I love these type of single screen collect and zap the enemies type games. I can imagine this being a premium release in the late 80’s. The visuals are incredible and I love that the main character grabs his hat when he jumps. The tune is good but it became quite repetitive after playing for so long.
I also appreciated that when you die you start at the beginning of the world rather than having to go back to the very beginning again. The controls are tight and gameplay is fun. I played on Vice emulation so managed to get to the end by spam saving. It’s a tough game!
World 1: Thanks for being so generous with extra lives in World 1. It makes it more fun to play and less frustrating when I died. In these style games you just die a lot (or at least I do) so having more lives encourages me to keep playing. The giant boss snail looks amazing and is a challenging but fun level!
World 2: Slight increase in general difficulty feels fair BUT Birds carrying barrels make it a lot tougher, especially if you are in the top left or right corner of the screen. If you are standing in the corner, you basically die as soon as they come in. Maybe make the birds come in less often. Also drop the second bird on the last 2 levels. It’s just frustrating! The boss is tough but once you figure it out, it seems fair.
World 3: The difficulty really ramps up on this one! It feels like it would be world 4 or 5 in a full game, in terms of difficulty. I love the hand enemy animation. Once I figured out what to do to beat the boss this is my favourite boss fight. I did have a lot more bombs in this world which did definitely helped.
A general thing is that sometimes you can end up stuck on ladders when jumping. You jump to avoid an enemy and find yourself halfway up a ladder.
Overall I love Petal Panic and could see this getting a solid review in Zzap. However I would love to see the difficulty reduced and/or more extra lives given out on later worlds. Maybe start with 5 lives!
I’m looking forward to buying the full game.
