magic planet snack is a game about the bonus round – not the bonus round as it usually appears in contemporary games, as an interruption of the game, but as it appeared in the more inventive arcade games: as a natural fixture in the game’s story. think pac-man, where the bonus round is when you transform your pursuers into treats that you can eat, or bubble bobble, where a certain item will change whatever labyrinth of enemies you happen to be in into maze of cookies for the players to compete over.
the protagonist of magic planet snack is a former-wizard now-space-worm eating its way through the planets of rival wizards (who are shaped like donuts and pizzas and, expectedly, edible). buried in the planet are magical balls – collect ten of them (enough to spell “HYPER” twice) and the entire grid of the screen will turn into an pastel array of cakes, cookies and treats that your wiz-worm is free to gobble up for a brief period of time.
this attitude toward BONUS TIME not as a phase but an event permeates the game’s design: the “bosses,” the wizards, appear at the mid-point of each world rather than at the end, and the transition from planet to planet is a different game in itself, in which you’re dodging bullets while trying to direct them toward the satellite that’s antagonizing you. magic planet snack is an argument against the arbitrary division of games into autonomous sequences with nothing to say to one another.
5 comments
This is so much fun. And deliciously oldschool.
But it took me a little while (ten continues or so. -_-) to understand which blocks could hurt me and which powered me up, and what those damn cat-things do. If this thing required quarters or tokens I would be pissed.
Ya dis one was great. I’m still playing it, up to 2.5 million points or so now.
I understood what blocks killed me, but I had a hell of a time actually seeing those blocks amidst the other blocks until several plays. It seems like it’s just hard to focus on them with all the colorful crap on the screen.
The game also had a bug where it would end at world 0 or world 1. The ending would play after seeing the midboss. I thought the game just sucked, but eventually the bug magically resolved itself and I could play the game.
They’re not cats they’re TROLLS.
bio miracle baby all grown up?
it takes a while to distinguish the MAGIC SPHERES from the similiar-colored blocks around them. but once it clicks they’re weirdly easy to identify.
Hi everyone! Thanks for playing Magic Planet Snack. I just uploaded a new version with some bug fixes and some secrets. Now you can play in Healthy Times by pressing: uuddlrlr start at the title screen.
(thanks again!)
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