This is the first game that almost drove me to throw Playdate up the wall. Angel Pop, the bullet hellfire that dropped on the Playdate Catalog last month, is utter chaos. Playing as a cute little girl, you must fend off constant enemy fire for 50 or more levels, trying to clear each stage of all enemies within a limited time frame, while shells bombard you from all sides. It moves incredibly fast and at some points there can be up to 1000 objects on the screen. Basically, it’s everything a person could want in a bullet hell, and I’m totally hooked.
Angel Pop really tests the limits of Playdate with so much happening on screen all the time, but plays with impressive fluidity. The game is set in what developer NNNN describes as an “unreal dream world,” and the art brings the cartoony player character and enemies to great effect with moody backgrounds such as dark cityscapes. It really nails the arcade feel of things.
He uses a combination of ever-changing difficulty and score bonuses that give you extra lives, allowing you to take things to a difficult level without going completely unrewarded. You can start a round normally, but play a little too well and soon you will find yourself in a more difficult mode. Or, there’s the option to play only in Nightmare mode, which locks the game on the hardest setting (Death). You can use either the crank or the D-pad to control the direction of your bullets, which is unlimited, and when you’re in a tight spot, there’s a limited number of bombs you can throw for close range attacks. .
Angel Pop It makes a great case for shmups on Playdate, and I’m now inspired to check out all the others after playing mostly slow-paced games. It’s a lot of fun and a lot of frustration — I’m only halfway through so far, and there’s a lot of yelling involved.
