Paprium is a side-scrolling beat 'em up video game for the Mega Drive developed by studio WaterMelon and released in 2020 . It was announced as part of a crowd-funding pitch in 2012. Development took eight years, with little to no communication with game's backers or the press, and was widely considered vaporware.
Gameplay
Paprium is a beat 'em up game similar in style to other beat 'em up games that came out on the Sega Mega Drive in the late 80s and early 90s like Golden Axe and Streets of Rage, with visuals styled after various pieces of media in the cyberpunk genre. The game offers three modes, "Original", "Arcade", and an unlockable "Arena". Original and Arcade mode are playable on first boot of the game with Original mode features cut-scenes and player-chosen progression, while Arcade mode is styled after retro-games of the era with set progression, however it is unique due to new routes which are unlocked by playing the Original Mode. Arena mode is unlocked after progression in Original mode, and it is a survival type mode with up to four players, but only if each of the four players use the WaterMelon produced Grand Stick III arcade stick.
Paprium begins with three playable characters, Tug, Alex, and Dice, each with their own strength and speed, with a handful of other playable characters that the player can unlock with game progression. The game follows the three characters in Paprium, a fictional supercity built after a massive nuclear war located "somewhere at equidistant point [sic] between Shanghai, Tokyo and Pyongyang" in the year 8A2 (hexadecimal value for the year 2210). The game supports both the Mega-CD and the 32X accessories, when the accessories are plugged in to a Mega Drive, it will insert boxes of the accessories in game which functions as a throw-able explosive weapon for players. In addition to this the Mega-CD's additional CPU hardware can be leveraged as a computer controlled second player in single-player games.
The player will move through various stages battling various enemy characters to advance to the final boss stage for each level. Certain stages have branching paths which allow the player to pick and choose which way they want to progress in the level. Killing enemies will add to the player's score which will help unlock additional lives or powerups. One unique feature in Paprium is unlike other beat 'em up games, Paprium's score is recorded in the hexadecimal or base-16 numerical system rather than the conventional decimal or base-10 system. This isn't limited to score in the game, as other numbers in the game such as the aforementioned year and player character's age is all recorded in hexadecimal. A mechanic in the game is the characters can form an addiction to BLU, a drug that can be picked up in the level and grant a small amount of invulnerability on use. Characters can become addicted to the drug, and this will eat away at the character's life bar. If the player's lifebar falls into the "addiction" portions the playable character will enter drug withdrawal and be weaker and slower. Players will have the option to pick up various weapons or use various vehicles in certain stages to make fights easier.
Development
WaterMelon announced a new game on their Magical Game Factory website, a site set up as both a storefront and crowd-funding page for WaterMelon and future games, as "Project Y", the then code name of Paprium, which was announced would be a new Mega Drive game on February 21, 2012, which would be developed alongside WaterMelon's first ever Super NES title code-named "Project N" which is still in development. Funding and influence on Project Y was funded by "gems", a digital currency used by WaterMelon for this site where funders would convert actual currency to WaterMelon for these gems in order to vote for what direction they wanted the game to take. Each gem would cost roughly 0.10 Euro (around $0.13 USD at announcement date) and would be used individually as votes, allowing funders to buy more gems to fund ideas they wanted more than others. Throughout the early development phase for Project Y, WaterMelon put up calls to funders to invest their gems to influence what game platform they wanted WaterMelon to develop Project Y for, what genre or genres they wanted Project Y to be, and the game's art direction.