Platypus II

I went in expecting a budget shmup and that is exactly what I got, which is either a comfort or a warning depending on your expectations. Platypus II is a horizontal scrolling arcade shooter built around the same claymation visual hook as the first game: every enemy, every explosion, every background element was physically sculpted in clay, photographed, and coloured digitally. The result has a tactile weirdness that still holds up as an aesthetic, even if the actual resolution strains against modern monitors. Mechanically you pick one of four shooting configurations at the start, and from there the loop is pure old-school: fly left to right, survive enemy waves, defeat a boss at the end of each fifth area. The game spans five worlds across twenty-five levels total. Weapon variety comes from a star system: wipe out a full enemy squadron and a coloured star drops. Shoot the star before collecting it to cycle through weapon types including laser beam, rapid fire, rockets, and spread shot. It works, but it puts extra cognitive load on you mid-wave when your hands are already busy. Balloons occasionally float through carrying crates that drop side cannons, extra lives, or score bonuses if you can tag them without losing your rhythm. Enemy waves escalate across worlds and new enemy types do appear as you progress, though variety is not the game's strong suit. Where Platypus II earns its keep is local co-op for up to three players on a single screen. That is a genuinely unusual number and it makes the couch experience the obvious reason to own this. Two-player shmup co-op is common; three is a whole different energy. Ships can absorb multiple hits before going down and a continue system cushions the difficulty, so the whole thing is approachable for mixed-skill groups. Two difficulty settings help bracket the experience without making either end feel like filler. From a shooter-specialist standpoint there is no netcode to speak of, no ranked mode, no movement tech worth talking about, and time-to-kill is basically irrelevant in a genre this old-school. That means I can only recommend it on its own terms as a casual arcade session. The context around this game matters. Platypus II was made without the involvement of original creator Anthony Flack, a fact that stirred up community friction at the time of its original 2007 release. The Steam version arrived in 2014, long after the controversy faded. More relevantly, the modernised remake Platypus Reclayed has since launched with Flack's actual involvement, 4K visuals, and a far stronger reception. If you want the definitive Platypus experience right now in 2026, Reclayed is the obvious answer. Platypus II is the cheaper, scrappier legacy build: functional, charming in small doses, and capped hard at casual. Running it windowed on a modern display is genuinely the better experience as full-screen scaling does it no favours.

Fred · Scout Team

Shooters

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