Aight here's the deal

[dest.]

I've clocked a lot of hours in this game. This is one of the best shoot 'em up sidescrolling pieces of work I've ever laid eyes upon. This stuff is just fantastic, looks awesome and sounds great. There's no excuse not to pick up this masterpiece.

[Kinder Lijk]

Yes. Finished this game more than once. Great aesthetics.

[Papa Shekels]

I have been unable to reach the fourth level on hard difficulty, since I had a beta version of this game in childhood without a menu or difficulty option. It feels like cheating to play on anything other than hard. My best runs still amount to two lives and no continues on the final boss of third level...anyway, just found out about the passive resistance bonus, gonna try now. That aside, the game is amazing and I love it. I have countless hours played on a non-steam version, and the graphics and gameplay are still great. Strongly recommend, especially for such a cheap indie game with replayability.

[Slapman]

I just finished the game but couldn't do it without cheats, even on easy mode. It's those two flying spaceships that fire lightning lasers at you at the same time that get me. To cheat, you can press Alt and then either 1, 2, 3 or 4 to get 20 seconds of a powerup, or press Alt and F12 to go invincible for a short time. Good luck!

[Papa Shekels]

I can't get past the third level on hard, but I can finish the game in one run on easy. The thing about this game is your main priority is avoiding the obstacles - it is better to just shoot blindly while dodging projectiles then keep holding that button until they die. If you have a perfect run, you will always be equipped with enough tools to win. It is just a matter of skill from there

[Anthony Flack]

FYI "hard" difficulty is the game's original difficulty. Apparently I made the game too hard! So some other difficulty levels were hacked in by Mike Boeh of Retro64, who also added other sensible things like mouse control and autofire when he updated the game to be a downloadable title. But the other difficulty levels are a fairly simple hack, mostly involve the enemies shooting fewer bullets. In some parts this makes the game really easy and in other parts it makes barely any difference.

[Papa Shekels]

Originally posted by Anthony Flack:

FYI "hard" difficulty is the game's original difficulty. Apparently I made the game too hard! So some other difficulty levels were hacked in by Mike Boeh of Retro64, who also added other sensible things like mouse control and autofire when he updated the game to be a downloadable title. But the other difficulty levels are a fairly simple hack, mostly involve the enemies shooting fewer bullets. In some parts this makes the game really easy and in other parts it makes barely any difference.

Bit of a necro from 2014 but yes, I do remember this. I had an old CD copy of this from the early 2000s from some gaming magazine (possibly bootleg) and there was no difficulty setting, or menu. It just tossed you straight into the game.

[Anthony Flack]

Yeah, the original game was more like a straight imitation of arcade games; it had a rolling demo etc. in place of a menu. I actually kind of wish I still had a copy of the original release as I lost it a long time ago.

Sorry for the necro, I only just looked in here today because somebody asked me about my history and I linked them here, and that's when I noticed all these message posts about Platypus I never knew about and thought I might try answering some people's questions...