Angel Pop
I love shmups of the bullet-H-E-double-hockey-sticks variety, but I am not the best at them. I have multiple copies of Ikaruga, DoDonPachi, and Radiant Silvergun across many platforms and I can get to like… the second level of each on normal difficulty. The only reason I can see the later levels in arcades is because I can get there just by putting more money into the machine, no matter how quickly I blow up. (I’ll never get that high score, though.) Angel Pop scratches that itch! And it’s kind of… mixed media? The art style of this game is wild.
Luckily, the developer told me some tricks to do well at this game, and I’ll share some of my own, too! I did manage to beat all 50 levels by myself (using continues). I’ll take it!
Angel Pop was first released in demo form as part of the Yellow Square Jam back in October 2023. But it’s come so far since then that the demo isn’t even available to download anymore – the game has so improved that the developer known simply as NNNN didn’t want to give the wrong impression of the full game. And what a full game it is. While DM-ing with NNNN, they talked about how the game shifts into different genres by the end of its ~20 minute playtime. At first I was like, “Really? I was only able to get up to the teddy bear and it is still firmly in the shmup genre at that point.” But then I got better. And the game got even weirder.
First, quick sidebar: this game can be 20 minutes long only once you get really good at it. I did well with Summit, beating that game in a fraction of the time that many other players did. But that was a platformer, my bread and butter. This one was so hard that I had to take a break to play Summit while getting up the nerve to come back for more Angel Pop. I thought the evil teddy bear was about all I could take, but that was only 40% into the game. Luckily, you can continue from levels that end in a 1 (11, 21, 31, and 41) to make it easier to get to the final boss at level 50. Your score starts at zero when you use a continue and you can’t pick the difficulty level, sure, but it’s nice to be able to actually see the end of the game if you use some STRATEGIES.
Spoiler Warning: I’m about to talk a lot about things you might want to figure out for yourself, but I would’ve never been able to beat this game without using some of these tips, and I also discuss some of the endgame content, so turn away if you don’t want to be spoiled on any of the surprises! Main takeaway is that this game is awesome and totally worth six bucks, especially if this is a genre you’re interested in. Okay spoiler warning over, let’s get really into it.
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Let’s talk strategies first. When you start a new game, you can pick the difficulty level. Lower levels mean less points, but you’ll also die way less. You’ll want to start out as high as you can to rack up points on the earlier stages, because you get an extra life at every 100,000 points. You have three bombs per life, and they’re very “use ‘em or lose ‘em” because they don’t replenish until your death. They damage everything around you and also give you a limited-time barrier from enemy attacks. As you do well in each stage, the difficulty increases, but using a bomb decreases the difficulty by one level. Not using a bomb in a particular level gives you bonus points. It’s a tightrope you get to walk between getting overwhelmed and getting lots of points.
When you defeat an enemy, each one of its bullets on the screen immediately turns into a coin that’s worth points. So the best strategy is to wait for the screen to be filled with bullets and then kill the enemies… if you can. You can shoot either by using the crank, or it’ll shoot in the last direction you were moving before pressing B. When you stop cranking, it stops shooting, because you need a way to let the enemies fill the screen with bullets for you to coin up. For me, I much preferred the D-pad control scheme (so did NNNN, because it’s easier to shoot bombs). It’s also easier to strafe, and I like to shoot in the same direction a lot more than spray ‘n’ pray.
Do not hoard your bombs. They earn you tons of points and are the only way to decrease the difficulty level, and more points equals more lives equals more bombs. They’re also your only shield, and sometimes there just isn’t a spot on the screen to hide.
At the end of each level, every spot on the screen that an enemy died turns into a flower. Collect them all for big points, or shoot them for less points, but still more than zero. You only have a moment to collect them before the next stage starts, so sometimes you’ll be grabbing coins on one side of the screen and shooting flowers on the other side of the screen to maximize your end-of-stage bonus points. Grab what you can, and shoot what you can’t.
About halfway through, the game will morph into a side-scrolling shmup like Keio Flying Squadron or Einhänder or Platypus or Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy or why are these the only genre references I have, I’m don’t know and I apologize. If you’ve played all four of these games, let’s be friends, find me here. Anyway, you do that for a bit, then it turns into almost if Adventure on the Atari 2600 was a shmup. You travel around a big rectangular map separated into individual screens, and you’ll destroy some innocuous-looking items in the rooms that aren’t full of enemies. Most rooms are full of enemies, though.
Then you reach the final boss, and it’s… a secret. I don’t want to spoil everything! Use these tips and you can make it! Save up your bombs and lives because that last one is pretty tough. Then you get some very good 1-bit art cutscenes that make me want a vib-ribbon looking game on the Playdate. Someone call NanaOn-Sha and get them on this immediately.
This is one of the longest things on the site, but there was a lot to talk about and it’s nice to give some pointers. That’s the kind of wild game Angel Pop is. There’s angels and teddy bears and creepy baby… dolls? And worms and little octopus guys and blurry digital backgrounds that look a little bit like they were taken with a Game Boy Camera. And there’s Nightmare Mode which is always way too hard, and you unlock Turbo Mode when you beat the game on Normal. Also there are online leaderboards, and I’m only about a million points behind tenth place, so, you know. Doin’ good.
Oh, last tip! The Playdate screen is wide, so try to be on the left or right sides of your enemies instead of above or below them. You’ll have more room to maneuver. You’ll need it. Angel Pop is rad, and even Yoko Taro thinks so. He wouldn’t lie to you, and neither would I!
(Get it on Catalog.)