Turbo Pudding

LoudnikScreenshot Saturday

All five Loudnik tapes at level 5, one screenshot each

· The Turbo Pudding team · 5 min read

Bell Garden, in dark slate blue: the ship, a white arrowhead with a round speaker cone in the middle and pale bars on its wings, flies at the bottom of the picture, and two wide arcs of BASS rise above it, white with a green and teal glow, one just over the ship and a bigger one at the top edge; two masts, dark square pads with a lattice frame and a satellite dish with a red light on top, stand at the top left and top right, four round pink enemy bullets with white centers float between them, a glass bell outline hangs on a thin thread at the right, and the gray edge of a floating island shows at the bottom left

It’s Saturday, so here are some screenshots. In Loudnik, the ship’s weapons are tapes, and there are five of them: BEAT, CHORD, SOLO, TRILL and BASS. Each has five levels, and for these pictures we turned every tape up to level 5 and flew them through the three free stations: Pirate Cove, the Disco Rings and Bell Garden.

Each wing of the ship carries five little bars, and with every level one more lights up in the tape’s color, so at level 5 all ten are lit. The picture at the top is BASS in Bell Garden. More about it at the end.

Where tapes come from

BEAT comes free. The other four wait in the Garage, on the Tapes tab, and each is bought once with picks, the little yellow guitar picks that enemies drop: CHORD for 500, TRILL for 900, SOLO for 1,500 and BASS for 2,200.

In flight, any tape can turn up as a capsule, often out of a music box you shoot open. A capsule shows the tape you hold first, then the others in turn, two and a half seconds each on Normal. Catch your own tape, and the game shouts “LOUDER!”: one level up. Catch another, and you switch tapes but keep your level. Three power sparks also make a level. Losing a ship costs two levels on Normal and one on Easy.

BEAT, straight ahead

“Short shots in pairs, straight ahead. Reliable.” At level 1, that’s two streams. Level 2 adds a third and level 3 a fourth, level 4 makes the shots fatter, and level 5 adds one more pair from the wing tips, angled out by nine degrees. At every level, it fires twelve volleys a second.

In the picture, a Stereo in the Disco Rings flashes white as the shots land. It’s two speaker cones on one bridge with a dashed seam between them. Shoot it down, and it comes apart at the seam into two halves that peel off and come at a slant.

Deep in the dark purple sky of the Disco Rings, the ship, a white arrowhead with a round speaker cone in the middle and bright cyan bars on both wings, fires BEAT: just above its nose flies a row of four fat pale cyan shots with one more angled out at each side, and higher up, as another row of shots flies past, a Stereo, two round speaker cones joined by a short bridge with a dashed seam, flashes bright white with little sparks flying off it, while a single stray shot flies on to the right
Searched “how to split a stereo.” Twelve volleys a second does it.

CHORD, the wide fan

“A wide fan of notes. Clears the swarm.” CHORD always fires a tight core of three in the middle, and the fan around it opens up with every level: five shots at level 1, nine at level 5, with the outer ones 40 degrees off center on each side. Since fewer shots reach any one target, each level also gives CHORD a bigger share of damage.

Over Pirate Cove, a column of Squeakers, little gray darts that point down, comes down the left side, while a heart floats beside them. A heart is one more ship.

Pirate Cove, in dark violet space: the ship, with lime green bars on its wings, fires CHORD, and two fans of round lime green shots spread out above it, a tight curve of nine just over the ship and a much wider one near the top; at the left, a column of four Squeakers, gray triangles pointing down with a dark red dot and a small antenna each, comes down the screen next to a pink enemy bullet; beside them a heart floats in a white frame inside a soft red ring; a big dark asteroid with a thin relay mast on top looms at the right with another pink bullet in front of it, and a yellow guitar pick drifts beside the ship
People also ask: “how wide is a chord?” Eighty degrees at level 5.

SOLO, the beam

“A beam that cuts through everything, enemy fire too.” SOLO is a single beam from the ship’s nose to the top of the screen, with a string wound around it. It hits every enemy in its path on every frame and wipes out every enemy bullet it touches, of any size. At level 5, it is three times as wide as at level 1. Of all five, it covers the least ground.

Shoot down one of the mirror balls hanging in the Disco Rings, and it gives you a GLINT: for three seconds, the ship fires a fan of four extra shots on top of whatever tape is in the deck.

The Disco Rings, in dark purple: the ship, with blue bars on its wings, fires SOLO, a wide beam of blue light with a white-hot core and a pale string wound around it in loops, rising from a big white glow at the ship’s nose to the top of the picture; a yellow guitar pick drifts through the beam, two more float just to its right next to a short pink dash of enemy fire and a small pink ring, and at the left a silver mirror ball with a few pink, teal and gold squares hangs on a long gray thread
Typed “can a guitar solo stop bullets?” This one can.

TRILL, the notes that steer

“Notes that find their own target.” TRILL sends mint green eighth notes out of the wings, two per volley at level 1 and four at level 5, and the volleys come faster with each level. Each note heads for the nearest enemy, speeds up to more than twice its first speed, and picks a new target if its own goes down.

In the picture, the notes leave the wings in pairs among yellow picks, a power spark floats at the left, and the truss at the right belongs to the old relay station.

Pirate Cove, in dark violet space: the ship, with mint green bars on its wings, has just fired TRILL, and two pairs of glowing mint green eighth notes with curved tails leave its wings while four more curl upward through the middle of the picture; yellow guitar picks of different sizes are scattered all around, a power spark, a white eighth note in a round dark badge with a pale rim, floats at the left, a dark asteroid hangs at the top left, and the gray lattice of an old relay station truss reaches in from the right edge
Search history: “notes that find you.” Four per volley, at level 5.

BASS, the arcs that grow

Back to the picture at the top. “Arcs that grow as they fly and pierce.” BASS fires one arc at a time, and the arc widens as it flies. It passes through enemies, hitting each one only once, and from level 4 it also wipes out the small bullets it touches. Each level makes the arc start wider and grow faster, so at level 5 it leaves the ship twice as wide as at level 1.

In Bell Garden, two masts stand guard, lattice towers with a dish that turns to follow the ship, and a glass bell sways on its thread at the right.

And there is something past level 5. Catch a capsule of the tape you already hold at full volume, and the game shouts “OVERDRIVE”: for six seconds, the tape fires 30 percent faster, the bars on the wings turn white, and 25 picks go into your pocket.

The first three stations are free to play in your browser at loudnik.com; the full game is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on its Loudnik page.

More about Loudnik

LoudnikMeet the cast

Loudnik: meet Volta, Bobina and the Jammers

Who’s who in Loudnik’s first three stations: a pirate DJ, a cassette robot, a machine that loves one note and the gray army that switches the galaxy off.