As well as being playable as a normal shoot-em up game, Cotton 2 has it's own tricks to make the gameplay unique. Let's take a look on the how-tos in this game. General You start with 3 lives, riding on a broomstick. You can move around with the direction buttons. You can press and hold the A button to move around faster. This is Dashing. Also, tap a direction twice while holding the A button to dash faster. The more you use this, the faster will you go in a direction. This can be very useful for Tea Time. Would you hit a wall while using this rapid dash technique, you will bounce off from it losing a small part of your speed. You can resume rapid dashing to the opposite direction afterwards. This applies to hitting the edge of the screen too. You will notice that you have a lifebar. Naturally, this will decrease every time you are hit by an enemy, or an enemies projectile. It's very hard to refill this life gauge, so make sure you avoid as many hits as possible. Read below about the combo attacks on how to refill the lifebar. That sums up the basic controls. Now let's see how we can destroy those bad guys. Shooting Use this to destroy enemies that get in your way, this is the simplest way to do this. Regular shooting and dashing needs no explanation - you either do one of them or the other, as they both use Button A. You have 5 levels of shoot power. You get experience as you gain points, once the EXP meter fills up, you will a jump a level. Being on higher levels will make your shots being more powerful and effective. Also, depending on your current Magic Power, the effects of the regular shots may vary. Also, if you have grabbed something, you cannot shoot. Pressing A while holding something will throw it away, just like pressing B would. Grabbing Button B opens up the real possibilites as it is the button used for grabbing stuff. You can grab pretty much everything, enemies and powerups, as well as some bosses. You can then throw them away, hitting enemies this way can do very huge damage, but it is also quite slow. So use this method if the screen is not too crowded with enemies, or against such enemies that would otherwise take too much time to deal with, as grabbing an enemy instantly kills it. After grabbing an enemy or an object, your witch will hold it above her head. It can hit an other enemy while it is being holded above you. This gives you some protection, especially with enclosed enemies which are quite big and thus can cover a large part above you. Also, if you have grabbed something, you cannot shoot. Pressing A while holding something will throw it away, just like pressing B would. Combo attacks Now, the main course is combining the grabbing move with the enclosed enemies. Doing certain key combinations can result in such attacks that will make the enemies enclosed in bubbles of your current magical power. Each type of bubble will behave differently. For a list of combinations that can achieve these bubbles, refer to the combinations page, for the behaviors of each type of bubbles, check the tables below. The point of these bubbles, is the fact that you can still shoot at them, throw them around and so on. Shooting them will result in more points and extra life being grown in the bubble. The more times you hit this bubble, the more points you will rack up, and the bigger the extra life grows. However, if the bubbles touches another enemy, the scores will reset and you have to start over. Also, the extra life will be released so you can pick it up. Note that it takes a LOT of shots to get a decent amount of life bonus. Additionally, with each life bonus you got in a stage, it will take even more shots to get extra life bonus. The path of the different bubbles are also important - if, for example, you keep shooting an ice bubble next to a ceiling, it will keep on going higher and crashing into the ceiling. Hitting the ceiling will count as an extra hit, but of course it's not possible with every kind of magic bubble. If the bubble floats around without getting touched or shooted at for some time, it will explode, releasing a Combo Bonus inside. The size of the bonus depends on how you used the bubbles, how many times you shot at it, how many enemies it touched, etc. Oh yea. And if a bubble like this touches another enemy, it will kill it and traps it into the bubble. So you can do chain reactions with this method. The bigger, the better. More hits will get you more points, and will also add to the power of the bubble, making it capable of killing bigger, more powerful enemies as well. I the bubble is not powerful enough, it will explode when it touches an enemy it can't destroy, inflicting damage on that enemy. The more powerful bubbles can also do some serious damage to bosses. Speaking of bosses. Most levels have a mid-boss. Should you finish one of them off with a combination attack, they can be enclosed in Energy Bubbles as well. However, these bubbles are a bit different then the rest. Firstly, they are quite huge, but more importantly, they will ignite every other enemy that touches them in an energy bubble, without disappearing themselves. Because of that it is rather easy to keep shooting them to get additional Life bonuses. Special moves With the C Button, you can release a Special Move. This move depends on the Magic power you currently wield. Each one will result in a different kind of attack, these are detailed below in the magic power chart. The Special Moves are one-shot moves, they will use up your active magic power completely and make it disappear. You should also take it into account that using button C to release a Special Move will not just do damage to the enemies on the screen, but will also destroy all of the powerup crystals as well as the enclosed enemies it touches. However, as well as cancelling out the enclosed enemies, it will also destroy enemy projectiles, or at least, most of them. Using the Special Move will also give you a limited, short time of invincibility. Hotkeys After completing the game a few times, you will be awarded with another possibility in the Options menu - to assign hotkeys to the X, Y, Z, L, and R buttons. These hotkeys can be either rapid shot attacks or instant combinations. Both of these can make the controls easier, and they can also affect the gameplay - for example, it's possible to shoot while dashing using these hotkeys, which can come very handy.