Hydorah follows the tradition of side-scrolling shooters having an absolutely incomprehensible plot. Set in the future, you play a pilot sent out to destroy Hydorah, an AI-like ship that has been conquering and destroying human colonies. THe plot is rendered in that terrible, vocoder-eque Engrish that many arcade games of the 80s and 90s fell victim to. It lends the game a distinct charm, however, since it tugs at the nostalgia center. Like any good indie gamer, we value our nostalgia center highly! The game also includes corrupted versions of Greek mythology. For example, Hydorah is what hydra might sound like if said by someone with a heavy Japanese accent. Cyclades is a corruption of cyclops. There is a level named after Scylla, which is one of the monsters of the Scylla and Charybdis duo. This inclusion of mythology adds a little bit of fun in figuring out where the names come from!

Hydorah is an incredibly stunning game, presentation-wise. The sprites are vivid and detailed, with impossibly smooth animations everywhere. The color palette is vibrant and keeps you focused, which is an absolutely essential part of any shooter. The developer even had the kindness to differentiate enemies in their colors. For example, enemies from Hydorah are yellow and mechanical. The music is stunning, and is fully available for your personal listening pleasure through the music folder in the game folder. The sound effects are excellent as well. Overall, this is a game which is better than the majority of mainstream 2D games in presentation, much less indie games.

Hydorah starts out easy, but don't be fooled. This is a game which is hard in the best of traditions. If you touch anything besides a power-up, you will die. Enemies fire at you often. There are a considerable number of enemies on the screen at once at times, and they will shoot at you. Some sections, such as dodging meteors, get rather difficult, and there are bits where you can get surprised by an enemy you didn't see. This is twitch-based, pattern recognition gaming at its finest. Thankfully, it plays the same every time, so there's no variance going on here. Everything is exactly as you remember it on the last play. If you struggled with Gradius or Megaman growing up, you will struggle with Hydorah.

Where Hydorah differentiates itself is in how it handles power-ups. There are three different types of weapons and three alternate power-ups to obtain, and each is key to your survival:

• The green power-up, which powers up your main weapon. This weapon can be changed in-between missions, and new weapons are obtained by killing bosses.
• The purple power-up, which increases your bomb strength. Bombs are the easiest way to attack below you, so are fairly important. This weapon can also be changed between missions and new weapons are also obtained by killing bosses.
• The yellow power-up, which adds to your special. Special is similar to bombs in vertically-scrolling shooters: incredibly powerful, but limited by ammo. Ditto on weapon-changing and new weapons.
• The blue power-up, which increases the speed of your ship.
• The shield, which prevents one hit from killing you.
• The heart, which gives you an extra life.

You definitely have to use power-ups effectively to get anywhere. Thankfully, when you die, you only lose three weapon/bomb power and one power/speed power. You are, however, sent to the beginning of the current stage section. If you die on a boss, you have to play the boss section over from scratch. This keeps the game from being ridiculously easy, as most of the difficulty is in the stages, not in the bosses themselves.

Did we mention Hydorah was hard? Because there's even more to its difficulty! You can only save a total of three times throughout the course of your battle, which means that you have to complete several stages per save. This is incredibly tough on its own. Thankfully, to alleviate some of this difficulty, you get an extra life at 20,000, 50,000, and then every 50,000 after. While this seems daunting, you can easily earn one extra life per stage section if you know what to do. There's also one extra life power-up per stage, and collection power-ups you have maxed out gives you 1,000 points. There's tons of little scoring secrets for you to find too, such as squeezing through tight areas or picking up threatened humans.

If there is one potential complaint we have about Hydorah, it's the save system. While it is not quite as bad thanks to the generous extra lives, three saves for a playthrough is a little rough. The game is difficult enough as-is, and it would've been nice if there were unlimited saves, or an option for those that want to finish the game instead of get a high score.

Despite its difficulty, or perhaps because of it, Hydorah is one of the best games we have played in a long time. Stunning pixel art, excellent music, polished levels, and refined gameplay mechanics make this an absolutely must-play. You will pour hours into it and forget where the time has gone, and that is the mark of a truly excellent game. We can't recommend this game enough. Play it, play it, play it! You can download Hydorah from the developer's website and leave feedback there as well. Good luck in saving the human race!

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