Pineapple Smash Crew

Pineapple Smash Crew

The game Pineapple Smash Crew is a "neo-retro" style, single player, level based, shoot-em-up game, focusing on smashing and grabbing items and powerups, simple tactics, and explosions.

Pineapple Smash Crew was developed by the company "RichMakeGame"(^[1]), an independent individual programmer, with music by chiptune artist Syphus. The game was previewed at multiple gaming conventions before being released for STEAM on February 2, 2012. The game is currently only available for PC platforms and is only single player. The player controls a group of four "mercenaries" that move through "spaceships"(levels) full of enemies. As the player advances through the game enemies become more challenging and more numerous. Each level is completed by beating a boss character. The mercenaries move through the game in a tightly bunched formation, each character holds a single grenade, and the players can be rotated to use multiple/different types of grenades. Pineapple Smash Crew is unique in a shooting game in that it focuses on grenades as the primary weapon, rather than a gun. There are multiple different types of grenades in the game that can be used singularly or in combination, allowing for strategic game play. The primary objective of the game is to blow up everything and grab as much loot as possible, other secondary objectives and missions are available that keep the game fresh. The main purpose of the game is highlight by the fact that all the visual and audio aspects of the game are purposely pixelated while the explosions occur in very high resolution.

Gameplay

Pineapple Smash Crew is a 3D game that give you a top-down isometric view of the playing field. Using the mouse and keyboard you control a squad of lost mercenaries fighting through randomized environments to recover the coordinates of your lost mother ship. As you fight the hordes of aliens robots and monsters your squad members will level up gaining health. Your squad itself as a whole will also level up and unlock new grenades for your group to use. These can range anywhere from simple grenades to giant lasers and mines. Before each mission you can choose from a selection of ships to board and search. The mission objectives are randomized as is the layout of the ship itself. As you progress the ships get bigger and the enemies get harder.

While completing the mission objective, one of the rooms will contain the boss for the level, which is also randomly equipped with defenses and weapons. The boss will clear the majority of the room of walls creating a large arena in which you must defeat it.

Aside from the mission objectives, each ship has a computer room which will help you find coordinates for the return trip to the mothership.

Audio

Soundtrack: The soundtrack consists of frantic, upbeat chiptune music written by artist Syphus a.k.a. Echolevel.^[2]

Sound effects: The effects in this game are reminiscent of retro 8-bit games. Thus the explosions and gunshots have a blocky sound to them.

Visuals

Although being in 3D, Pineapple smash crew retains a retro appearance. The sprites and textures have a low resolution to them that bring the retro feel to the forefront of the player's perspective. The colors are bright and contrasting making explosions and bullets pop out from the background.

Reception

Pineapple smash crew received a 62 out of 100 on metacritic based on 10 reviews.^[3]

On IGN Pineapple Smash Crew received a 5.5 out of 10.^[4]

Sources

1. ↑ http://www.richmakegame.com/?page_id=399
2. ↑ http://echolevel.co.uk/
3. ↑ http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/pineapple-smash-crew?rating_login=1
4. ↑ http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/02/10/pineapple-smash-crew-review