[b]TL;DR[/b]
A really solid shoot 'em up with some really solid art, a love letter to traditional arcade shooters with a lewd twist on it.
+ Really comfortable and intuitive gameplay
+ Music is atmospheric and appropriate
+ Lewd art is plentiful and well made, especially with multiple outfits to choose from
+ Gameplay promotes a more aggressive and risk-reward approach without being too unfair
- No tentacle-related sexual content despite it being pretty hinted at
- Missiles feel rather useless to use
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[h1]--- Overview ---[/h1]
Hot Tentacles Shooter places you in the role of Alish, an ace pilot hired by Queen Aka to rescue 20 female warriors captured by alien tentacles. Battle against waves of alien enemies ever-increasing in their threat and defeat enough of them to free the captured warriors from their tentacled foes!
[h1]--- First Impressions ---[/h1]
The game starts on a great note, giving you the option to choose what degree of clothing you'd prefer the ladies wear. They can wear nothing at all, some swimsuits, or presumably their soldier uniforms but I couldn't get that part to actually work. You start off with a short text crawl giving you all you really need to know, get a refresher on controls, and then are placed in the main menu with some really appropriate music.
I found the sound design to be on point, really doing its part to make the game feel like that arcade shooter it was looking to emulate. Shots sounded good, explosions weren't overly bombastic, and it just stayed true to that minimalistic shoot 'em up you'd find in an arcade cabinet.
[h1]--- Character Design ---[/h1]
With 22 girls (including the main girl and the Queen), you'd expect there to be some issues in body type. Surprisingly, the game does a great job of providing a variety of different faces, body types, breast size, and even the welcome addition of some other visual characteristics such as moles, glasses, heterochromia, pubic hair, and muscle definition.
I really found that each girl looked unique. The interesting character blurbs you get upon freeing each girl is really nice to have. The dialogue in it can be a tiny bit rough or incorrect in terms of grammar, but nothing too overly important as it is still perfectly coherent. With just these short bios on the characters, we learn all we really need to know about them.
[h1]--- The LEWDS ---[/h1]
To my surprise, there is no actual tentacle porn in the game. Instead, during the levels, girls are merely covered with a tentacle overlay, not being violated or anything, merely covered up. Upon rescuing them, the tentacles vanish and the girl is revealed. If you are playing with nudity enabled, you'll only get full-frontal nudity with some varying poses and facial expresses of the girls. If you are playing without nudity enabled, you get some tasteful yet personality-appropriate swimsuits for them to wear instead.
I found the lewds to be tasteful if perhaps not a bit too tame. The girls are absolutely plenty cute enough to stand on their own, but I did feel like the overtone of the game being about tentacles and tentacled enemies left perhaps a bit of an expectation of actual tentacle sex, but alas, no such thing is in the game as of yet.
The gallery is great, allowing you to quickly view each character and the final two full-screen scenes involving Alish in what is the only time she can show up nude, but I do kind of wish I also could view the character bios from the gallery as well.
[h1]--- Gameplay Overview ---[/h1]
I found the gameplay to be really enjoyable. It doesn't challenge you immediately, instead starting you off really easily to understand the controls and what does what. It gradually adds new elements into the game until it eventually gets to the point of being overwhelming and chaotic, meaning you have to start focusing and really thinking through a lot of your actions, taking damage when necessary to perhaps get to a more advantageous spot.
You do get a few upgrades and abilities that you can use, as well. Picking up weapon-related upgrades in the mission gives you better types of ammunition to be used against enemies and while this is awesome by itself, I found the fact that you'll lose that upgrade and have to pick up a new one if you get hit to be a great balance and a smart way to curb the player just plowing through later levels, even if they still aren't terribly difficult.
You also have a shield that you can use to plow through enemies and deal some damage to bosses while simultaneously being invulnerable for the duration of the shield. This is a great last-minute save when the screen is full of enemies and is a good way to get a breath of air in what can otherwise feel like a hopeless situation.
Perhaps the worst upgrade you have are the missiles, which you need to stop firing normally in order to activate. While they deal a decent amount of damage, they are slow and rather unhelpful in the missions aside from perhaps some early damage against the bosses. For the most part, I can't recommend using the missiles.
Unlike a lot of these types of games, you don't complete missions by making it to the end. You complete missions by defeating enough enemies to fill up a gauge to fulfill the objective and continue to the next stage. I think this is a great way to incentivize the player to go with a more aggressive playstyle and is something I found to be really well thought-out.
[h1]--- Issues / Bugs ---[/h1]
· The store page calls the main character "Sofia," except the main character is named Alish, also refers to her as male at one point
[h1]--- Final Thoughts ---[/h1]
A really enjoyable shoot 'em up against an alien race revolving around tentacles, it's a fun experience made only better by the cute girls it rewards you with. While there is only nudity and no true sexual content, there is a fantastic sense of balance between the gameplay enjoyment and the delightful nudes you get out of it. Overall a solid experience and one I'd love to see expanded upon in the future.
[b]If you like my stuff, you can view my curator page [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40740064/] HERE [/url] c:
