Platform: Nintendo DS
Publisher: Nintendo
Price: $35
Electroplankton is probably the hardest game I’ve ever had to review for two reasons: Firstly, its not really a game in the traditional sense, and secondly, because you’re only going to get out of it what you’re willing to put into it.
Confused?
I’ll do my best to clarify.
Electroplankton is essentially a program that turns your DS into a synthesizer of sorts. Using a combination of the touch screen and microphone, you’ll create music by manipulating little plankton creatures on the screen. Each style of plankton provides a different type or style of music, such as a piano, string, drum, etc. Each plankton has its own specific property and look, and depending on how fast you move them around the screen, or how fast or slow you give them a path to follow, the music will respond in kind.
You’ll most likely start out with the Tracy-type Plankton, which is the easiest to control and familiarize yourself with. As you draw a line on the screen, the plankton will follow, and create an appropriate piano based sound at a speed that mimics how fast or slow you were drawing the line. In addition, you’re able to use the D-Pad to help control the speed of all the plankton involved. From there you can move onto 9 other plankton types, each with their own unique sound.
Unfortunately, there’s not much more to the title than that. It is quite a bit of fun to play around with each style, and it will definitely hold your interest for an hour or two, especially when it comes to getting used to everything that you’re able to do with the simple set of controls. However, as time wears on, the title’s deficiencies also begin to show through.
First off, there’s no save function. To me this was the biggest drawback, as there’s nothing more discouraging than coming up with a complex and catchy beat that you’d really like to show off to some friends, and then finding out that there’s no way to do that outside of putting your DS into sleep mode and hoping the battery holds out until you see them. I’m not sure that I understand the reasoning behind not adding what should have been a sure fire option to the game, because it definitely seems like a huge oversight.
Also, whilst you’ll be trying to come up with something catchy and unique, most of the time you’ll come to realize that you’re really just making a lot of noise. It would have been nice to have a bit more of a tutorial to the game, maybe something that caused you to redesign or follow a preset tune, which would go a long way into familiarizing someone with the controls (which aren’t always apparent). The game does look nice for what it is, each plankton has a unique look, and the backgrounds tend to be pretty mesmerizing and match up with the sound very well. The sound itself is great, even coming through the less than spectacular DS speakers. However, the lack of a save feature really makes the playability of the title limited, and I can’t say that its something I’ll find myself going back to again and again, knowing that everything I create is incredibly finite.
If you’re a big fan of creating your own music, and can get past the point of not being able to save your work, than definitely pick this title up. For everyone else, you might want to at least give it a try, see if it might be your thing. It’s something that really should be experienced rather than read about.
- Dustin Chadwell currently resides in Ohio, USA. He's been playing video games since the Atari 2600, and believes he can whoop anyone's ass in Joust, and Galaga. Probably not Halo 2 though. New technology tends to confuse him.