Shadow of the Colossus, only with flying serpents.
Sky Serpents
is a browser game by Nitrome.
In it, a boy decides to challenge his father's record of slaying 14 sky serpents. He runs off, and you get to play through fifteen levels, each of which consists of damaging parts of a long, linear boss while avoiding enough projectiles to survive and not get thrown off too much.
Tropes present in this work:
- Alien Blood: The titular serpents bleed grey.
- Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: The Slayer is very rude towards his father and wanted to beat his record of killing 14 sky serpents.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Each boss has a number of purple segments that are the only vulnerable portions of its anatomy.
- Boss Game: There are no mooks or other enemies, just one sky serpent after another.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The spots you can attack are colored purple, and they turn black once you've done sufficient damage to them, cluing you in on when to move to the next one.
- Colossus Climb: The serpents are pretty big, and you spend the fights hopping around their bodies.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: All you lose from screwing up is your high score. And heck, falling into the bottomless pit at the bottom of the screen simply regurgitates you unless you're on your last bit of health.
- Excuse Plot: The plot is pretty much there to explain why you're fighting these things; there's nothing plot-like during or between the battles.
- Expy: The final serpent looks quite similar to Cthulhu.
- Flash of Pain: The serpents' weak points flash when you strike them, which helps you know whether you're in the right spot or need to adjust a little.
- Frictionless Ice: Level 10's serpent has a slick, icy exterior, making it harder to get where you want to. Luckily, you can still jump around and lodge your blade into its weak points.
- Giant Flyer: The titular sky serpents.
- High-Altitude Battle: Every battle takes place up in the air. Part of the challenge is not falling off the serpent.
- Humble Pie: The Slayer proceeds to kill 15 sky serpents, supposedly taking the record from his father. He gets stunned silent when he discovers that his father actually slew 140.
- Jerkass: The Slayer is very rude towards his father. His father calls him out on it and points out that if he showed him a bit more respect, he would have realized that he slew 140 sky serpents instead of 14.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The serpents come in different shapes and sizes and their abilities can range from shooting fire, lasers, or slime out of their bodies or being covered in armor, and sometimes they'll look like normal dragons, while other times they'll look more insect-like. There's also one that looks like a boar and another one that looks like a duck.
- Puzzle Boss: After the first serpent, each serpent has some sort of characteristic challenge, though said challenges are relatively simple to deal with until some of the later serpents.
- Scarf of Asskicking: The hero wears one.
- Segmented Serpent: Each is made of a head and a tail with various segments in between, and they fly around with right-angle turns.
- Status Effects: The slowing gas, sucking-holes, and paralysis bubbles.
