Description
Here's another fun game published by Henteko Doujin and Sanuk! Developed by "Kamikaze Kobo" and released earlier this year, "Kamikaze Empire" is a curious little game that has been sloooowly developed over a period of 10 years, as it was first unveiled way back in 2016 with the "Game Maker" engine. While I seriously doubt the game spent that much time in "active" development (it was more likely that Urushibara Sakakibara, the primary developer, spent time gradually learning to code, design graphics and the like and the vision eventually took shape as a full-fledged project), the end result is a fairly unique game with parallels to "Every Extend", "Unlimited Shiromaru" and "SUiCA32", essentially serving as a "Suicide STG". The game combines simple pixel graphics, moe characters and a deceptively grim story delivered with silly banter and non-chalant dark humor to mask the atrocities of war in this indie shooter.
The game is set 100 years after the events of an unspecified global war, where humanity is basically deemed to be extinct and war continues with no signs of stopping. The fight that once belonged to humans is now waged by armed robot girls from different factories throughout the world who, without their handlers, blindly battle each other with no directives to do otherwise. These robots' A.I. evolved at some point to have some form of "survival and preservation" characteristics and began to self reproduce. Building their own only to be shot down by their own again was a daily occurrence in a vicious cycle... Amid this endless loop of chaos however, one robot boldly raised their voice and said... "Hey, who ate my pudding?”
... Thus began a battle where pudding is synonymous with honor and robots ask existential questions and break the 4th wall, eventually stumbling across a special robot referred to as "Zero" that may bring salvation for humanity or the extinction of robot kind as well. The game has brief story dialogues or intermissions between most of its 50 normal stages and also has three different endings as well as hidden stages and extra challenges. While a few characters are introduced throughout the game, the story mostly focuses on Ohka (the "Baka Bomb Beauty of Bravery" named after the Japanese "Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka Kamikaze Aircraft"), Umeka (a crybaby attack fighter), Aya (the "strategist" and resident victim of frequent pudding theft), Tsubame (Aya's sidekick and a capable getaway driver), Shiro (a robot of small stature that is the "brains" of the group, aka "Professor") and Momiji (an "amnesiac" robot you rescue who slowly recalls key events). The player is also alluded to as a super computer that helps coordinate the instructions of the robots to make a capable offensive. Fun stuff.
Gameplay generally comes in three flavors: standard "speed-based" missions (with Ohka), "Dungeons" (done with Umeka that have more obstructions and generally tighter defenses) and "Chase" scenes (handled by Aya and Tsubame). Ohka and Umeka's missions are common and make up the bulk of the game where the player flies freely around the screen grabbing power-ups and shooting down enemies. In these stages, ammo is intentionally limited as the player is encouraged to use their "Kamikaze Detonation Attack" to finish their offense as a last resort to do big damage, increase your destruction combos, destroy obstacles and rack up extra points. Shooting enemies and increasing your combos will also increase the radius of your blast and double your points, not to mention you have infinite lives as your chums back at base will just build clones of you and send them out to fight (they constantly upload their memories to a server to keep up with current events). Attacking enemies also gradually increases your speed as another incentive and power-ups are plentiful and can't be stacked, so you're encouraged to attack quickly and often.
Aya and Tsubame's levels are fairly rare and on rails, where your goal is to aim a cursor and shoot down enemies on your way to your next objective. When shooting, holding down the attack button will auto-fire and increase the concentration of your shots, but your cursor speed will slow down as a consequence. Unlike the other stages, you DO have health, but it's pretty generous, and you can use limited missiles to take down beefier foes. Because these stages are uncommon, they're generally longer than the regular stages. The game is littered with checkpoints and anyone can clear it, but getting the best ranks and collecting all white / gold stars and 100%-ing the hidden content will provide a few hours of fun. The music is also pretty neat and the pixels are crisp with good effects and you can even see the corpses of your fallen robo sisters on the battlefield.
This is a video of a single blind playthrough with one ending (Route A). You can get the game at:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3031720/Kamikaze_Empire/
Enjoy.
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