A free indie platformer by the Japanese developer Buster (E. Hashimoto), inspired by games like La-Mulana and Maze Of Galious. You are a knight tasked to retrieve the royal crown, which was stolen by the dreaded Hydra. Thus, you explore the spacious castle of the hydra, fighting its goons, obtaining items that bestow you with new powers and clearing various sub-dungeons to clear the way to the Hydra itself.
While still fairly challenging unless you're really, really careful, Meikyuujou Hydra is a nice introduction to this style of exploration-heavy Metroidvanias and a lot easier than Maze of Galious or La-Mulana, since it neither has the Nintendo Hard and brutally unfair struggle for survival of the former nor the brain-sundering puzzles and unintuitive interface of the latter.
An English patch can be found here
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Among some English-speaking fans, the game is known as “Hydra Castle Labyrinth”.
This game provides examples of the following tropes:
- Antagonist Title: The titular Hydra is the Big Bad.
- Ballistic Bone
- Big Bad: The titular Hydra stole the royal crown, and the knight is tasked with getting it back.
- Blackout Basement: Half of World 5 (Lolidra's Cavern).
- Bleak Level: World 3 (Golgia's Ruins). The music is ominous and eerie, the colour scheme is fairly jarring, and you encounter the first skeletons and zombies. World 5 (Lolidra's Caverns) is similar, with additional poisonous enemies and darkness.
- Bullfight Boss: The first boss (the dodo).
- Charged Attack: Granted by the Red Scroll.
- Crate Expectations
- Defeat Equals Explosion: For both enemies and you. Defeated bosses undergo a Post-Defeat Explosion Chain.
- Degraded Boss: The first boss appears as a recurring miniboss in the Hydra's Lair.
- Door to Before: After defeating any boss.
- Double Jump: Granted by the Winged Boots.
- Excuse Plot: The hydra stole the crown. Kill it and return the crown.
- Flip-Screen Scrolling
- The Goomba: Grubs. Slow, do nothing but crawl back and forth on the ground, and die in one hit.
- Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed
- Hidden Item Alert: The chime.
- Hub Level: The main part of the castle, sort of - it's still where you spend about half of the game, since it's larger than any of the dungeons, contains enemies and is where you find all the items.
- Invulnerable Attack: While executing the Charged Attack, you're invincible. But note that while charging, you're not.
- Knockback
- Lethal Lava Land: World 7.
- Mercy Invincibility: Thankfully, since there's also knockback.
- Mook Maker: The world 5 boss (Lolidra) periodically creates small floating eyes.
- One-Hit Kill: Caused by contact with lava. On the player side, bombs are powerful enough to do this to ordinary enemies.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: There are weird crawling seals with a huge sticky tongue, and later creatures that launch their explosive head at you and instantly regrow a new one...
- Precision-Guided Boomerang: It always stays at your own height.
- Randomly Drops: Much like in other platformers of this kind, enemies may drop hearts or ammunition.
- Recurring Boss: The first boss appears as a recurring miniboss in the Hydra's Lair.
- Shield-Bearing Mook: The armoured shield dudes.
- Shout-Out:
- The title Meikyuujou Hydra is a reference to the Japanese title of the Castlevania series, Akumajou Dracula.
- The Dagon Idol, "Bane of Innsmouth"
- Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom: They're like thwomps and 'maverick' thwomps.
- Spikes of Doom: They just hurt a bit and knock you back.
- Status Effects: Poison, petrification, paralysis, quake stun.
- Temporary Platform: The breaking and fixed interval types.
- Underground Monkey:
- Grey bats (only move up and down) and red bats (move freely)
- Blue slimes (only hop up and down), red slimes (hop around freely), yellow slimes (paralyze on contact)
- White zombies (basic zombies popping out of the ground and walking forth and back) and green zombies (poison on contact)
- Under the Sea: World 4 (Gyra's Bog).
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: Shut down the game by force while low on health and executing a Leap of Faith into another room directly into an enemy, spike or lava pit. This will only affect the crash quicksave though.
- Vent Physics: The gimmick of World 6 (Devil's Lair).
- Walk, Don't Swim: Combined with Super Drowning Skills... ouch.
- Walk on Water: The red winged boots allow you to walk on lava.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Certain bosses can only be defeated if you got a certain item from their dungeons.
- A Winner Is You: "THE END!"
- You Have Researched Breathing: You need an item to break crates.
