Bird Tapper: Purple Platoon Panic
released on Nov 08, 2023
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A month back, I had reviewed Super Meat Boy Forever on this site. I cited it as one of the worst games I had ever played, being frustrating in nature, lacking lots of polish and a sense of overall direction. It was an impersonation of what the original game stood for, and what the game stood for. During the development of Purple Platoon Panic, a commonly cited inspiration was Super Meat Boy Forever. A large amount of flaws I had with Forever were only highlighted when I played Purple Platoon Panic. I checked out this game thanks to Salt N’ Spam’s video on it, comparing it to Forever in several aspects. A lot of our ideas paralleled each other for both games as we had similar issues with Forever, but I’d still recommend watching his Purple Platoon Panic review, as well as his Forever review, as he goes more in-depth to the game compared to me. The links to both are here and here, respectively. Tell them that ZeusDeeGoose sent you.
I was surprised at how fun Purple Platoon Panic was, how it encourages experimentation with the levels while maintaining Super Meat Boy Forever’s simplistic controls. For the true Super Meat Boy Forever (and intended, I guess?) experience, I played it on mobile, and it works like a charm. I wish that it wasn’t locked to browsers as I had some weird issues with iOS highlighting the game in blue text, and uppercutting is a bit cumbersome without multi-tap, but I won’t fault it for that as it can also be played on PC without issues. For starters, I complained in the original that the controls were incredibly limited, with only a jump, punch, and slide, which didn’t work when the levels expected you to speed through it to get the A Rank, in an auto runner. Mastering the “levels” be damned, you just needed to spam jump, punch, dive on repeat to get the A Rank. And if you wanted more excuses to break a fucking keyboard, you have to do it all deathless for 100%. It doesn’t sound fun, and that’s because it isn’t. Bird Tapper fixes all of this. First off, you have a triple jump, and an uppercut. No longer are levels locked to the same unfun controls than before, it feels much more expansive and has a wider degree of control. If you fuck up and jump too early, you can actually correct yourself, rather than being locked into your own doom. It’s not an easy game per se, but the game is forgiving to your mistakes as you achieve mastery of the game mechanics. This lack of consideration plagued the deathless achievements of the original Forever, as you had to input everything essentially perfectly in order to win, which wasn’t the case in the original at all. The levels in Bird Tapper take full advantage of the greater focus on controls, by making each level have a score count. Each score threshold represents 3 things; your first clear of the level is Bronze; the baseline skill level. It’s easy to get and can often be done on your first try. Silver is an intermission between being new and mastering the level. It’s often achieved by going for Gold ranks, which represent complete mastery of the the level. The primary challenge is to chain as many enemy kills without touching the ground, which resets the combo, and you really have to use everything to your advantage. For example, knocking the soldiers into each other instantly kills them, and adds to your combo chain, which is needed if you want to kill an enemy behind a bomb, for example. The game encourages you to keep trying for those higher ranks, as they’re directly tied to your progression. The rankings of Bird Tapper are nearly perfect. It allows players to get accustomed to the game, and invest either the bare minimum, or the upper limits of skill level in the game. A solid game all around; Purple Platoon Panic is short, yet sweet, and offers a better experience than Forever with great tunes blasting in the background. It’s quite literally free, so I highly suggest that you check it out if you have the time. And I highly suggest the developers to create a Steam release containing a gajillion more levels with the same design philosophy as beforehand and a level editor, because it’s really fun and I would buy it. Me and my Steam Deck would be happy.
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh binding of isaac rebirth review series coming soon, been in the works for a while now but it’s coming to fruition now. hope you enjoy! oh and spunky 2 coming soon woooooooooooooooooooooo!
also fun fact: i submitted this to igdb
I was surprised at how fun Purple Platoon Panic was, how it encourages experimentation with the levels while maintaining Super Meat Boy Forever’s simplistic controls. For the true Super Meat Boy Forever (and intended, I guess?) experience, I played it on mobile, and it works like a charm. I wish that it wasn’t locked to browsers as I had some weird issues with iOS highlighting the game in blue text, and uppercutting is a bit cumbersome without multi-tap, but I won’t fault it for that as it can also be played on PC without issues. For starters, I complained in the original that the controls were incredibly limited, with only a jump, punch, and slide, which didn’t work when the levels expected you to speed through it to get the A Rank, in an auto runner. Mastering the “levels” be damned, you just needed to spam jump, punch, dive on repeat to get the A Rank. And if you wanted more excuses to break a fucking keyboard, you have to do it all deathless for 100%. It doesn’t sound fun, and that’s because it isn’t. Bird Tapper fixes all of this. First off, you have a triple jump, and an uppercut. No longer are levels locked to the same unfun controls than before, it feels much more expansive and has a wider degree of control. If you fuck up and jump too early, you can actually correct yourself, rather than being locked into your own doom. It’s not an easy game per se, but the game is forgiving to your mistakes as you achieve mastery of the game mechanics. This lack of consideration plagued the deathless achievements of the original Forever, as you had to input everything essentially perfectly in order to win, which wasn’t the case in the original at all. The levels in Bird Tapper take full advantage of the greater focus on controls, by making each level have a score count. Each score threshold represents 3 things; your first clear of the level is Bronze; the baseline skill level. It’s easy to get and can often be done on your first try. Silver is an intermission between being new and mastering the level. It’s often achieved by going for Gold ranks, which represent complete mastery of the the level. The primary challenge is to chain as many enemy kills without touching the ground, which resets the combo, and you really have to use everything to your advantage. For example, knocking the soldiers into each other instantly kills them, and adds to your combo chain, which is needed if you want to kill an enemy behind a bomb, for example. The game encourages you to keep trying for those higher ranks, as they’re directly tied to your progression. The rankings of Bird Tapper are nearly perfect. It allows players to get accustomed to the game, and invest either the bare minimum, or the upper limits of skill level in the game. A solid game all around; Purple Platoon Panic is short, yet sweet, and offers a better experience than Forever with great tunes blasting in the background. It’s quite literally free, so I highly suggest that you check it out if you have the time. And I highly suggest the developers to create a Steam release containing a gajillion more levels with the same design philosophy as beforehand and a level editor, because it’s really fun and I would buy it. Me and my Steam Deck would be happy.
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh binding of isaac rebirth review series coming soon, been in the works for a while now but it’s coming to fruition now. hope you enjoy! oh and spunky 2 coming soon woooooooooooooooooooooo!
also fun fact: i submitted this to igdb