Electroplankton (DS) Review
The best way to describe this cart is interactive electronic music box. Electroplankton was designed and developed by Toshio Iwai, a renowned Japanese artist. It is pricey to import and the chances of a release outside that country are slim. So why even bothering? Theres no published title in any console that comes even close to this experience. It is different, it appeals to everybody and it has no language barriers. If this is just an experiment, keep them coming because it turned out to be a great unique game.
Graphics: The graphics are simple but beautiful. Each plankton has been crafted to fit the specific kind of music interaction they represent. They are cute and are always smiling waiting for the player to interact with them. Colors have also been carefully chosen according to the music. Upbeat/loud planktons tend to have a red/orange palette. Calm/relaxing ones usually use blue/green colors.
Sound: This is probably the most important aspect of Electroplankton. The sound is crystal clear and each plankton has its own personality. The music that can be created its fascinating. It ranges from hypnotic to calming, complementing the visuals perfectly.
Gameplay: There are basically two modes: Performance and Audience.
In the first one 10 the player chooses from 10 different planktons to make music with. In Audience you can leave the DS alone making music by itself like a music box. Each plankton has its own personality:
Tracy: there are six different planktons, each one with a different sound and color. After selecting one and drawing a line it will follow that path make different sound effects.
Hanenbow: these tadpole shaped plankton jump from leaf to leaf until they fall into the water. Modiffying the angle of each leaf causes the plankton to bounce in different directions to produce different sounds.
Luminaria: there are 4 plankton, one on each corner and the screen is full of arrows. Touching these changes their direction. When a plankton reaches an arrow it will make a sound and it will jump to the following according to its direction.
Sun-Animacule: to create creatures in this level, the player must tap different sections of the screen. Each one will create a smooth sound that will grow with the plankton. Once it reaches a certain size it will disappear.
Rec-Rec: in this level, there are four fish that will record any sound using the portables micrphone. It also allows the player to change the speed and the base creating a short and simple rapping style song.
Nanocarp: 16 plankton swim on this level. When touched, the sound they make creates a wave that affects the other ones causing a chain reaction. The player can also use the microphone to arrange them in different shapes.
Lumiloop: 5 round plankton fill the screen and creates a smooth sound when the players spins them around.
Marine-snow: the screen is filled with snowflake shaped plankton. When touching one of them, it will swap places with the previously played snowflake causing chains.
Beatness: 5 chain like plankton play sounds in a loop with different music bases. These are old-school Nintendo songs from games like Mario and Donkey Kong.
Volvoice: after recording your voice or a sound, each plankton on this level will re-play with it with a special effect (making it slower, faster, etc)
The biggest flaw of this game is that no music creation can be saved, so after composing a great song theres no way to share it or play it later on.
Another great feature of the game is the packaging. The all-metallic blue box is eye-catching and doesnt follow Nintendos boxing standards. And its bigger than usual size is justified because it includes a pair of earphones. The manual is printed in a special paper and all the instructions are hand drawn graphics. Even though everything is in Japanese, you can still decipher some of the planktons behavior just by looking at them
Replay value: How much you will play this game depends on your imagination and how much you enjoy music. Peoples experience with Electroplankton differ a lot because it reaches the player in such an intimate way that no one interacts in the same way with each creature.
The fact that songs cannot be saved is a great design flaw, but it is probably a decision that was made and not something that was forgotten. Maybe the idea that this is art and it cannot reproduce could explain this problem.
