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| Apidya |
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| | Developer(s) | Kaiko | | Publisher(s) | Play Byte, Team17 | | Platform(s) | Amiga, Atari ST | | Release date | 1992 | | Genre(s) | Shoot-em-up | | Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer | | Media | Two floppy disks |
Apidya is a horizontally-scrolling shoot-em-up computer game developed by Kaiko and released by Play Byte in 1992 for the Amiga and Atari ST. The player controls a magical honeybee that can spit damaging energy projectiles. There are five levels in the game, and each level is divided up into a number of stages (usually three). There are also a number of secret bonus levels. At the end of every stage is a different boss, which must be defeated to progress to the next stage or level.
Levels- Meadow's Edge: A grassy meadow, pitting the player against various insects.
- The Pond: A pond, featuring various fish and aquatic creatures. The player can fly either above or below the pond surface.
- Sewers Blast: A sewer pipe, containing some bizarrely mutated enemies, both animal and inanimate.
- Techno Party: A level apparently set inside some kind of bio-technological machine, featuring many homages to R-Type.
- Boss Panic: A dark, atmospheric level, which pits the honeybee against five final bosses.
In the first two levels, nearly all the enemies are real insects and animals that can be found in a meadow or pond. During Techno Party, the bee morphs into a more mechanised form for the duration of that level.
GameplayThe gameplay is standard for a horizontally-scrolling shooter, with some elements borrowed from early, classic shoot 'em ups. The game uses the power-up bar system pioneered by Gradius. Destroyed enemies sometimes leave behind a power-up in the form of a red-and-yellow flower. The player may collect these flowers and activate new weapons and enhancements using the power-up bar at the bottom of the screen. The game also uses a 'build-up' weapon very similar in operation to the 'beam' weapon in R-Type. If the fire button is held down for a second or two, the player's bee makes a hissing noise. Releasing the fire button will then cause the bee to fire a large, organic rocket which can wipe out waves of small enemies, or damage larger ones.
Miscellaneous informationThe musical soundtrack to the game was composed by renowned game musician Chris Huelsbeck. An Apidya suite was performed live by a full symphonic orchestra in 2003 at the Symphonic Game Music Concert-series in Leipzig, Germany. Recently it has been announced that music from Apidya will be a part of the PLAY! A Video Game Symphony concert in Stockholm, Sweden as well. When the difficulty is set to "Easy", the game skips the last level and the ending sequence, and goes straight to the end credits. In 2002, Stefan Becker began writing a PC remake of Apidya called Apidya 2002, using graphics and sound ripped from the original game. The name Apidya appears to be styled after Japanese. The four katakana characters on the title screen, アビヂャ (pronounced "abija" but romanized "abidya" under the Nihon-shiki system), might be an attempted transliteration of the Latin Apidae, which is the name of the taxonomic family to which the honey bee belongs.
External links- Project: Apidya - homepage of Apidya 2002, a fan remake in progress
- An Apidya Fansite
- Apidya entry at Dream17 - the Team17 Fansite
- Apidya lost bonus level uncovered after 16 years
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