Super Crate Box

Super Crate Box is a freeware PC & Mac arcade game created by Vlambeer in 2010.

In it, you play as a Waddling Head who has to fight a army of monsters that come from the top of the screen. However, you don't get any points by killing them. Instead, you must collect the boxes that appear at random locations in the screen, and every time you pick one of them, your current weapon changes.

On April 1, 2011, Vlambeer announced they had fixed a supposed “bug” in the scoring system, which was now tied to enemy kills and not crates, and also made the discgun not deadly for the player. To great surprise, it turned out real, but the original version was obviously restored for download the day after.

Tropes used in Super Crate Box include:

• Awesome but Impractical: Surely the Minigun shoots a lot of bullets, makes a lot of noise and shakes the screen, but the recoil will surely get you unless you hold forward.
• Bottomless Magazines: The weapons never run out of ammo.
• Crate Expectations: The objective is to collect them.
• Deadly Disc: The Discgun. It bounces off walls and can kill you too. Just imagine being "blessed" with it while button smashing near walls... Ugh.
  • The April Fools' version has a non-deadly Discgun. Would have been nice if the original version kept at least this change.
• Elvis Impersonator: One of the unlocked avatars.
• Endless Game
• Flash of Pain: When enemies get hurt, they flash red.
• Game Breaker: The Revolver in the April Fool' version, with the Flamethrower a close seconds. Once you take them, as long as you avoid getting more crates, you can just find a safe spot and die of boredom before any enemy is able to touch you.
• Goddamned Bats: Those skulls that float around and can follow the player. Better leave some mines where they're going to pass.
• Guns Akimbo: The Dual Pistols. Too bad they're the lamest weapon a crate can give you.
• Katanas Are Just Better: One hit kill, lightning fast swing, and it is a katana. Yeah, it is Awesome Yet Practical.
  • It can also turn the big enemies around.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Will probably be the fate of the April Fools' version.
• Lava Pit: Falling into the pit of fire will, of course, spell instant death.
• Nintendo Hard
  • Completely subverted by the April Fools' version. Tying the score to enemy kills makes the game trivially easy (just get a good weapon and you're set to kill hundreds), sometimes even boring, and it takes no more than 30 minutes to unlock everything. If Vlambeer wanted to make a point towards who protested the original scoring, they hammered it good.
• No Ontological Inertia: A rare player case. When you die, any mines you have set up immediately explode.
• No Plot, No Problem
• One-Hit-Point Wonder
• Revolvers Are Just Better: It is strong and shoots fast, without much delay. It's also the second-most powerful non-explosive weapon, with the laser gun being the only non-explosive with an instant kill on everything.
• Short-Range Shotgun: To the point where the pellets suddenly vanish after only a few feet.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: I can't make up my mind, okay? They're all good.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The April Fools' edition could have been made into a nice alternate mode by simply making all guns have limited ammo.
• Turns Red: If a enemy drops on a Bottomless Pit, it just respawns, red and faster. Don't let too many enemies do this, or else...
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Averted. The flamethrower is excellent for quickly killing all enemies on screen.