Hyper Princess Pitch
A Spin-Off game to Daniel Remar's Garden Gnome Carnage. You play as Princess Pitch, a side character from Garden Gnome Carnage, who is very fond of explosions and bears a big grudge against Mecha Santa. Supported by your trusty ally Catstrike and your mother, the Goddess of Explosions, you blast into Santa's factory and Shoot Everything That Moves (mainly robotic Christmas Elves, turrets and combat-suitable toys) with explosive bricks, rainbow beams and ice rays, intending to confront Mecha Santa himself in the end.
In terms of gameplay and design, it's a cute, tongue-in-cheek remake of the obscure, rather dark DOS arena shooter Operation Carnage. You have a limited amount of lives, explore Santa's base room by room and defeat hordes of enemies Zerg Rushing you. The game is rather short (only containing four normal stages), and you cannot save, but it has a high replay value due to multiple Difficulty Levels, many paths to take and tons of secrets. It's fast-paced, has smooth controls, and focuses on dodging and destroying enemies about equally.
The free Windows version of Hyper Princess Pitch was released on December 1st, 2011. Which you can download here, and you can check out the excellent game trailer here.
Tropes used in Hyper Princess Pitch include:
- Abnormal Ammo: Bricks are your basic ammunition.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Stage 3's boss.
- Airborne Mook: Sleighs.
- An Asskicking Christmas: You go around Mecha Santa's base blowing everything to smithereens.
- Apocalypse How: The Golden Ending results in a Galactic/Physical Annihilation. The name "Galactic Princess Buster" isn't an exaggeration.
- Ascended Extra: Pitch was a supporting character in Garden Gnome Carnage.
- Ash Face: Pitch and Catstrike in the ending.
- Attack Reflector: Counter can reflect certain attacks in addition to just blocking them.
- Awesome but Impractical: The code for bigger explosions. Looks a lot more fun, but makes threats harder to see.
- Badass Family: Pitch's parents are the Goddess of Explosions and the Bear Miner.
- Badass Princess: Pitch.
- Badass Santa: Naturally, Mecha Santa is the final boss.
- Bad Santa: In the ending, Mecha Santa is seemingly forgiving towards Pitch... but then it turns out the present he gave her was explosive. Also, the boss room, in which he's on a podium talking to a bunch of elves in the stands, looks a lot like the Nuremberg Rally.
- Bottomless Magazines: Bricks are infinite.
- Bullet Hell: In harder difficulties.
- Calling Your Attacks:
- PRINCESS BUSTER!!
- Mecha Santa shouts the names of his attacks AND displays them on a screen above him at the same time.
- Cap: You can carry 99 units of rainbow and ice ammo each at a time.
- Car Fu: You can grab a train (or theoretically, the clown car miniboss) to smash them into your other enemies.
- Catch Phrase: Pitch's specific way of saying "Awesome".
- Chain-Reaction Destruction: Some enemies can be thrown at other enemies to take them out in the resulting explosion.
- Christmas Elves: Your enemies.
- Classic Cheat Code: The Goddess is summoned with the Konami Code.
- Collision Damage: You deal it as well to even out the short duration of Mercy Invincibility.
- Cool Shades: Worn by elves on elite sleighs.
- Crosshair Aware: Small X-es mark the area of effect of some enemy attacks.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Inverted in the ending. And then subverted. When Mecha Santa' gift turns out to be Explosive, Pitch turns back to slam Santa into the ground.
- Denial of Diagonal Attack: Downplayed. You can shoot in 8 directions at least.
- Destructible Projectiles: Ice shots have the purpose of deflecting weaker bullets.
- Earthshattering Kaboom: In the Golden Ending, the princess uses a technique learned from her mother to blow up the entire galaxy by crashing the moon into Mecha Santa.
- Easter Egg: Loads of them, this being a Daniel Remar game.
- Easy Mode Mockery/Hard Mode Perks: Mostly averted. Your headgear changes depending on the difficulty level, but the effect is neutral or positive rather than humiliating. Players can earn more points on higher difficulties, but there are no special gameplay bonuses.
- Elite Mook: Obviously robotic robot elves, and sleighs with shades-wearing pilots.
- Everything Fades: Don't let your powerups lie around for too long.
- Finishing Move: When a stage boss is about to explode, Pitch can get close to them and destroy them with PRINCESS! BUSTAAAAH! Later on, the goddess of explosions can teach you an upgraded version of it to finish off Mecha Santa.
- Freudian Excuse:
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He sure never gave ME any presents when I was a kid! |
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- Harder Than Hard: The "Goddess of Explosions" difficulty mode.
- Having a Blast: Princess Pitch and her mother, the Goddess of Explosions.
- Humongous Mecha: Mecha Santa, among others.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels:
- Trainee.
- Combat Lady.
- Battle Princess.
- War Queen.
- Goddess of Explosions.
- Reallyjoel's mom.
- Made of Explodium: Bricks, crates and christmas trees. Handwaved by making things explosive being a power of the Goddess of Explosions.
- Mad Eye: Mecha Santa.
- Mercy Invincibility: Very shortly, but to even it out every mook that touches you is destroyed as well.
- Metal Slime: Elite sleighs are hard to destroy but give a good amount of points.
- Meteor Move: Pitch can do this to normal enemies (which, for extra funness, include toy trains), and she can also finish off all bosses (except Mecha Santa) this way. And the Goddess of Explosions does this to the Planet Saturn in her attack.
- Mook Maker: The toy clown car miniboss, as it was to be expected.
- Mooks: Standard robot elves.
- More Explosions: The modus operandi of Princess Pitch.
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Goddess of Explosions: Anyway, what is your wish? |
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- Mythology Gag:
- The key combo for Counter/Piledriver is identical to that of Expel in Hero Core.
- There's a secret level filled with incarnations of Spacenörd, the protagonist of an old game by Daniel Remar.
- Pitch's father, the Bear Miner, is the protagonist of a No More Sweden game by Daniel Remar, which was also a Spiritual Sequel to Garden Gnome Carnage.
- When catching a jumping enemy from the air to smash them into the ground, Pitch says "Not a chance." in a way very similar to Ansaksie from Iji.
- The first picture in the ending is identical to the first picture of the ending in Iji, only with Pitch instead of Iji and Mecha Santa instead of Tor.
- One Stage 3 Mini Boss uses the fire pattern of The Eliminator from Hero Core.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Robotic christmas elves and a legless airstrike cat.
- No Fair Cheating
- No Indoor Voice:
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Goddess of Explosions: THIS IS MY INDOOR VOICE! |
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- Odd Job Gods: The Goddess of Explosions.
- Oh Crap: The Good Mecha Santa's reaction if you summon the Goddess of Explosions.
- Power-Up: Several pickups that enhance your power temporarily in some way.
- Punny Name: The title is a play on Super Princess Peach.
- Shout-Out:
- "Let's get dangerous!"
- "Cowabunga!"
- Catstrike, a flying cat with a fire (or occasionally, rainbow) trail, looks awfully like a black Nyan Cat.
- You can enter cheat codes during play. They all start with RG (Remar Games). Which is probably a reference to how all Doom cheat codes start with ID (ID Software).
- The Galactic PRINCESS BUSTER! looks a lot like Sephiroth's Supernova spell in Final Fantasy VII.
- One of the minibosses, "Frilly Hat Elf" is a Touhou reference, as confirmed by Word of God.
- Shouting Shooter: Pitch.
- Sinister Scythe: A stand-alone one appears as a resilient, annoying type of enemy.
- Smart Bomb: Calling the Goddess of Explosions.
- Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: The gift Pitch received in the ending? It was explosive.
- Spread Shot: The Triple powerup bestows this temporarily.
- Stuff Blowing Up
- Technical Pacifist: Mecha Santa. He wants to bring peace to the world, but he has an army and factory defenses solely to ward off Princess Pitch.
- Video Game Lives: The initial amount depends on the Difficulty Level. You also gain one per level.
- Villain Protagonist
- Waif Fu
- Wave Motion Gun: The rainbow laser used by the boss of Stage 3.
- What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?:
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Goddess of Explosions: Welcome, princess! I am THE GODDESS OF EXPLOSIONS! |
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- World of Ham: Mecha Santa and the goddess of explosions kind of out-ham Pitch, but she has her moments, so yes, this applies.
- Zerg Rush: As this is a Garden Gnome Carnage Spin-Off, this way to be expected. It becomes ridiculous in the bonus level.