Whoot. I'm back. Played it a bunch last night before drifting off into dreamland.
So actually, I highly recommend you go to
the official Electroplankton website and click on the first bubble at the top-left ("donna soft?" for those of you who can read Japanese).　It actually takes you through all 10 plankton, which is basically the entire game. (I know it's not a game, but for lack of a better word, I'm going to refer to it as one.)
Each plankton is like a different mini-game, I guess, with its own unique way of making music. I'll give you a brief rundown of the first five, but be warned -- I HAVE NOT YET READ THE MANUAL, and the game itself gives very little detail as to what you can do with each plankton, so these descriptions are going to be pretty simplistic.
01 Tracy -- Each of the seven plankton can be dragged anywhere on the screen to create its own line of sound. First you draw a line (it can be pretty long, actually), and then the plankton will follow it over and over. It even repeats the speed that you draw -- so for example, if you draw the first part reeeeeeeally slow and then the next part super quick, it'll follow the line in the same manner. You can make some pretty cool music (well, with me it was more like noise) when you have all seven going at once...
02 Hanenbow -- This one's kinda neat. One leaf at the bottom shoots a plankton up in the air, and when it hits things (namely other leaves), it makes a noise. The point is to try and rearrange the leaves in such a way that you can keep the plankton bouncing around and making tunes before falling off the screen (you can even press A to display the specific angles of each leaf, i.e. 45 degrees, 83 degrees, etc.). If you press "up" on the d-pad, you can shoot out more plankton manually in addition to the one that comes out every few seconds automatically. Also, if you keep hitting the same leaves over and over, they turn red. I haven't managed to get all leaves red at the same time (they fade back to green if you stop hitting them), but perhaps it might trigger some kind of reaction. BTW, you can also press "Select" to change the leaf layout -- there seems to be four different layouts in all.
03 Luminaria -- I like this one, too. There's a grid with 36 arrows on it, and you start out with a plankton in each of the four corners. Once you touch one, it starts traveling the path of the arrows (which you can change on the fly, of course), making music as it goes. Each plankton has its own speed, too. So you basically make music by sending them around the grid in whatever direction you please. If you keep an arrow pressed for a few seconds, it starts spinning, meaning the direction the plankton goes when it crosses it will be totally random.
04 Sun-Animalcule -- Haven't messed with this one too much, but basically you just draw dots wherever you like on the screen (little suns), which make different tones based on where they are, and as the music loops, it replays the same rhythm over and over. The cool part is, if you leave them alone, the suns will get bigger and bigger each time around until it eventually gets dark and then they turn into little moons. The type of music you can make changes between sun and moon, and if you time it properly, you can have both types going at the same time.
05 Rec-Rec -- This one rocks. It's the one Bill Trinen showed off at GDC, with the four lines of fish that scroll from right-to-left along to a beat (there's a few different beats you can choose, BTW). You record a sample to each one using the mic, and then they all play together as it loops. You can make some pretty funky music with this one.
I gotta get going now; I'll do more later if I have time, but I probably won't, so here's hoping someone else (cough, Jonny) might be able to pop in and offer up some thoughts on the remaining five.
It seems pretty cool so far; if you like tinkering around with sound, then you'll probably enjoy it. I'm not sure if it's worth the price of admission ($45 seems a bit steep to me), but maybe that's why they threw in the free earphones. ;p
Later!
