Trail Mix

What is this?

You run around a top-down arena dodging enemies while your companions handle the shooting. Between waves you hit the shop, buy new companions, merge duplicates into upgrades, pick perks, and try not to go broke. The whole thing runs on a Nintendo DS.

And there are 434 historical figures hiding in this game, each with up to two encounters translated for the first time into English and German. You'll find them if you play long enough.

Features

• 🎯

  36 companion classes

  Across 6 color factions, each with 3 upgrade tiers. Every class has a unique shot pattern — Gunners fire tracers, Tesla Coils chain lightning, Plague Doctors lob poison, Overclockers fire faster until they overheat and burst. Three of a kind merge into the next tier.

• 👾

  30 curated waves

  Five random variants per wave, so every run plays different. 17 enemy types in 3 sizes plus 5 bosses with real AI — the Sentinel fires spiral bullets, the Dreadnought charges and slams, the Leviathan summons adds. Wave 30 is a 3-phase final boss.

• 🃏

  30 perks

  From the practical to the absurd. Bullet Hell fires in all four directions. Shortcut lets you merge with only two copies. Double or Nothing flips a coin on your wave gold. Loan Shark gives you 240g now and bills you for ten waves.

• 🌈

  6 color synergies

  Four tiers each. Stack companions of one color for escalating bonuses — Red burns, Blue freezes, Green heals, Yellow prints money, Purple hexes, Cyan electrifies.

• 💰

  Economy with interest

  Unspent gold earns interest per wave. Save or spend — your call.

• 📜

  Sayings Collection

  After every boss fight you discover a short encounter from one of 434 historical figures spanning roughly a thousand years — 859 encounters in all, most appearing in English or German for the first time. Collected like cards, browsable from the menu.

• 🌍

  Full English & German

  Every string, every menu, every historical encounter — completely localized in both languages.

• 🎮

  Runs on real hardware

  Not just an emulator toy. Tested on R4 flashcart, saves to the SD card, and persists across runs.

Six colors, one trail mix

Collect companions of the same color for escalating synergy bonuses. Three identical companions merge into an upgraded version.

• Red

  Burns. Damage over time that stacks as the fire spreads.

• Blue

  Freezes. Slows and locks enemies where they stand.

• Green

  Heals. Keeps you alive deep into the wave count.

• Yellow

  Prints money. Turns kills into extra gold every wave.

• Purple

  Hexes. Weakens enemies and warps the odds in your favor.

• Cyan

  Electrifies. Lightning arcs between clustered targets.

Screenshots

Captured in the melonDS emulator — both DS screens stacked. Click any image to enlarge.

• The title screen.
• Wave in progress — companions auto-shooting.
• Later waves get crowded fast.
• The between-wave shop: buy, merge, pick perks.
• The Sayings Collection — 434 figures to find.

Get it & play

Trail Mix is open source. Grab the ready-made ROM from the latest release, or build it yourself — both produce the same trailmix.nds.