#richmakegame

Genre: Shoot Em Up Developer: RichMakeGame Price: £6.99

Pineapple Smash Crew (pineapple in the sense of the Mk2 Grenade, not the delicious fruit) is some sort of an unholy combination of a shoot-em-up, roguelike and the 1993 Sensible Software classic Cannon Fodder. In  it you play as a mercenary 'Smash Crew' that makes it's money from looting the decaying and alien-filled remains of corporate space ships left over from the Wasabi Wars; an intergalactic conflict over an incredible power source that resulted in the destruction of all sides.

The game is presented in a 'neo-retro' style, featuring a mix of stylised blocky characters, textures that look like they were taken out of a SNES game and just a touch of cel shading to tie it all together. The result is very effective; whilst it doesn't really feel retro in any way whatsoever, the design is bright and bold and really stands out on the screen. The presentation is further reinforced through a thumpingly good chiptune soundtrack by Slyus that really sets the game's rapid pace. 

Throughout the game you guide a team of four mercenaries through a series of levels, finding the target locations on each ship and completing missions there. All four mercenaries are controlled at once, huddled together into a single unit, but each merc has his own lifebar and can carry a grenade of his own. Holding the left mouse button has all the mercs fire in the direction of the cursor, but this weapon is limited by overheating, encouraging the player to fire in bursts for maximum efficiency. The right mouse button throws grenades, and this is where the game starts getting interesting.

Grenades come in 13 varieties in this game. Whilst when starting off the player is only given access to standard grenades and rockets (which once thrown can be aimed in the direction of the player's choice and then fired), as his mercenary group levels up, they gain access to further grenade types with a wide variety of effects and uses; they can spew flames, fire machine guns, act as proximity mines, shoot lasers through walls, fire in all directions, suck enemies and other grenades towards a point, act as a decoy, heal the team, and more. Grenades are dropped randomly from the available pool, so best use of them is generally a mix of quick thinking, strategic hoarding and throwing things at enemies whenever possible. The effects of grenades upon your alien and robotic foes is suitably powerful, and getting a well placed grenade right can be immensely satisfying.

The game presents you with a cavalcade of increasingly expansive pieces of space hulk to raid your way through, each generated by random and containing a mix of doors, laser grids and more enemies than you can shake a stick at. Whilst the player's first instinct is to go exploring, or to blow up everything in the vicinity looking for credits and powerups, this is a bad move. Pineapple Smash Crew is a game about busting in, shooting your way through to your objective, and completing the mission, not about examining every single nook and cranny. It may come as a shock to the completionists amongst us that you player needs to learn to see the vast series of rooms not as the play-area, but as the obstacles on the way to the play-area. You get in, you push your way through, you get to the exit; nothing more is recommended.

Once at the correct location as shown on your minimap, the team is tasked with completing an objective, such as destroying all enemies in that area, or knocking toxic containers onto a panel that destroys them. Whilst these missions feel necessary, there is sadly a lack of variety, with only three or four possible activities to be done here. Similarly, in cases where these missions are suddenly replaced by the end-of-level boss, the bosses are always the same structure but with a different number of shields, and simply need to be hit repeatedly until they blow up. Happily the combat is fun enough that this still doesn't make for an uninteresting part of the game.

As well as your team levelling up as a whole, individuals level up too. After each mission, surviving members of your team are given experience points, and grow stronger with each level bestowed. Non-surviving members are lost forever, and will be replaced with new level 1 recruits from a limited pool of replacements. Whilst the extra toughness afforded by higher level characters isn't so important that should your entire team be wiped out towards the end of the game you'd struggle greatly, there's a definite difference in the survivability of a level one character and a higher level character running in the same squad.

Sadly when the end does come, it comes as a bit of an anticlimax. The final boss proves to be another upgraded version of the previous bosses (this time with a comically large number of shields), and is finished off in precisely the same way. The player is then treated to a screen reminding them of the Mercs they lost getting to the end of the game (a rather dilute version of Cannon Fodder's surprisingly subversive 'killed in action' screen), and the surviving team's names are recorded in the Hall of Fame.

But it's the journey that's the important bit, and what little the game does, it does brilliantly. Once you understand it's get-in-destroy-stuff-get-out-quick principles, Pinapple Smash Crew is an extremely fun little game with excellent presentation and some interesting twists.

In the neo-retro pixelation of the far future, there is only fun.