Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel freeware game

(tags bishoujo, game, freeware)

Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel, a gambling slot-machine created back in 2006 by the Trivy Corporation and Sammy Corporation, now makes it onto the Windows PC. Sammy ran with this bishojo concept and besides having currently serialized manga, enlisted major seiyuu like Yukari Tamura (田村ゆかり), Mamiko Noto (能登麻美子) and Masumi Asano (浅野真澄) for the 2008 OVA.

Now they enlisted Kogado Studios Koneko-san Team of bishojo all-ages game fame for this free 2009 New Year's present: Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel: Illusion Girl (快盗天使ツインエンジェル 幻の少女). (Thanks to Zepy for the tip).

Free. I can't believe this is free. \(>_<)/ 1.33 GigaByte download. 3 scenario writers. FREE.

This freeware game plays like an extended Flash game, but with unheard of 1280 pixel wide visuals. And though they call it a Visual Novel, almost every line is voiced. It's more like an anime with subtitles.

I want to figure out who did the character design for this particular work, because it's really kawaii. But it's either the OVA animator Makoto Koga (古賀誠) or it's someone that calls themselves "Sakana" (魚). A hard to find psuedonym? Oh wait, there is an illustrator called Sakana and the illustrator's web page confirms the connection.

Is this nagomi-inducing moe? At least the visuals are, yes. I captured these screens in Windowed mode using the Print Screen key, and the water-marking logo on the left hand side automatically imprints.

Sadly the story is maho-shojo cliche to the point of irritation. Normal teenage girls (15/F/Japan) transform into super powered heroines (CERO 12 transformation scene) to battle the evil-bent but mostly incompetent Black Auction Corporation. Their senpai backs them up without revealing his identity, using an eye mask (is this a Sailor Moon motif?). Other maho-shojo cliches abound, though thankfully there is no upskirt fan-service.

I am annoyed with the ditzy character Yukarin voices. Noto has the humble know-it-all role. Masumin voices the overly competative rival. I applaud her energy but the dialogue is so predictable.

The first battle plays out with fighting game life bars, but the actual game mechanic is a my-first slot machine with easy to hit targets. I suspect that the rest of the battles to be the same. The story progresses with a choose your own adventure style branching, with episodes like playing vollyball or cooking food in class.

Free. On one hand I can see this kind of work selling for 7000 yen or more (typical PC game prices). It doesn't have the advertisement atmosphere, so it makes me wonder if this was intended to be a retail package. However this is a sugar-coated, heavenly-sounding, girly eyed junk. I "play" this game by putting it on auto and waiting for the next battle or reading my web browser. I haven't finished the game, but I bet there's at least 4 hours worth of stuff in here. Hm. Continue.

Echoes strengthes my mouse hand

(tags game, Windows, shmup, freeware)

Retrogaming with Racketboy did a rare Windows game intro with "Featured Free Game: Echoes - Asteroids Meets Geometry Wars". Echoes is a fantastic Windows-based shmup-like game by Binary Zoo studios. I am totally in love with the control scheme: mouse + wasd movement keys.

This is how I spent most of my holiday:

This guy pictured above is a world of hurt.

Actually I bookmarked this game more than two months ago (on a Kotaku link, no less). It also has me thinking about buying Geometry Wars for the Windows XP on Steam, but after taking a look at demo clip, which is more about avoiding homing stuff instead of shmup-hopping inanimate asteroids, I will pass for now.

My best score as of now is 1.2 million on Normal, which seems to be ho-hum.

Ack! Excuse me while I try to get one more game in before I go to sleep.