Under the sea, under the sea...
Pronty (International title: Pronty: Fishy Adventure) is a deep-sea underwater-themed indie metroidvania released by Taiwanese developer 18Lights Studios and FunZone Games.
Pronty Z-X-921, a little fish-boy, and his robotic krill partner Bront, has been enlisted as guardians of Atlantis and assigned to salvage the ruins of Rayla, the once-destroyed underwater city in the outskirts, near the borders where aquatic monsters roam thanks to toxic marine waste from the surface leaking into the depths. Given an important task, it's up to Pronty to explore the world outside while gaining assorted skills to prove himself worth in Neptune's Hall. But along the way, Pronty discovers the secrets and truth behind Atlantis all those years ago.
The game was released for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows.
Something Fishy's Going On Under Atlantis...
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Raksha, the absolutely humungous, six-eyed behemoth battled in a tunnel where its head takes up the entire left side of the screen. It's a fight-while-fleeing example, Pronty needs to direct Brent into attacking Raksha while swimming forward like crazy to avoid getting chomped. What's even better though, is that upon death, Raksha's mouth regurgiates a smaller, red version of itself with a new health bar, and Pronty and Brent needs to defeat it all over again!
- Apocalyptic Log: Pronty and Bront comes across an audio recording in the ruins of Rayla, detailing the city's last days.Initiate Command Proteus.
All surviving protectors shoudl retreat to Royla immediately... - Awesome Underwater World: The ocean environment (those which escaped pollution, that is) depicted within the game looks gorgeous... despite taking place in a wasteland in the distant future.
- Bait-and-Switch: Pronty and Brent exits from Para-Keto's gloomy cavern, swimming into a beautifully-animated underwater area... and the camera zooms out to reveal it's a bilboard. It then falls off, and beyond it is even more darkness
. - Cyborg: All of the game's enemies and bosses are marine life converted to mechanical creatures via implants and experimentation, with visible machine parts on their bodies.
- Dash Attack: Alongside stabbing with his nasal horn, Brent can also perform a supercharged tackle which deals stronger damage. Some of the bosses - like Lamina the blade-covered shark-thing - can pull this attack too, enough to chew off most of Pronty's health.
- Equippable Ally: Pronty himself doesn't have any attacks, but he controls his mechanical krill bestie, Brent, who acts as Pronty's floating "sword" targeting any nearby enemy as directed by Pronty. What's even better is that Brent is indestructible.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Even the clownfishes are hostile and tries attacking Pronty and Brent for no reason!
- Fiendish Fish: Most of the enemies and a large number of bosses are fish-themed, and looks absolutely deformed with the large amounts of bionic implants embedded all over their flesh. Including the Rakshaha, Lamina, Chattertooth (both Silver and Gold), Mother Whale, and the like.
- Fish People: The player-controlled protagonist, Pronty, is a chibi-looking fish-boy, complete with flappers in place of limbs and Ear Fins.
- Floating in a Bubble: The game has a lethal version; Pronty can be caught within bubbles which carries him away, but as a fish-boy, being confined in a bubble actually harms Pronty's health due to lack of water. Pronty can only summon Brent to pop the bubbles and escape.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: The Garbage Maiden, one of the last bosses (a garbage truck fused with flesh-like growth with a mannequin resembling a woman erectede on its top), is fought in a set of tunnel-like caverns where it keeps fleeing, necessitating Pronty and Bront to chase and attack. It'll dispense mooks and obstacles behind to slow down the duo.
- Giant Crab: Befitting an underwater game, an oversized crustacean shows up as a Mini-Boss. But all of the game's enemies are half-mechanical as well, with the one Pronty and Brent faces being a Gatling Crab, with automatic turrets in place of pincers capable of firing exploding projectiles while the crab crawls all over the area.
- Green Is Gross: The most polluted areas of the ocean depths are, unsurprisingly, filtered in shades of dirty-green. Some area even has clouding green fog thick enough to obscure Proty and Brent.
- Harmless Enemy: The cleaners are fishes meant for garbage disposal, and while they can be attacked they can't fight back in any way. The compendium even describes them as "harmless".
- King Mook: The first boss, Silver Chattertooth, is a sized-up version of the common Chattertooth fishes. And near the end, the Golden Chattertooth, which is expectedly even stronger than its silver twin.
- Monster Compendium: Pronty's adventure begins with one for him to catalogue the various monsters encountered. Oddly enough, Pronty himself and his sidekick Bront are listed among the creatures.
- Mook Maker: The Brick Lair is one of the few bosses who isn't a giant-sized sea monster, because it's a giant brick structure (yeah, no really) who doesn't have any attacks by itself but contains tubes capable of releasing clownfishes and nautiluses in large numbers until it's destroyed. It's however a rather easy boss fight after the dangerous Lamina.
- Orbiting Particle Shield: There's a power-up that allows Brent to swim in circles around Pronty rapidly, slicing up enemies along the way in a manner similar to this trope. Pronty can even dash and allow Brent to cause additional damage along the way.
- Painful Pointy Pufferfish: The game as a boss version, the Puffer Fortress who's a giant pufferfish that takes up half the screen. It can inflate itself to spam waves of spikes as an attack, even regrowing spent spikes in a few seconds.
- Robot Buddy: Brent is the titular hero's robot krill sidekick. Who helps Pronty fight enemies by ramming them with it's nasal spike.
- Sand Worm: Para-Keto, the second boss, is a giant-sized bobbit worm fought in a cavern, where it tunnels in and out the arena trying to chew at Pronty and Brent.
- Sea Monster: Most of the bosses are gigantic aquatic monsters that dwarves over Pronty and Brent.
- Storm of Blades: Lamina, a monstrous shark-creature whose body is curiously embedded with blades, can spam bladed projectiles - each larger than Pronty - all over the place as an attack. And even summon blades that takes up half the arena'' periodically! She's a difficult Wake-Up Call boss at that point of the game.
- Stationary Enemy:
- Tentaquil-Fairy, Tentaquil-Rosa and Tentaquil-Dionyssus enemies are sea fans rooted to the ground, but can launch waves of spikes by swinging. Touching it damages Pronty's health, too - Pronty needs to keep a distance while controlling Brent to rough it up with his nasal spike.
- Somnus are blobfishes who doesn't move about, but can release bubbles capable of trapping their targets.
- Tortured Monster: Lamina, who doesn't seem like one when fought as a boss until further details. Appearing as a shark but with tons of protruding, blade-like growth coming out from all over her body, after defeating her as a boss her entry is added into Pronty's compendium where it turns out she used to be a regular shark before a radical environmentalist group captures her and turns Lamina into a half-machine, half-fish bionic monster in a constant state of agony and pain. She then escapes and goes on a rampage before dissappearing into the deepest trenches.
