Follow TV Tropes

Following

Video Game / Amorphous+

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/amorpluslogo.png

Amorphous+ is a free flash game by Innocuous Games. You play an unnamed man wielding the Splatmaster3000 and kill various types of Blob Monsters. During the course of the game, you will unlock "Awards", which in turn will unlock "rewards" in the form of special weapons and armour that will help the player against the slimes.

You can play it on Newgrounds here.

The game features a licensed soundtrack by Revolution Void.

Tropes in this game:

  • Achievement Mockery: Yes, you get awards for dying multiple times and also for dying in multiple ways. Then again, it's pretty much to be expected. And it's the only way to get 100% Completion — to get all the reward keys, you'll need to get these dubious awards.
  • All There in the Manual: The bestiary contains surprisingly in-depth info on all Glooples you can meet in the game.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: There are a few small ones that prevent the game from being annoying, as opposed to just hard. Normal Glooples will not be able to stun you again until after you finish the flinching animation of the first hit, meaning that unless you get hit at an inconvenient time, which is itself just part of the difficulty, you won't get stunlocked to death. Also, after the swing, there is half a second where the arc in front of you still counts as damage, which means near-misses with the swing will still hit it if runs into the arc.
  • Armor Is Useless:
    • Mostly averted by the Reactive Armor — while it doesn't advertise the fact, it can deflect several kinds of attacks that would ordinarily be lethal. The Gray's tendril lance will bounce off, as will the Razor Queen's spike attack. It also protects against fire. It will explode if you are hit by something that will absolutely be fatal, such as the Biter's lunge. Played straight with some attacks that the armor offers no protection against, such as a Grinder rolling over you, Meltie acid, or the Void Eater's disintegration ray.
    • Also averted by the Hazard Suit — it protects you from acid, sticky goo, and ink, sure, but did you know it also counters blinding by ink, baby Clutters, and the Void Eater's attraction power?
  • Boring, but Practical: The suits. The Hazard Suit renders you immune to Melties, movement-impairing effects, and blindness as long as it's intact, while the Reactive Armor, in addition to providing a second Hit Point against most threats, lets you No-Sell a Grey's Combat Tentacle and prevents being lit on fire.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing:
    • The Horror, THE HORROR!!! These guys are created in a (thankfully) rare occurrence when two Biters fuse together. They are a horrific buzzsaw of teeth and death that is invulnerable to your regular attack while spinning, and will kill you if you so much as brush against them while they chase after you. If that's not an option, they can also shoot out spikes in eight directions that are not only lethal to you, but also turn other Glooples they hit into deadly Biters, making the Horror a Mook Maker on top of everything else. The only chance to kill it is when it splits up into four spiked wheels that orbit around its defenseless core; unfortunately, this is also That One Attack, as the disks tend to be quite hard to dodge.
    • Void Eaters, a powerful Gravity Master created in the rare occurrence when a Gray absorbs a Gloople. Although they are only a One-Hit-Point Wonder, they are impossible to approach normally due to constantly unleashing devastating gravity pulses around themselves, with a range far superior to that of your sword. You can only kill it in close quarters when it fires its Disintegrator Ray (that sucks everything into it like a black hole), no small feat since you still need to somehow approach it without getting sucked into the beam yourself and without colliding with any other Gloople getting sucked into the beam (even a regular green Gloople will spell your demise here, as you can't fight the beam's pull when stunned). It's so utterly destructive it can even kill the True Final Boss, should you be unfortunate enough to fight them both at the same time. It also has the dubious distinction of possibly making the game Unintentionally Unwinnable (see below).
    • Amalgams... just Amalgams. They can eat other Glooples, can split into more Amalgalms if they're hit or get too large, and take a lot more hits than one would expect. They also remain in the battle even if chased offscreen, unlike other Glooples.
    • Grinders could be considered one, as well. Made out of living rock, these guys need to be subjected to an explosion, a collision with a solid object (another Grinder, a Gray, or an Instant Wall; Sharps don't count), or a puddle of acid to weaken the outer coating, and then you have to hit the damn thing five times before it gives up and dies. It's also the largest Gloople short of the final boss. The Razor Glaive can break the shell in one hit, and kill it with two more.
      • The Grinder can actually kill a Horror and survive the disintegration beam of a Void Eater. That's how tough the thing is. Though it is objectively far less dangerous.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: The third equipment slot and the eleventh Reward key, which you get after getting all the Awards.
  • Deployable Cover: The Instant Wall does exactly what it sounds like: it deploys a barrier at the targeted spot that most Glooples cannot pass.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • There are medals awarded for things one just would not expect. Furthermore, the corpse you leave behind changes appearance depending on the way you died, and a complete extra set of dead sprites were made for wearers of the Hazard Suit.
    • Each type of Gloople can interact with you and other Glooples in different ways. For example, Stickie Goo will slow you and most weaker Glooples down, make you immune to burning, put out Torchie fires, and gum up the mouths of Biters and Fuzzles, preventing them from attacking.
  • Duel Boss: When the Queen is the last Gloople in the nest, the fight comes down to one of these. Her agility and Dual Wielding against your Splatmaster 3000 and powerful gadgets.
  • Excuse Plot: There's blobs, and you have to kill them.
    • Averted for the description of both the Glooples and your items. Everything is described with much care. Every single Gloople has several paragraphs of text devoted to their role in the nest and the hazards they pose to you.
  • Food Chain of Evil: The Amalgam eats other Glooples. Of course, the Amalgam can eat you, too.
  • Gotta Catch 'Em All: You can only practice against a type of Gloople or view it in the compendium if you've seen it before, in any mode.
  • Homing Boulders: Literally, in the form of Grinders.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight:
    • Inverted; no matter what the Queen does, fighting a Player with Reactive Armor is literally Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. Heads, the player wins and one-shots the queen: tails, the queen lands a hit instead, and the reactive armor explodes, nullifying the attack and killing the queen. Of course, you need to win to get any achievements.
    • The Amalgam can sometimes turn into one. If there are too many Glooples on the screen, it may become virtually impossible to wear the Amalgam down, as it heals faster than you can damage it, and keeps making more of itself on top of that. You can deprive it of its food supply by killing all the other Glooples in the nest first, but good luck doing so while also being chased by several Amalgams. Thankfully, it usually spawns at about the same time the Queen does, when the nest is nearly cleared.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: This is the Gray's main form of attack. However, it's unable to harden its body while doing so, allowing you a chance to damage it. The Reactive Armor can block the spike.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: The Razor Glaive; it does triple the damage, has superior reach, and can break the defenses of most normal Glooples. However, it's quite heavy, so wielding it slows you down a bit.
    • On the other hand, in order to get aforementioned Infinity +1 Sword, you have to beat the monstrous Razor Queen in single combat. The Razor Queen is a ludicrously huge, mutated Queen that's five times tougher and has an annoying habit of being vulnerable only in front — which is also where its huge claws are.
  • Insect Queen: If you're (un)lucky, you'll fight one near the end of a nest. The idea of the Insect Queen is actually played with in-game. The descriptions for the Queen admit that it is not certain whether she really does control the hive, or whether the Gloople swarm has no true ruler and the Insect Queen is just another member of it, albeit a very powerful one. There is a step above the normal Insect Queen, too...
  • "Instant Death" Radius: Literally in the case of Void Eaters — if you get too close, they create a shockwave, killing you instantly. (Its radius is greater than your sword's reach too, unless you have the Razor Glaive, which is slightly larger than your starting sword.)
  • Interface Screw: What happens when an Inkie hits you. The screen turns completely black for a short while, enough to get you killed easily by another dangerous blob.
    • You can keep swinging your sword though, and hope for the best. There is an award for getting a kill while blinded, and another for surviving the blindness.
  • Killer Rabbit: Fuzzles, which are fuzzy, adorable little things that lunge at you and tear your heart out. Did we mention they take three hits to die, and have a Healing Factor to boot?
  • Kill It with Fire: Torchies. Touching one sans armor will set you on fire, which causes your character to flail around somewhat randomly and will kill you if you don't put it out with Stickie goo or a Frostie. Trying to kill it while it's on fire will cause it to explode, killing you instantly.
  • Kill It with Ice: Frosties. Attacking them normally will get you harmlessly frozen, but if you're hit while frozen, you shatter into pieces.
  • Kung Fu-Proof Mook:
    • Grays harden to block your attacks, and are only vulnerable when attacking. The same is true of Horrors, except they can attack while defending and are only vulnerable when using a specific attack.
    • Sharps. As soon as these guys sense danger, they turn into an invulnerable ball of spikes. Once their perceived threat is gone, they switch back to their original form, where you can kill them in one hit. You can deflect Sharps while their spikes are out, and the game even recommends knocking them out of the screen in order to get rid of them; however, because of the way you swing your sword, you tend to knock it away in a curved path rather than a straight line, which makes getting it off the screen a rather challenging task. Oh, and it's entirely possible to "deflect" a Sharp right into your face. The Razor Glaive can kill them with the spikes out.
    • Grinders are even tougher. Not only are they immune to the sword, trying it won't change their course and stuns you briefly, potentially letting them run you over. They have to be soften/cracked via Meltie Acid, grenades, a Torchie explosion, another Grinder crashing into it, tossing an Instant Wall in its path, having it collide with a hardened Gray, or luring them into a Void Eater's shockwave/disintegration range in order to harm them. (Amusingly, the Grinder is perfectly capable of flattening a Void Eater even after being nailed with its shockwave or kill-beam, though it will just bounce off of a Gray.) Even the Razor Glaive, though it can crack their shell, isn't strong enough to prevent you from being stunned.
    • Queens and the Razor Queen are only vulnerable to attack when attacking, and will otherwise block your attacks with their own sword-limbs (or dodge).
  • Law of Chromatic Superiority: The Queen is the only Gloople that's red in color, and has gold claws. Uh oh...
  • Lightning Bruiser: The Razor Queen is fast, has a slew of deadly attacks, and also takes 5 hits to die, which is a lot compared to most Glooples.
  • Literally Shattered Lives: If you get touched by anything after getting frozen by a Frostie explosion, you shatter into ice fragments.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: What happens to you if you get exploded by a Torchie or your own grenades, touch a Horror when it's spinning, or get into a Void Eater's "Instant Death" Radius.
  • The Many Deaths of You: Getting engulfed by a bigger blob, Impaled with Extreme Prejudice (and then absorbed), dissolved via Meltie acid, eaten by a Biter or Fuzzle, exploded, disintegrated by a Void Eater, shredded to pieces by a Horror, rolled over by a Grinder, shattered into pieces after getting frozen by a Frostie, etc. There are even awards for dying in multiple ways! Here's a video compilation of all of them.
  • Mercy Invincibility: Of a sort. Whenever you're stunned by the impact of a Gloople, the stun has to wear off before you can be stunned again, making it harder to get stun-locked in larger groups of weak Glooples.
  • Monster Compendium: You fill it up by encountering different types of Glooples.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Yes, the Horror and the Void Eater are both exactly as nasty to deal with as they sound.
  • Nintendo Hard: You are a One-Hit-Point Wonder, and many of the enemies are incredibly nasty.
  • No-Damage Run: You can only get the "badass" achievement if you don't screw up in a run. This means not getting harmed at all, which includes less harmful stuff like being bumped by Glooples, Clutter shots, or Stickie slime.
  • Off with His Head!: If the Queen gets you with her dual blades, she cuts off your head.
    • One of the Horror's moves can also result in this. It's also the only move that lets you attack it.
  • One-Hit Kill: The Void Eater's Disintegrator Ray will kill the player regardless of armor. It'll also destroy all Glooples except Grinders.
  • The Pen Is Mightier: Parodied. As the game points out, there is no pen, and the sword is really big.
  • Personal Space Invader: The clutters, if you don't have the environmental armor. They slow you down unless you shake them off.
  • Scoring Points: For each Gloople you splat, you earn "bounty"; this bounty is multiplied by how many Glooples were killed in that swing.
  • Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: A lot of Glooples can kill other Glooples. Horrors will shred most other Glooples that get in their way, Void Eaters will blast just everything to pieces with their shockwaves (or erase them with their disintegration rays), Torchies tend to light all other Glooples on fire, Frosties freeze everything around them, Inkies that get set on fire by Torchies will explode, Biters and Fuzzles will "pop" other Glooples in their path while lunging, Oozles and Grays will flatten smaller Glooples that they collide with, Grinders and Sharps will chase destroy most weaker Glooples in sight, and this isn't even going into Meltie acid and Amalgams! Unfortunately, Glooples killing each other doesn't count for your score, nor does it count for decrementing the number of Glooples left in a Single Nest. In order to make progress, you have to kill the Glooples yourself. However, oftentimes so many enemies are onscreen that you have no choice but to let them kill each other, making this essentially Set A Mook To Kill A Mook: The Game.
  • Single-Use Shield: the Reactive Armor explodes on contact with an enemy while leaving the player alive.
  • Single-Stroke Battle: The Queen has only one health like any regular Gloople, but she has a pair of bladed limbs that counter all attacks aimed at her, except for one split second while she is in the middle of her attack. So assuming you don't just blow her to smithereens with the Autoturret, the Grenade or your Reactive Armor, any showdown with her will come down to both of you in close quarters swinging your respective weapons at each other, with a fraction of a second's worth of timing making the difference between who stands and who falls. If you want the achievement for killing her, you must beat her this way.
  • Sophisticated as Hell: Some of the descriptions in the bestiary, which provide sophisticated biological commentary about the Glooples, but also tend to contain less sophisticated-sounding warnings about how they can kill you.
  • Spin to Deflect Stuff: Horrors use this — in fact, the only time you can hurt it is when it isn't spinning!
    • Spinning is also used to get baby Clutters off of you.
  • Sprint Meter: The sprint reward allows you to move a lot faster for a limited period of time. However, you had to stand still to recharge it.
  • Status Effects: Most of which apply to both the player and Glooples.
    • Stunned, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Happens when you are bumped by a Gloople without getting killed.
    • Sticky, which makes you and Glooples slow (but fireproof and freezeproof) until it wears off. Biters and Fuzzles affected by this cannot attack.
    • Inked, which makes you unable to see anything until it wears off. Only happens if you let an Inkie bump in to you.
    • Stepped on Ink, which makes you and Glooples move forward uncontrollably for about a second.
    • Burned, which kills you and Glooples if you don't find a way to put it out.
    • Frozen, which makes you and Glooples unable to move until it wears off/you shake out of it. If a frozen entity is touched by anything, they shatter.
  • Top-Down View: The game is seen from above.
  • Training from Hell: In training mode, you can decide what Glooples to fight, choosing from any species you've faced before. Meaning you can go up against a Queen, a Void Eater, a Horror, an Amalgam, and more all at once.
  • True Final Boss: The Razor Queen is an enormous Gloople with giant blades both at the front and at the back, and plenty of tricks up its sleeve. It has a lot of health and if you try to get out of range of its melee weapons, it plants itself into the ground like a giant turret and starts pelting you with bone spears, bone caltrops that leave a very spiky obstacle that makes it harder to maneuver around the battlefield, and worst of all, weird critters that travel underground before surging at you out of nowhere. It's the only enemy the game will allow you several tries to defeat. Thankfully, once you know the tactic, you can work around its deadly lunges, and as long as you don't leave close range, you shouldn't ever have to deal with its ranged attacks.
  • Unintentionally Unwinnable: If you are foolish enough to leave the Void Eater as the last gloople in a nest (for example, if you can't find a good opening to deal with it and decide to leave it for when you're no longer getting distracted by lesser enemies), you are screwed. The reason for this is that its black hole attack does not stop, ever, until something enters the Void Eater's blast zone. This can be a gloople, or it can be you. If there are no glooples left, well, guess which option that leaves.
  • Unstable Equilibrium: The True Final Boss is an example of this. If you know what you're doing, you can goad it into a lunge attack that leaves it vulnerable to counterattack, strike it, then goad it again until you've killed it, totally shutting out its deadlier abilities. But, if you screw up, you'll find yourself facing all those deadly abilities, which are difficult to survive even if you're wearing armor.
  • Useless Useful Spell: Some of the Rewards can be this, especially since the other options include the Boring, but Practical Hazard Suit and Sprint.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: The first time a player runs into a Grinder, he/she is probably going to realize that some Glooples may need more inventive means to kill than just slashing it with your sword.
  • Weak Turret Gun: With the emphasis on "weak". Although it does auto-aim at blobs and can kill many of the really nasty ones in one shot, it cannot take much damage.
    • Also is a case of AI Stupidity, since while it tries to shoot where you aren't, it may still shoot you to hit an enemy behind you, resulting in your death.
  • You Have Researched Breathing: One of the unlockable Rewards is Sprint. Presumably to entice the player into unlocking it first, it's positioned on the top-left of the Rewards screen.

Alternative Title(s): Amorphous Plus

Top