews... My mistake... This game is a huge step backwards, from the downgraded graphics, to the poor story and lousy mechanics. We went from great weapons, cool graphics and a great story to this? Whoever was giving feedback to the developers and said that this was good should be slapped up side the head with a fish, preferably a large salmon "Monty Python Style" I will be playing Creeper world 3 for the next few hours in protest as well. :)

Thanks to the recommendation of Angory Tom, I have played all of the creeper world games. Despite being a slightly new take on the series, I loved this one just as much as the others! 10/10!

I loved CW3, CW4. I was cool with Particle fleet. The problem with IXE is it just fell apart when it introduced a unit that had to mix 2 solutions to solve problems. It's not a fun mechanic, and the base game didnt have enough going for it for me to push through that.

Maybe the mod scene will save this game, but I can't foresee how. I would not recommend it. I don't hate it, but for my money i would get CW3 and CW4, play the campaign and then the custom created levels (where you get 90% of the content) and move on.

It plays like a combat mode for The Powder Toy. I really enjoyed the campaign - the story is unremarkable, but the progression from single-ship to small fleet, and the introduction of new mechanics is exceptionally well paced. Missions seem to evolve in a way that's very intuitive, and I only rarely found myself too frustrated. It's not as static as a tower defense, but still slower than a RTS - missions are difficult but surmountable. A really singular game.

The falling sand engine is a neat way to re-envision the threat of flowing creeper, but it comes with a truly atrocious performance hit AND terrible story to boot. It IS fun to carve out spaces to redirect reservoirs of creeper goop, and it's fun to watch in- well, I can't really call it real time, it gets pretty slideshowy. 'Sides that, it's still creeper world - small fighter (cannons) hold back thin goop, missile ships (mortars) ignore walls if there's pathing to the point of attack, nullifiers break emitters, spirit ships (strafers) counteract digitalis, etc.
I'm not too fussed about the limitation put on quantity of ships (you can override this with Free Build Mode) as it did foster some creative thinking, but it does remove resource tension once you've put your reactors in a safe place. Put ship by green ore, build all reactors, slam out your coil ships (beams for spore emitters) before you get evaporated, then figure out how to play the level. Repeat.

I can't recommend it. The performance is too poor and interrupts the novelty of the engine, and the story might genuinely be better if all the dialogue was stripped out. Creeper Worlds 3 and 4 are better choices

Really Enjoyed this game, Played all creeper games, Id probably rank this about the 4th best of the games.
The only negative part of the game is the mixing materials, where sometimes it works great, but other times if you make a mistake or by accident you can loose materials which require a full restart of the map.

7/10

Creeper world good game

As always Knuckle Cracker does not dissapoint.

I do prefer the previous games for the RTS vibes mutch more than this one , also there are some things that are unecessarely complicated.

But overall not a bad game

Creeper World IXE is not a bad game, but it is less than satisfying in defining mission constraints. Of course, players are given the option of enabling a feature that disables build limits, with the only consequence being an aesthetic markdown next to their publicized score, all missions begin with players operating at an unwarrantable deficit to race against the ever-growing "Creeper" threat (lest players spend more time than needed in a level that might be less than liberal in resources and terrain). This is especially maddening when certain levels bury much-needed resources in Creeper-related hazards or require players to dedicate much of their time digging out those resources while said looming threat thickens to either deadlock the level or misappropriate much of the player's precious time. Whether it is because Knuckle Cracker still thinks it is in the flash era or they take too many liberties in boxing players with rigid level design, this product caters primarily to those most loyal to the Creeper World series as it is unimaginable for the standard RTS enthusiast to not be bored to tears after playing a few hours' worth of levels.

If you love tower defense type games, give this a chance as well as the previous entries in the series. One of my favorite series and one of the few games I have 100%

I have to believe that if you know knuckle cracker games you know what you're getting into. I think this game did succeed in the classic creeper world formula of gradually pushing forward against the tide.

Like all knuckle cracker games, It's a tech demo bodged together with some hilariously silly plot, and it's clear what the focus was on this outing: The falling sand sim and the interactions within. Missions weren't all that fancy, campaign wasn't all that fancy. Everything is simple. It's taking the fluid sim dynamics explored in creeper world 4 and bringing them into the side perspective of Creeper World 2.

The fluid dynamics of the creeper here, I think, are the perfect. It's a blend of the low res pixel art asthetic with the dynamic fluid simulation. It works. Creeper be creepin in this one. 10/10.

Going back to the Particle Fleet: Emergence style resource constraint of limited ships was... Well I personally did not like it. I suspect the developer knew that and shoved in a "hey do you want to turn the arbitrary resource constraints off?" right at the start. And I didn't do that on the presumption that the game was balanced for the resource constraints (It is).

I don't like those constraints, but the game doesn't doom you to an innevitable death as a result of having those constraints. Use the resources your given and you can make it through fine.

This dev is weird. This studio is weird. And I think I like it like that. Looking forward to your next one Knuckle Cracker <3

An excellent addition to the series, love the new mechanics and pixel simulation.

another great creeper world game

Recommended for Creeper World fans (I've played all of them), BUT it did take me 5-10 levels to really get into it, so play one of the earlier games first if you're new to the series.

Good:
- Interesting "chemistry" mechanics with particles (nothing too complicated).
- Good variety with level design, especially later on.
- Challenging but not too difficult. Hard to put down.
- Creeper liquid animations were quite mesmerising to watch on some levels.

Bad (?):
- Earlier levels felt more like a puzzle with the limited ships/units compared to other Creeper World games, and - especially while learning the mechanics - it was quite easy to end up in a stalemate where neither side was making significant progress. Later in the game with more mechanics available and better knowledge of the game this was less of an issue.
- I tried the newer "Free Build" game mode on a couple of earlier levels to avoid stalemates, expecting it to play more like other Creeper World games, but found it far too easy to be enjoyable (since power generation takes negligible space). I was glad I persevered through learning the earlier levels instead of Free Build, but it's good to have the option available.

First game in the series where I've had to restart a map because it became impossible to complete. It feels more like trial and error to find the developer's intended solution instead of solving the map with the resources at hand. Still a fan of the series but I can't recommend this entry considering how solid the other games are.

This is gold! Its just the perfect Game both fun and challanging, normally games get boring fast but this is a masterpiece like Kill it with fire 1 and 2! Respect. 10/10. Normally i find many mistakes fast and then its just not fun anymore but there is no mistake here.

I really dig the spin on the game mechanics. I like this every bit as much as I do the other versions of the Creeper universe. At the very LEAST... it is definitely worth a play-through.

Sorry but this is not it. It's just not fun trying to play discount tower defense Noita. CW always been fairly innovative, but they went the wrong direction with this one. Sad.

This is a more puzzle-like and less of an RTS / tower defense take on the Creeper World games.
It is by no means a bad game, but I can see how some might've had very different expectations here.

If you figure out the current level's "twist", then you will probably not struggle with any of the campaign missions.
For me, it was honestly more of a relaxing and quite hypnotic experience with a nice soundtrack in the background.

There are definitely a few valid criticisms here, though:

The last mission completely changes gameplay around. Which in general is a really nice idea and I wish there were more campaign missions of that type - it's actually quite fun.
But doing this for the final mission in a campaign is honestly a bad idea. As a player, you want to have some great final battle with all the fancy tools at your disposal. So it ends up feeling very unrewarding and straight up odd.

Even if you take your time with the campaign, it is quite short. There are more self-contained missions/challenges in the game, but they have no real connection to anything.
It would've been much better if there would've been more campaign missions, especially optional ones that could be played to unlock some bonuses. That would also have solved the issue of the campaign being 100% linear, making its map and navigation feel almost pointless.
The story is... weird, even after finishing it I still don't really know what the IXE actually is/was, tried to do, where it all went wrong and if it is the bad guy or we are.

All that said, if you enjoyed the other Creeper Worlds, this one is definitely worth checking out. It might not be the best, but if the others are a 8/10 or more for you, this one could still be a 6-7/10.

Creeper World IXE is, unfortunately, a misstep in a franchise that once defined its own genre. If Creeper World 3 was the pinnacle—offering strategic depth, emergent gameplay, and a perfect balance of chaos and control—then IXE feels like a regression, doubling down on the weakest aspects of the series rather than evolving its strengths.

The biggest disappointment? The perspective. IXE returns to the side-view format of Creeper World 2, which was always the oddball of the series. The joy of Creeper World has always been managing fluid, organic threats on a large scale, not dealing with confined tunnels and awkward vertical combat. This shift makes the game feel constrained rather than expansive, a downgrade from the strategic freedom of Creeper World 3.

Then there’s the linearity. IXE doesn’t just feel more restricted—it is more restricted. Levels seem to have a single correct solution, forcing you into rigid execution rather than rewarding creative strategies. Part of what made earlier titles great was the ability to tackle problems in multiple ways, experimenting with unit placement and energy management. IXE strips away that flexibility, turning missions into puzzles where alternative approaches are punished with failure.

And let’s talk about the story—or rather, the continued lack of one. By this point, the franchise deserves something more cohesive than "The Creeper is here again, deal with it." The developer has seen enough success to justify hiring a real writer to expand the lore beyond the same vague, half-formed narrative we’ve seen before. IXE, more than anything, highlights that the franchise is running out of new ideas. If Creeper World 4 was the last major evolution, IXE is proof that simply repackaging the concept isn't enough anymore. At this point, revisiting Particle Fleet would have been a more interesting direction.

To give credit where it’s due, the pixel art is fantastic. The visuals are crisp, and the game has a nostalgic charm. But at this point, it might be time for a Command & Conquer: Remastered-style update—let players swap between high-quality modern textures and classic pixel art. The series has always prioritized function over form, but a refresh wouldn’t hurt, especially if it brings in new players.

Ultimately, Creeper World IXE isn’t a bad game—it’s just a disappointing one. It leans into the weakest aspects of the series, strips away the freedom that made previous entries great, and offers little in the way of fresh ideas. If you’re a die-hard fan, you might find something to enjoy. But if you were hoping for the next evolution of the series, you’re better off replaying Creeper World 3—because IXE isn’t it.

Another solid entry from Knuckle, Thanks for making a game worth playing.

Completely "Meh." It was/is an interesting attempt at new mechanisms but this game is just a slog to get through. While CW games do take some "hold the line" and "pound them into submission" game play it just feels like IXE really puts it to a whole new level. I didn't do a refund or anything because it's not BAD, but definitely not a strategic mind bender like the old games could be.

Kind of a miserable game for a Creeper World. Lots of glacially slow eating away along fixed corridors and trying to deal with phantoms with your entire 2 anti-phantom guns.

god the pixel art ship movement is so damn cool, but if you lose or accidentally destroy any of the combination resources you literally cannot complete a mission. It is physically impossible. It just seems that there is only one solution to each level, and if you do it out of order you fail every time. All the combination resources can be gathered by lathes EXCEPT water, which gets destroyed by it, Like I'm not bitching about difficulty when I say the mission becomes unbeatable. It becomes functionally impossible to win. That is just really, really bad game design, because you may not even intentionally lock yourself out because lathes are stupid and just destroy or build everything that you paint.

Also because of the pixel art style, it becomes really, really difficult to tell how concentrated the creeper is in each location unless you pay attention to a very specific number box. And if you breach the room with that creeper, your ships almost certainly cannot hold back the tide and will get pushed back or destroyed. I really really want to like this but it just feels like such a step backwards for the series.