This is a starter guide, as well as a hints and tips guide for Platypus Reclayed, the ground up remake of the classic shoot-em-up, Platypus. The guide is for players new to the game, or those who don't excel at games in the genre (just like myself!).
If you are an experienced Platypus player, or generally a very competent shoot-em-up player some of the starter tips may be known to you. However, I hope you still find many of these tips useful, particularly if you haven't played the original game in over a decade, or two!
Platypus is not an easy game, particularly on higher difficulties. It wouldn't be possible to walk you through how to complete levels as there's a high skill ceiling. The tips in this guide aim to help you better manage your screen positioning, manage your limited opportunities to obtain power ups and in general, survive.
General survival hints, tips and tricks
Shoot!
An easy tip to start. Unless you’re in an area with explosive mines, always keep your finger on the trigger. You have endless ammunition in Platypus Reclayed, keep that finger down and you'll take down many enemies before they even reach your screen.
Lives and continues
Unless you're using the Beginner ship in Platypus, each hit you take will take a life away from you in. You have a set number of lives until you need to use a continue.
Lives can be earned by increasing your score. You should see the vertical bar in the bottom left of your screen to track how close you are to earning an extra life. When you see a flash of orange stars from the bottom left, you've been awarded an extra life.
When all lives are exhausted, in true arcade game fashion you can use a continue to keep the show going. You will start with 2 continues per run. Using a continue will reset your score.
Tip – A good tip for when you lose all your lives. Make use of your 10 second cool down before continuing. If the screens very busy, hang fire till the last second before getting back to the fight.
Difficulty levels
There are four difficulty levels in Platypus Reclayed - Easy, Normal, Hard and the very difficult, Nasty. The game is notably more difficult on each increasing difficulty level, the jump from Normal to Hard is quite stark.
You must beat a stage on the same difficulty to unlock the next stage - ie you cannot play stage 2 on Hard, if you've only beat stage 1 on Easy.
It's important to note that the games final stage is not available on Easy, therefore you will need to play on Normal or higher to see the final boss.
Survival and positioning
Platypus Reclayed is an on-rails, you don't need to defeat every enemy and often it's more important to survive than go for every kill.
Spend your first 30 minutes with the game getting a feel of how enemies move, each with their patterns and attacks. Each of the game’s stages introduces new enemies but many basic and weaker foes will return across multiple stages. You should try and get a feel for where enemies on each stage approach from - most will be from the right, naturally; however you can expect enemies to attack from all over.
- Behind: Whilst it would seem natural to stick to your far left, that's just as dangerous. Enemies will creep up from behind you and take you out off guard.
- Below: There are enemies and scenery that will attack you from below, boats and turrets in particular.
With all this in mind, it's best to stick at around this position for the most of your time:
Always keep on the move. Enemy shots will target the location you were at, at the time they shoot. Also, homing missile attacks will easily hit you if you're not moving. Circular-like movement patterns can be your friend, enabling you to loop around enemies and their attacks - remember, fighter jets can only attack from behind, you've seen Top Gun, right?!
Attacking enemies and aggressive play
Once you're more comfortable with survival, it's time to start playing more aggressively. By playing more aggressively you can defeat more enemies who will drop power ups and score boosts, earning you more lives and eventually making your game easier.
There are enemies who regularly drop power ups who you want to target, such as these orange foes:
Power ups also give you some extra protection. Taking a hit whilst holding a power up will remove your power up, but save your life (Beginner and Regular ships only).
Be careful though, particularly on boss stages. Basic enemies who drop power ups regularly pass through as you're focusing on survival. The temptation to go after the power up dropping enemies needs to be quickly evaluated, as in doing so you're going to take your eyes off the boss and their bullet barrage. Think fast, but always prioritise your life.
After each level within a stage there will be a report of how many enemies you've killed allowing you to keep track of how you're performing. 100% enemy destruction will give you big score bonuses.
Ships
There are three ships in the game, which can all be used on any difficulty level. I recommend starting with Regular as it can be easy to become over reliant on the Beginner ships' shields. However if you're struggling there's no shame in using Beginner.
Beginner
- Offers two shields per life meaning you can take two hits before a third fatal shot
- Weaker shots mean tougher enemies will take longer to put down, although not all too much.
- Power ups act as a one hit shield on the Beginner ship
Regular
- Recommended for most players
- Normal balance of power and manoeuvrability
- Will be shot down in one hit
- Power ups act as a one hit shield on the Regular ship
Advanced
- A quick ship with more damage output than Regular
- Will be shot down in one hit
- Power ups do not act as a shield on the Advanced ship
Power ups
Platypus Reclayed is full of power ups for players to use. From the basic like rockets and lasers, to the extremely wacky special power ups including cheese burgers, fish and doughnuts.
Power ups are timed and expire after a set timer in the top left of your screen. Power ups can't be stacked (eg rockets + fireball), but picking up multiple power ups extends their duration. Power ups do carry over between levels though, with the timer pausing whilst your score review is displayed.
Basic power ups
To pickup basic power ups, players should look for these stars when playing through each level. Power ups will last until the temporary timer in the top left of your screen lasts, or will be lost when you get hit.
You should fly into the stars to obtain the power ups, or shoot the stars to do one of the following:
- Change the star colour, in turn changing the power up.
- Change the star to a "˜!?', which activates an alternative special power up (see below*).
- Keep shooting to destroy the star giving players a points boost. This is good for players chasing high scores, though not advised for novices.
Not all power ups are created equal and there some better than others. Some of the best basic power ups in the game are:
- Fireball: Creates a very powerful ball of fire that you can hold in front of your ship melting everything in your path. You can also release the fireball as a dangerous projectile.
- Shockwave: Creates a shockwave that destroys enemies and their fire. If you have the additional powerup to fire up to 3 at a time, position yourself in the middle of the screen and you will vaporise anything to your right before it appears on your screen.
- Homing rockets: Whilst the enemies love hitting you with homing rockets, it's just as satisfying getting your own back. Homing rockets latch in to foes around the screen, leaving you to spend more time dodging enemies and their fire.
- Bombs: Extremely useful in the third stage where there are a number of boats beneath you that are easy to miss. Dropping bombs on them will eat through their hull enabling you to focus on the more visible flying foes. You retain standard bullets when you have bombs.
Special power ups
Platypus has some extremely bizarre special power ups including cheese, doughnuts and bombs which are suitable for attacking ground-based enemies. See above* for how to activate special power ups.
Many of these are powerful and can chew through enemy spacecraft freeing up your play space for you to manoeuvre.
Some of the best special ups (those acquired by flying into an "˜!?' market) in the game are:
- Cheese: A barrage of holey cheese sets off to batter your foes shields. Very useful against mid to high-tier enemies.
- Fish: Odd, right? But by no means weak. Fish fly out of your cannons in a fish-like flail dropping down on foes around you. Powerful on its own, but if you have the trio cannon enabled with fish, prepare to wipe your screen of baddies in no time.
- Hearts: Rarely obtainable but incredibly powerful. Hearts fire a slow but steady stream of pink hearts that deal incredibly high damage.
Other items
There are numerous other items that you can pickup in Platypus Reclayed that can give you a competitive edge including a points boost or firepower advantage. These come in the form of the following:
- Fruit: There's a lot of fruit in Platypus Reclayed. Normally dropped by enemies, grab as much as you can to boost your scores and increase your progress bar (bottom left) towards an extra life.
- Crates: Will fly across the screen attached to a balloon. Be sure to shoot the crate rather than the balloon, and be sure to fly in close to grab the item. This may be coins, points multipliers or a mushroom which awards an extra life, or something else.
- Safes: Similarly to crates, they will fly across screen attached to three balloons. Safes require more shots to destroy than crates but the rewards are often better. There are three balloons attached to safes as standard. With three balloons the safes will usually fly up your screen too quickly for you to destroy. Shoot one of the balloons to slow down its ascension, and another to make the safe descend giving you more time.
- Mushrooms: Occasionally dropped in crates, these will award you an extra life.
Enemies
Enemy variety is great in Platypus Reclayed and each stage introduces new, more dangerous ships to take on.
Many will go down in a few shots but some of the larger enemies are going to take a lot more firepower. Here's some general tips on what to look out for:
- Movement: Each enemy has a unique movement pattern. Watch and learn where they come from, what they do and if they fly off after a certain amount of time - remember you don't have to defeat everything.
- Bullet type and patterns: Enemies who fire are those most likely to cause you an issue. Small red bullets are the most common and can be tricky to spot when the ante ups. Some shots are homing and some are more static. General advice is to always keep on the move as most bullets shoot towards your position at the time of the shot.
- Health: Larger enemies have more health and take more bullets to put down. Whilst there aren't health bars in the game, the visual prompts for health are the cracks that increase after receiving more of your firing barrage.
Also, if you take out groups of enemies - eg a group of 5 saucers - you will get a small points boost, scalable dependent on difficulty level.
Future tips and tricks
This was our Platypus Reclayed starter and hints and tips guide. We will continue to add new tips and tricks as we spend more time with the game. See below about submitting any of your own to us and we will of course give you credit.
Platypus Reclayed released on 18 September 2025 for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4 & 5, PC and Nintendo Switch. You can read our full Platypus Reclayed review if you're interested in picking up the game.
Did you find the above useful in completing that first boss fight? What tips do you have for Platypus Reclayed? Please let us know, we'd be happy to credit your suggestions in the guide. And stick with GSC for more Platypus Reclayed tips, tricks and news.
