Tasty Planet

Tasty Planet
Genre(s)	Action Side-scroller Top-down perspective
Developer(s)	Dingo Games
Publisher(s)	Dingo Games PlayFirst
Creator(s)	James Sayer Kris Sayer
Artist(s)	Kris Sayer
Platform(s)	Windows Macintosh Linux iOS Android
First release	Tasty Planet (2006) August 12, 2006
Latest release	Tasty Planet Forever October 16, 2018

Tasty Planet franchise release timeline

2006	Tasty Planet
2007
2008
2009
2010	Tasty Planet: Back for Seconds
2011
2012
2013
2014	Tasty Blue
2015	Tasty Blue (Steam)
2016	Tasty Planet: Back for Seconds (Steam)
2017	Tasty Blue (Android)
	Tasty Planet (Steam and Android)
	Tasty Planet Lite (Android)
	Tasty Planet: Back for Seconds (Android)
2018	Tasty Planet Forever

Tasty Planet is a top-down and side-scroller video game franchise developed by Vancouver-based studio Dingo Games and published by Delaware-based PlayFirst and Dingo Games for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, iOS, and Android.

The games are focused on the evolution of an array of characters, notably the prototype bathroom cleaner or nanotechnology experiment, the "Grey Goo", which is based off of the hypothetical doomsday scenario of the same name. Each game is divided into levels, following a controllable character that can eat anything smaller than itself, constantly growing in size every time it eats. Levels are grouped into different "chapters" that feature different entities and environments, such as parks, cities, the ocean, outer space, and in some cases different playable characters and storylines. The plot is also serialized through comic strips that appear at the beginning and end of some levels, explaining the background of the protagonists and in some cases connecting different chapters together.

Gameplay

The games stars a cast of protagonists that gradually grow as they eat entities and objects (such as batteries, microscopes, bacteria, fauna, and flora) around them. The player controls and navigates the protagonist using their finger, pointing device, or by tilting their screen. The main objective of the games is to get to a size specified by the level; the size of the protagonist is tracked on a "progress bar" on the top-left corner of the screen. Gaining size is done by eating entities or objects that are smaller than the protagonist by coming into contact with them, and avoiding those that would harm it, which are usually larger. Touching a damaging item or entity removes a small bit of matter from the protagonist, indicated by a reduction of size in the progress bar, and visual and audible "injury". However, on certain challenge levels, touching a single harmful object results in immediate death. The vast majority of harmful entities ignore the protagonist; only a few actively pursue it. The level is complete when the player has reached the required size by filling the progress bar or otherwise fulfilled the stage requirements, such as eating a certain number of objects or entities. On timed levels in the first two games, players can also try to achieve "medals" (which come in three places, bronze, silver, and gold) for each level by completing the level under a certain time limit.

Games

Tasty Planet (2006)

Plot

Tasty Planet
Developer(s)	Dingo Games
Publisher(s)	PlayFirst
Producer(s)	Erik Zwerling Kristina Tomalesky
Designer(s)	James Sayer
Artist(s)	Kris Sayer
Platform(s)	Windows Mac OS X Linux iOS Android
Release	August 12, 2006
Genre(s)	Action Top-down perspective
Mode(s)	Single-player

The plot is shown solely through comic strips at the beginning and end of some levels. The first comic strip shows a scientist telling his assistant about his latest discovery, the Grey Goo, a microscopic bathroom cleaner that can eat anything smaller than itself, and grows every time it eats. They place it under a microscope, and the first level of the game begins. After the first two levels of the game, the assistant touches the Grey Goo, who bites him and enters his body. The scientist tells his assistant "just go and wash your hands", believing the goo will be destroyed. The pair then decide to go out for lunch.

The Grey Goo is then washed down the drain and lands outside, where it moves to a park and grows in size. It then moves on to a picnic table where the scientist and assistant are having lunch. When they discover it, the pair are shocked and hastily throw the Grey Goo into the ocean. The Grey Goo then eats through the ocean and is launched by a whale into another park and then to a city, implied to be located in Canada due to the presence of mounties. There, the Grey Goo faces its first war from humans, who attempt to stop it using tanks. It eventually launches itself into the sky and then into orbit around Earth. After eating the moon, Earth, and the rest of the solar system, it moves on to nearby stars like Alpha Centauri and beyond the Milky Way. However, its mass becomes too great after devouring the fabric of space and time, and it implodes, thus causing the universe to begin again.

Levels

Tasty Planet is split up into 9 chapters, further split into 60 levels. They are listed in increasing size order as the Grey Goo grows.

1. Labs
2. Outside
3. Picnic
4. Ocean
5. Park
6. City
7. Sky
8. Orbit
9. Cosmos

There is an additional bonus level, titled "Laser Dolphins"; The Grey Goo must avoid and subsequently eat dolphins strapped with laser machines. The level serves as a promotion of another game developed by Dingo Games, Laser Dolphin.

An additional, selectable option from the main menu is the "Endurance" mode, which are variations of three existing levels. The only change is that the player grows extremely slowly, and it can take over an hour to beat one of these levels. The Endurance mode is absent from the iOS and Android versions.

Tasty Planet: Back for Seconds (2010)

Tasty Planet: Back For Seconds
Developer(s)	Dingo Games
Publisher(s)	Dingo Games
Producer(s)	James Sayer Kris Sayer
Designer(s)	James Sayer Kris Sayer
Programmer(s)	James Sayer
Artist(s)	Kris Sayer
Platform(s)	Windows Mac OS X iOS Android
Release	September 1, 2010
Genre(s)	Action Top-down perspective
Mode(s)	Single player Two-player

Plot

Just like in the original Tasty Planet game, the plot is shown solely through comic strips at the beginning or end of some levels. The first comic strip shows the scientist from the first game telling his assistant about his new time machine, and also mentioning an accidental discovery, a grey goo, sitting under a beaker, that was created when experimenting with nanotechnology. The assistant thinks the blob looks hungry and gives it some candy, much to the dismay of the scientist who believes it is dangerous and shouldn't be given anything to eat. The blob eats the candy, then the lab equipment lying on the table, then larger apparatuses, until it is big enough to consume the time machine itself, which makes it travel back in time 65 million years.

The Grey Goo starts small again in the late Cretaceous period, consuming the plants and animals of the area, before consuming a volcano and being hit by a meteor, which prevents the dinosaurs from going extinct. In the present, the scientist and the assistant experience changes in the timeline as they happen in the past, firstly by finding dinosaurs roaming around the city. After being hit by the meteor and consuming it, the grey goo travels through time again, but each time it travels through time it reverts to a smaller size. It then travels to Ancient Egypt, where it spawns inside a house, and consumes a settlement and the Pyramids, causing them to disappear in the present. Next, it travels to Ancient Rome, where it consumes a small marketplace and grows large enough to destroy the city, forcing the Romans to pull together and prevent the fall of the empire, causing the scientists' city in the present to somehow become part of a Rome that never collapsed. The Grey Goo then travels to Feudal Japan, where it eats a settlement and consumes "Monsterzilla" (a parody of Godzilla), removing the world's protection from giant monsters and allowing them to ravage the present.

The scientist by this point has figured out that the Grey Goo has only one jump left, this time to their future, and they must be prepared for it, so he and his assistant preserve their brains so they can survive until the goo appears. When it does, far in the future, it is microscopic instead of a few centimeters in diameter as when it usually jumps, but the scientist has prepared tiny robots to destroy the grey goo while it is still small. However, it evades the bots and grows larger, necessitating the scientist's second line of defense: energy weapons grafted onto ants, rats, and cats. It evades those too, growing large enough to consume the scientist and his assistants' brains. Giant humanoid tanks armed with powerful lasers are dispatched to destroy the goo, now several meters in diameter, but it evades the blasts, consumes future technology, people, cars, tanks, and then destroys the city.

Next, it launches into space, grows on small asteroids, and destroys humanity's last line of defense - giant, armed, circular satellites, then moves on to destroy Earth, the moon, and the planets. Next, the grey goo consumes small stars around the sun, then the sun itself, working up to red giants. The goo eats the largest stars (red hypergiants); though one of them undergoes a hypernova leaving a black hole, the goo consumes the black hole as well. The goo continues to consume nebulae, star clusters, galaxies, and galaxy clusters. Ripping through the fabric of time (which is represented as literal black fabric), it eats said fabric and discovers that the space-time continuum is resting on the back of a turtle, which is on the back of a slightly larger turtle, and that it's turtles all the way down. It eats said turtles, but since the turtles are infinite, the goo's feast is never-ending, concluding the game.

Levels

Tasty Planet: Back For Seconds is split up into 6 chapters, further split into 48 levels. The latter are largely related to the story, but many of the levels are separate challenges unrelated to the growth of the grey goo. For example, a level where the goo must eat hippopotamus babies but avoid the adults until it is large enough.

1. Modern Era (4 Levels)
2. Cretaceous Era (7 Levels)
3. Ancient Egypt (11 Levels)
4. Ancient Rome (8 Levels)
5. Feudal Japan (7 Levels)
6. Far Future (10 Levels)

Tasty Blue (2014)

Tasty Blue
Developer(s)	Dingo Games
Publisher(s)	Dingo Games
Producer(s)	James Sayer Kris Sayer
Designer(s)	James Sayer Kris Sayer
Programmer(s)	James Sayer
Artist(s)	Kris Sayer
Platform(s)	Windows Mac OS X iOS Android
Genre(s)	Action Side-scroller
Mode(s)	Single player Two-player

Tasty Blue is the third game in the franchise. It is the first game in the franchise to not be top-down, instead being a side-scroller, and the first not to feature the Grey Goo as the protagonist, though it does make a small cameo as a mascot on a billboard in the game's penultimate comic strip. Set in the ocean, the player navigates one of three aquatic creatures in different marine biomes. The game has 5 difficulties: Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly; they determine how much size is deducted from the protagonist should it touch a harmful entity, with harder difficulties deducting more. The "Deadly" mode causes the protagonist to be eaten or destroyed instead of being hurt, triggering an instant game over. An optional feature in the game is "Carnage Mode", which causes blood particles to come out of the protagonist's mouth every time it eats an entity, with the water slowly becoming redder as it eats more.

Plot

Goldy or Goldfish

The Goldfish, also known as "Goldy", is the first character of the game. A child purchases Goldy from a pet store and overfeeds it, ignoring the warning on the aquarium saying "Do not overfeed." The goldfish escapes from its bowl and grows larger in size, proceeding to consume the town the child lives in.

Smiles or Dolphin

The Dolphin, or "Smiles", is the second character of the game. Smiles is forced to work in an abusive aquarium where it is forced to perform dangerous tricks. It overhears a video being watched by a visitor about Goldy, who has become breaking news, which gives the dolphin the idea to escape and eat the aquarium and everything around it as revenge.

Brenda or Nano Shark

The Nano Shark, otherwise known as "Brenda", is the third and final character of the game. She is an artificial shark created by the pair of scientists from the first two games to stop Goldy and Smiles from consuming the Earth. She begins at a microscopic size, eventually growing to a giant size and eats Goldy and Smiles. However, the shark doesn't stop and proceeds to consume many Arctic and Antarctic creatures and the rest of Earth. In a pre-credits comic strip, the scientists, now floating on a lone ice chunk in space, are confused as to how and why Brenda continued to eat, as it was programmed to stop after the scientists pulled a fail-safe switch. They discover a wire leading to the switch has been chewed, but are unsure what chewed it. The last panel reveals a penguin with bits of wire in its mouth, looking by as Brenda eats the rest of the solar system, concluding the game.

Levels

Tasty Blue is split up into 3 chapters, further split into 56 levels, with 15 optional bonus levels after completing the main game. Each chapter focuses on one of the aquatic creatures, though the majority of the plot is concentrated at the beginning and end of a chapter; as with Tasty Planet: Back for Seconds, many of the levels are unrelated to the growth of the creatures and the plot of the game.

1. Temperate (19 levels)
2. Tropical (24 levels)
3. Polar (13 levels)

Tasty Planet Forever (2018)

Tasty Planet Forever
Developer(s)	Dingo Games
Publisher(s)	Dingo Games
Producer(s)	James Sayer Kris Sayer
Designer(s)	James Sayer Kris Sayer
Programmer(s)	James Sayer
Artist(s)	Kris Sayer
Platform(s)	Windows Mac OS X iOS Android
Release	October 16, 2018
Genre(s)	Action Top-down perspective Side-scroller
Mode(s)	Single player Two-player

Tasty Planet Forever is the fourth game in the franchise, and was released in 2018. It has more than eight playable characters and over 150 levels; some levels are top-down whereas others are side-scrolling. Each chapter features a different storyline and protagonist.

Plot

Parisian Cat

The game begins in a restaurant in Paris, France. Two chefs, which resemble the scientist and his assistant from the three original games, tend to the restaurant, and the latter notes the kitchen's large amount of filth. The older chef informs his assistant of a robotic cat cleaner, who can eat anything smaller than itself, gifted to him by his cousin. The chef orders their robotic cat to "eat everything"; the cat consumes peas, cockroaches, mice, wine bottles, knives, and croissants on the floor. However, its command states that it must eat "everything" and thus doesn't stop. It consumes the waiters and customers of the restaurant, trees, cars, buildings, the Eiffel Tower, and eventually all of Paris.

Caribbean Octopus

An infant octopus in the Caribbean Sea is sleeping, only to be awoken by an aluminum can that hits its head. It swims to the surface of the sea and, much to its dismay, finds that a city resort on an island has produced a large pile of waste. The octopus starts to eat rubbish, causing it to become larger and eventually consume the waste-producing island resort.

African Rat

In Africa, a foreign stray rat appears among other rats trained to eat old land mines to prevent the deaths of endangered animals. The rat grows as it eats the inhabitants and fauna of the Sahara, along with safari vans, resorts, and planes.

Big City Bee

To prevent the collapse of endangered bee colonies, a genetically engineered bee is kept in a test tube; but a beekeeper raises concerns that the bee grows abnormally large after eating and shows hostility to things smaller than it. During an interview, a man walks by and observes the bee. Shocked with the size of its eyes, the pedestrian aggressively snaps the test tube, causing the bee to be released. At first it eats nectar, but grows in size and moves on to gnats, apples, drones, various species of birds, then whole humans, trees, aircraft, buildings, hills, mountains, and islands. Eventually, the bee consumes the continents, the Moon, and finally the Earth.

Pacific Basking Shark

In an alternate timeline taking place in 1956, a man in charge of a large fishing business boasts about having killed all basking sharks in the Pacific Ocean. However, one off the coast of British Columbia begins to consume other fish and grow rapidly, then eats scuba divers and log cabins.

Australian Dingo

In the Australian Outback, a stray dingo trained to eat invasive species begins to consume humans and eventually the entire landscape, including tractors, houses, livestock, and crops.

Cyberpunk Penguin

In the future, most of the ice on Earth has melted, resulting in a sea level rise. A group of penguins has been confined to a barren island, while most of humanity has built floating islands in the highly polluted atmosphere. A mutation occurs within the commune of penguins, giving it wings that it uses to fly to one of the artificial floating cities. It begins small by eating first french fries, meat snacks, moths, and butterflies, before consuming buildings, futuristic flying vehicles, and entire floating cities.

Martian Grey Goo

In 2057, the first humans are finally able to land on Mars. However, one of the crew members reports observing "anomalies" in the ice samples he had brought with him. The "anomalies" turn out to be from a grey goo frozen in the ice, which is subatomic in size. The goo begins to eat quarks, hadrons, atoms, before growing in size to eat the crew members, their robotic canines, and their settlements on Mars. After consuming all of the human bases, the goo consumes the surface features of Mars (such as the planet's ice caps), then the entire planet and the seven other planets in the Solar System. It then moves up in scale to eat the Sun, M-type, K-type stars and yellow dwarfs, T Tauri stars, nebulae, "Space Manta Rays", the Milky Way and other galaxies in the Local Group, a "Noodly Monster", and eventually the observable universe. The universe, however, turns out to be nothing but a quark in a much larger universe, with many more quarks as parallel universes, allowing for infinite consumption.

External links

• Official website