Platypus

Developer: Idigicon
Steam Release: Jun 2004
Hours Played: 3.6
Similar To: Dandy... / Nandeyanen - The 1st Sutra / Reign of Bullets /  Steredenn 
Rating: 4/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
Platypus is an old-school style side-scroller where it appears high-scores rely solely on skill rather than on upgrades between playthroughs (but more on this later). Every new game starts you from scratch where you begin with a standard set-up. Sure, you pick up power-ups in the form of stars as you play giving you rapid fire (blue), barrier bullets (green), spread attack (yellow), beefy rocket-missiles (red) and lightning lasers (light blue) but these all appear as part of your run not on points spent in between. Bog-standard rules apply: you continuously move forwards from left to right while moving anywhere on the screen and blasting at enemies. There is just one single ability - fire. There is nothing else! For extra rewards, mini-bosses drop fruit which you can pick up for boosts to your score.
   

BALANCE & PACE
For a start, you'll have to get used to the developers terminology where they seem to have the term "level" and "area" mixed up. That is to say, the game is divided into four levels with each containing five areas. Anyway, with each area taking about 2 or 3 minutes to complete, the game really does narrow down to firing away at the bad guys while trying not to lose your five lives. There really isn't much more to it but the gameplay mostly shines with its variety of enemies. You'll get the one-hit cannon fodder types in the form of flying saucers; submarine-like foes that enter the fray from behind you; the tin barrels that take quite a few hits to take down and those that gravitate up towards the chunky bosses. It has two other big plus points...
 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
The first of its two main other strengths lies in its playful and child-like presentation. Imagine that life-sized characters from the Wallace & Gromit films have tiny explosives placed inside their bellies along with a bag of gunk. Then imagine shooting at them with a machine gun. Times this by a hundred and you get the type of chaos that ensues in a game of Platypus. Add to this the second of its strengths - its melodic bassy chiptune-like soundtrack to chug things along, and it really does play as good as this sounds. Another fine touch is the way bullets smack into more robust enemies leaving bullet holes and damage to indicate how close to annihilation it is. Its downsides include its fixed low resolution and almost complete lack of settings including the inability to play in windowed mode, plus absence of controller support in its menu screens.
     

PROGRESS SYSTEM
From the start-screen you get three difficulty settings to choose from: Easy, Normal and Hard. You're then given the choice to start from one of four unlockable starting levels and proceed to battle your way through its five areas with the final one consisting of a hard-to-bring-down boss. You'll know when this happens as it all goes silent before some heroic music starts playing. Each level takes about 12 minutes to complete. Unfortunately, Platypus suffers from a major flaw in its score-system in that once you've completed a level, you retain your score and then given the choice to start from any level once again. As there is no mode that forces you to start from Level 1 and to go through them sequentially there is nothing to stop you repeating the easiest Level 1 over and over! 
  
     

CONCLUSION

In redeeming itself, it must be noted that Platypus has a local and not an online high-score chart so in this respect it's fine to play the game how you want. But personally, separate high-scores for each level and perhaps for a campaign (starting from Level 1 and working your way through) for each difficulty would have given the game vastly more replayability value. Other features of the game include a display of stats and a small bonus after each area, along with two credits which is essentially a set of five ships that you can continue with after your death. (But, hey, with its deeply flawed score-system what's the point?) Still, with those splattering graphics and that jolly feel-good soundtrack - not forgetting that local single-player high-score chart that you can personalise - Platypus just about deserves its place in my Top 10 of 2D side-scrolling shooters