I was fortunate to play/try out a demo of this game at the 2019 Retro World Expo gaming convention last year and enjoyed it very much being a fan of magical girls, anime, and old school 8 bit style platformers. I got a cute little business card of it and couldn't wait till it came out on Steam to purchase. Now that it's almost a year later, I've now played and won the game. How was it?
Fortunately it lived up to my expectations and it was a very good game, the first good platformer magical girl game I've seen/played on Steam. It's not perfect by any means, but still fun and enjoyable.
The upsides/pros of this game start with the graphics. The graphics are bright and colorful, and the world designs are phenomenal, showing its own science fiction universe. They have good background depth and detail that draw your attention straight into this alien universe, and no two worlds look the same. Star Girl Proxima herself is well designed and drawn, the typical schoolgirl with pigtails who transforms into her magical girl self which has an appealing color palette, and her sprite animates well along with her magic star projectiles. The evil alien enemies, be it orbs, ships, and other monsters including some which even come from Greek Mythology, also have appealing designs and good animation. Even the cutscene with Proxima's transformation is done well.
The controls might take some time to get used to if you use a computer keyboard (WASD to move, Enter to shoot your star projectiles, Space bar to jump, Left Control to sprint fast), but they respond well and are great with some little exceptions. Shooting enemies works well and you can shoot in eight different directions, which is an excellent design choice.
The gameplay is great too, it not only captures wonderful 8 bit platformers of yesteryear like Mega Man, Super Mario Bros., Ninja Gaiden, and even ones like Batman, Shatterhand and Vice Project Doom on the NES. It's your typical platformer where you go right to left or left to right, kill enemies and try to make it to the end, with optional routes available to get health or extra shooting power if possible. Four difficulty modes exist, but the game itself is actually quite challenging to where you might have trouble on a certain spot before you figure out what to do, sometimes you might die over and over again but fortunately you have unlimited continues so it manages to be challenging without being too frustrating. It's very fun blasting enemies and monsters whilst going through cool unique worlds, and brings a wonderful nostalgic feeling of older platfomers, as this game has as much creativity, effort, heart and passion put into it.
There are downsides/flaws to it however. The first is that despite the "About this" section explaining it, there is really no story inside the game except for a cutscene of the magical girl transformation at the start (Proxima doesn't seem to have a civilian name in this game also) and one at the end, and there is no explanation as to how she goes from the city to an underground cave to a snowy forest, etc. The second is that at times the jumping can be a little frustrating, and it can be a pain to get up certain jumps (usually side to side distance ones), and the controls for jumping while still great, are a teeny bit too sensitive so sometimes you'll double jump by accident when you mean to jump once off a platform. The third is that while the star projectiles do the job, a little more weapon variety like other types of attacks would help add more depth. The fourth is, without spoilers, the ending may be too simplistic and lacking for some people, but it's more of a nitpick as it doesn't lower the replay value for me and I'd play it again any day.
And a warning, if you're going to configure your controls if playing on a computer, select the option that has a KEYBOARD beside the word "Controls", not with a controller, if you try to configure the controller controls with a keyboard, it crashes the whole game.
So overall, if you love anime/manga, magical girls, and old school platformer games, pick this one up, it's worth the money and it's very, very fun. It definitely was worth trying out at the convention and worth the wait for the release, I can't wait to see what Giant Evil Robot might have next in store!
