Again in 2017, Studio Koba introduced Narita Boy, a recreation named after Tokyo’s second-biggest airport that appeared customized constructed for Kickstarter. It had slim-fit pixel artwork characters in a neon side-scrolling world. It had nostalgic ‘80s anime vibes with trendy visible results. It had a narrative of a developer — former Buddy & Foe workforce member Eduardo Fornieles — going again to his hometown to make the sport he at all times dreamed of.
It was only a idea at that time, but it surely was beautiful, and that was sufficient to push the inevitable crowdfunding marketing campaign excessive.
4 years later, the sport shipped and turned out to be one of many higher Kickstarter online game success tales, trying like a playable cartoon and taking part in like a surreal model of a basic action-adventure recreation. With easy fight and text-heavy screens slowing the tempo, although, it by no means felt fairly nearly as good because it appeared.
The workforce’s follow-up, Haneda Woman, doesn’t have that drawback.
Introduced final yr with a demo now on Steam, Haneda Woman — named after Tokyo’s greatest airport — isn’t a direct sequel, regardless of the identify. It’s an action-platformer with quicker motion, extra responsive controls, and the sort of precision required when it’s important to bounce between wall jumps whereas avoiding photographs from all instructions.
You play as a woman named Chichi Wakaba who has a sword and may dart across the display screen in fractions of a second. She has no ranged assaults, so she has to sneak up on enemies, go into “ghost mode” to cover from lasers, or slice by means of panels to drop platforms on enemies beneath, BurgerTime-style. She’s additionally extremely susceptible and can die if hit by a single bullet.
The twist is she has a mech companion, M.O.T.H.E.R., that she will be able to hop out and in of. The mech strikes slowly and may’t bounce as excessive, however has a machine gun turret and may take in a number of photographs earlier than blowing up and respawning a number of seconds later.
Taking part in the demo, I discovered myself always leaping out and in of the mech, utilizing it to cost Wakaba’s assaults, take the brunt of enemy assaults, or simply spray bullets in an space and hope it labored out — which it typically did. The extent designs pushed me to modify between the 2 kinds, providing slim paths or excessive partitions that solely Wakaba can match by means of or climb, and rooms stuffed with enemies that M.O.T.H.E.R. was constructed to blast by means of. It looks like there is perhaps a strategy to speedrun the sport primarily utilizing Wakaba, however the steadiness between the 2 is what made the demo work for me. I always felt the temptation to fly in the direction of the objective, solely to suppose higher of it and accept a number of moments of planning, adopted by a number of moments of chaos.
Or I simply went for it and died. Because the trailer suggests, that’s going to occur lots.