Don't Stop, Girlypop!

i want to make it clear that i respect the devs of this. its an incredible thing to be able to make your first game and only serves to build your experience for later projects, but honest to god this is one of the most miserable experiences ive ever played. Its playable sure but the overall feel of this game is just abysmal, the weapons dont feel good to use, in the later levels you are constantly being bombarded with just an overload of things, the arena waves are set up horribly and you dont really have the right weapons or mechanics to deal with them properly so you're just kinda floundering around and dont get me started on the platforming. it feels like they put more into the aesthetic and marketing of the game rather than making the game play well. theres a lot of gimmicks that really dont need to be here either or that clash against the core focus of the game where ironically, you actually have to stop or slow down. the music however, absolutely knocked it out of the park, really good tracks throughout the whole thing. despite my dislikes, i really hope they give game dev'ing another shot. i look forward to seeing what and if they make next.

Style and humor don't save it from failing at it's own genre approach. Momentum breaks faaaaaarr to often and easily, making it feel slow and boring. There's very little chances for vertical momentum, giving you limited ways to express movement. Also, I can't lie, it's just not fun to look at. Sparkles and lights can't hide the stiff, boring models. It's like looking at bedazzled cardboard.

I had hopes for this game, but its potential seems to be completely wasted. I am not new to movement shooters, Ultrakill is my favorite game and I have P-ranked all content on Brutal. The weapons, soundtrack, and the aesthetics are fine. But that's about it The movement is mediocre, which is bad since this is supposed to be a movement shooter. The game constantly slows you down, and even when it isn't, the speed cap is too low to enjoy the movement. The primary way of gaining speed is easy enough, but there is basically no alternative, and with the speed cap it doesn't feel fun. The jump height is too low with no way to increase (despite having a similar slam mechanic to ultrakill's) which makes the platforming sections insanely annoying. I like the rails but they're rare and don't synergize with other few movement mechanics. Wallrunning also sometimes just don't work There are some bugs, with poor geometry and the hooks not registering half the time. I like the weapons, but the gunplay isn't good. It's not satisfying and the feedback is kinda poor. I went in hoping to like the game but I can't lie, without the movement being redone and bug fixes i cannot recommend this game.

ue5 fps template with a pink aesthetic

This game is good, but not $20 good, the combat is amazing but it keeps getting interrupted with platforming that DOES NOT work well with the movement mechanics and are quite annoying to get through. Love supporting indie creators, and overall it was quite fun.

waow... protect queer art

Ultrakill for men

[h1]Don't Stop, Girlypop![/h1] Don't Stop, Girlypop is an arena movement shooter with Y2K aesthetics that really doesnt want you to stop moving. Unless it does. Look, this is a very tough game to recommend. And I only do this with a ton of asterisks. I got the game relatively cheap and I literally just finished it. So I wanted to give my thoughts on it while they are still fresh. To sum it all up: This is a very flawed game by a group of passionate indiviuals. The game has it's strong moments but falls ultimately flat on what it sets out to do. And I generally feel like I paid money more for the concept of the game, rather than anything else with how it feels. However, I still recommend the game despite that because I feel like the devs deserve some positivity and love for what they were trying to do and the message they've tried to convey. For more details I'll put a Pro/Con list below: Pro: - The music is fantastic! Even as a metalhead I gotta say: This slaps! Good job! - Great Y2K aesthetics and vibe - Awesome color pallet with some cool visuals here and there - Generally a good and relevant story message! - Interesting concepts and some cool ideas - You can tell this game was made with a ton of love and passion Neutral: - The game is relatively short (4-5h) (There are people who enjoy shorter games, some don't so that is really up to personal taste) Cons: - A lot of the concepts and ideas feel undercooked and sometimes contradict themselves - For a game so focused on speed and movement you hit a lot of speedbumps - THE PLATFORMING...GOOD LORD... (it's probably the worst thing about this game) - Very limited and basic weapon selection - Weapons felt overall weak with poor feedback - While the aesthetics are great the overall visuals can be messy - A lot of visual clutter, makes enemies hard to see and track at times (overstimulation city) - Game feels directionless and it is sometimes not 100% clear where you need to go next (no map, marker or objective tracker) - While the message of the story is great it is very poorly told - Outside of 1 or 2 exceptions, the voiceacting is kinda bad (writing included) - Audiologs keep playing at full volume when NPCs talk - Also Audiologs are unfortunately way too long and drag on for what little they actually have to tell (sometimes less is more) Lastly, there is one more thing I wanna touch on: The charakter of Adiuvo. Well, she is unfortunately not well played. Even more so than some of the rest. I dont wanna be offensive or anything. Again, I can totally see how this game was made by a tiny studio with so much passion in it. But the acting was more than sub par to the point it actually got distracting for me. I cannot stress enough that this is in no shape or form ment as a personal attack on somebody. Just my personal note of criticism. With all that being said. I dont regret buying or playing it. As a matter of fact I am looking forward to what the studio comes up with next. And I just hope they will improve on what they've done so far! I'm rooting for you! [b]Anyway, if you've made it this far then thanks for reading! I hope you have a fantastic day! Cheers! [/b]

Don’t Stop, Girlypop! is a beautiful subversion of the expected aesthetics of the boomer shooter genre while still falling in line with the mechanical expectations. If you like DOOM or ULTRAKILL or similar bouncy boomer shooters, you’ll feel right at home in Don’t Stop, Girlypop! That is, unless you’re sensitive to different aesthetics. The moment I saw a trailer for this game, with all the glittery, bedazzled Y2K hyperpop vibes lathered all over my favorite genre, I had one thought: Sign me up! Nothing excites me more than a full, unapologetic commitment to style and vibes, especially when it’s something so near and dear to my heart. The first two levels really set the tone and engulf you in a sea of amazing music, over-the-top visuals, weapons to shoot, jumps to pull off, and a little bit of overstimulation. This is a VERY overwhelming, overstimulating game – but in the best possible way. Really, it doesn’t matter if your eyes glaze over and you can’t keep track of the UI, you don’t need it. Once you drop into the flow state, the mechanics become instinctual. Movement is the name of the game – literally – and you’ve got a variety of options including jumps, dashes, ground pound, and so on that can be combo’d to maximize speed. These are critical, as you have to keep moving (as the name implies) to maximize your damage output and your healing. This is fine and dandy, but the skill ceiling for movement seems pretty low. Sure, there are different approaches one could take navigating the map: Staying low to the ground but hopping and dashing everywhere, grappling up high and staying mostly airborne, executing glory kills from enemy to enemy, etc. But ultimately maintaining the max movement speed and output is pretty easy and the button combos are quick and easy on keyboard. I could NOT imagine playing this on a controller, however. The game is everything I expect for a shooter of this genre, with the added excitement of the aesthetic and music choices (and integration into the gameplay) that had me grinning from ear to ear for my entire playthrough. I think anyone eeked out by the aesthetics will be missing out on a fun time if they’re a fan of this genre. Thematically, Don’t Stop, Girlypop! presents a fun opportunity to subvert the traditional expectation of a “game for girls.” As some academics refer to “pink silos” or games that are traditionally casual, easy, and pink meant to be “for girls” – that concept isn’t useful. This isn’t a “shooter for girls”, it’s a action-packed, testosterone-filled movement-focused boomer shooter where you blow up bad guys for hours just like any other entry in the genre, just with some hyperpop makeup on top. This is how games “for girls” should be. If you’re not good at this style of FPS, the game will challenge you; and if you are good at it, it will feel like home. The game is for lovers of shooters, but it says you can love pink, platform boots, and electronic music, and still hit flawless skill-shots – which more games need to be okay with. The game is just as aggressive and intense – arguably MORESO – as DOOM and other similar games in the genre, it just looks different. That’s how “girl games” should be. I’m tired of “girl” plus “games” being infantilizing, and so are the devs of Don’t Stop, Girlypop!. I think there’s some interesting deeper layers of the themes that could be explored further, but perhaps I should leave it to others to make video essays on? For example, the main character Imber is basically just a floating pair of arms. Her character body is translucent and the only tangible parts are her arms. To me, this feels like an intentional nod to the traditional “male gaze” problem in male-oriented games where the main protagonist is basically just a pair of muscle-y arms for self-insert and female characters have historically been reduced to emphasis on their sexualized bodies. Obviously this has gotten somewhat better in recent years, but as a game IN the retro-revival genre of boomer shooter, this feels like an interesting commentary on that phenomenon, regardless. Maybe not. I also love Don’t Stop, Girlypop! from the angle of its complete commitment and marriage to its style and vibes. In an era where everything around us from mainstream video games to McDonald’s and everything inbetween are homogenizing themselves, crumbling in their identity under “Blandification” to offend as few people as possible while making themselves not really FOR or appealing to anyone at all – going the opposite direction and being okay with people being turned off by your aesthetic choices is something I will ALWAYS celebrate. My main and BIGGEST critique is that for a game who’s name contains “Don’t Stop” and is focused on keeping momentum going at all costs – it REALLY likes disrupting your momentum. Final kills in a given room completely halt the game, going into slow-mo and zooming in on that enemy’s death for a glory kill-like experience. Platforming is clunky, sometimes completely janky and broken-feeling, which is especially rough towards the end with a MASSIVE platforming section that was honestly just miserable to play and I will be skipping entirely on future playthroughs. For your first time playing through, you presumably want to take in all the story, which means encountering and activating “Echoes.” Echoes are basically mini cutscenes that just show the silhouette of a fairy while playing dialog that builds the world and backstory to the events of the game. These require you to basically stand still, or move extra slow around the room while you listen to them, and are placed in the middle of normal levels – so it feels like you’re just yanked out of your momentum and forced to listen to audio and feels completely contradictory to the mechanical themes and priorities literally stated in the name of the game. You COULD probably just skip them, or deal with it for a first playthrough and then have a much speedier time on subsequent playthroughs, which is fine I guess. Most campaigns in shooters have their slow points for story delivery – and they do provide a nice break from the death grip you might be breaking your mouse with and give your eyes a chance to blink. My second angle of complaint comes from the performance and production side. The main “companion” performance on the flip phone is… borderline bad at certain points, with really clumsy line delivery, often feeling like the actor’s first time reading the lines. Sometimes they clearly didn’t record enough buffer or dead air for how the lines were going to be used and you see very obvious loops of her idle camera performance in-between takes. Part of me also feels like this just contributes to the overall camp of the presentation and that it fits right in. My most serious complaints about the production are actually much smaller in scale. Every once in a while there would be a stutter in the music looping while playing – it really felt like they only got 2 main songs produced for the game, but it would have really benefitted from a little more variety here. Also the developers really didn’t figure out how to juggle all the NPCs that talk at you towards the end, so you have the flip phone, Tamagotchi, and other floating NPCs all covering each other up in a way that just… looks bad. ALL THAT BEING SAID… The ONLY complaint I have about the game that ACTUALLY detracted from my experience was the awful platforming section at the end. Ultimately, the game doesn’t do anything to challenge the genre in any way. You move from room to room in a linear path, circle strafing and killing enemies in an expected arena shooter way, then fight bosses with 2 or 3 different stages, then fight the big bad and win. But that’s okay. When I WANT more arena shooter, I expect more arena shooter, not something completely different. Don’t Stop, Girlypop! delivered exactly what I expected and hoped for from the trailer, and nothing less.

Please Update this game I want to love it this games feels like Kitchen Sink of mechanics with some conflict stuff like Cutscene That break flow of going fast, No new game plus or way to bring the complete Arsenal to Older levels, Artstyle being 50/50 of Looking pretty to like Unreal 4 asset with Pink, please don't be let this idea go to waste