A short playable top down 3D shmup with cute 3D character designs and really well animated characters. This is one of those rough gems that has a good foundation that can be worked on further and deserves a good long polish.
Magical Girl Concept: The game definitely has the Magical Girl concept in the bag especially with the character design, magic spells/abilities, and transformation happening in the game. The choice of color palette matches well with the low poly 3D characters and its magical girl design. I think the Magical Girl design could have been made a lot more detailed with frilly uniforms and accessories.
Mechanics: The game employs some basics character movements which feels fluid with the animations. Although the fixed camera view made the movements feel limiting since the character movement speed is really fast, so a good solution is to either have the camera track the character in place (camera rotation) or have it pan with the character position. The attack seem to have some sort of auto aim assist going on which is a nice feature to have but it could have been optimized a little so that it resets back to the forward aim direction of the player character. I suspect the aim direction did not reset after the previous enemy gets killed so the next few shots I was firing wasn't going in the correct direction. The ability to switch between spells is really nice and it could use a cooldown indicator which isn't noticeable after the spells are used. The controls and layout out of it are comfortable during gameplay which only requires the keyboard controls. I notice there is a little bug in the shop screen where the player character is able to turn with the arrow keys and even cast fireball. The shop and ability upgrade mechanic is commendable but can be improved on by a lot with balancing the cost and its damage effectiveness. There is also a very strange mechanic where enemies can hit the player character even when a fireball did not land on the player. It is mention that it is a part of the theme but it feels frustrating when an incoming bullet cannot be dodged way before it could arrive at the player character position. The drop mechanics is a nice added feature and not giving it a time out means players can stock certain drops on screen for later use.
Visual: The game is visually pleasing with cute character designs and fluid animations. The transformation sequence is simple and it was done well when the character changes to her Magical Girl counterpart. I can see there is a difference in the visual effects in the attack before and after transformed. The use of the UnityChan shader is done right as it made the color and cell shaded look a lot more authentic with the artstyle the developer is aiming for. There is good effort put into the animation for all characters present in the game including the enemies which I believe is attributed to the use of the EZSoftBone tool. I also like the run animations on the player character and the dust kick up effect applied when running. The animated title screen and its design gives it a nice vibe of what the game is about.
UI: The title screen layout is simple and bare bones but decently laid out making it easy to access the main game. The shop menu could be improved a lot since it is laid out in a manner that overlaps with the UI below it. The main game UI is bare bones but does hint on the keys for switching and firing off a spell. It could use a much nicer UI interface if health, score, and coins are going to be displayed. The red tint on the character portrait helps a little but it seems a little buggy because even with 20/20 health points, the portrait is still tinted red after picking up a health potion.
Audio: The sound effects in the game is nice to hear and is paired in line with the actions. The music track feels sparse, with only two noticeable tracks, while I find that the title screen and music track feels a little out of place as it did not match the fun cutesy artstyle of the title screen. The continuous pad build up works well with the end splash screen but made the title screen sad rather than fun. Besides that the voiced characters add a nice addition to the game but it could do more.
Theme: This game obviously have strong vibes with the Magical Girl theme and everything about it is a Magical Girl game. The theme they picked are Schrodinger's Cat, Uncertainty Principle, and Conservation of Energy. I find that only one of three hits the mark and that is the uncertainty of where the enemies would spawn and appear off camera view. Also the uncertainty is further boosted when the player character wanders off camera view, making it hard to know if players would run into an enemy character.
Challenge / Engagement: The game is quite challenging with the build up of enemy number over every kill with their health and damage steadily increasing on each spawn. The player character attack is enhanced in the Magical Girl form but isn't something that can be done often as the transformation power wears off and needs to be collected. The game gets a lot difficult with the random hit distance of the enemy fireball and the diminishing movement space with enemy number on screen. Even with the spell upgrades and health drops, the damage output from the enemy feels unfair when their one hit can potentially shave off a quarter of the character's health. In terms of difficulty, the game could use a lot of balancing since it gets really steep after 4 enemies appear on screen. The game is really engaging with the difficulty level at first but gets really frustrating over time when there is no breathing space or breaks between enemy spawns since the game is designed to spawn enemies continuously on each kill without end.
Originality / Creativity: The game is certainly original as the Magical Girl is pitted against a continuous hoard of enemies in a space limited arena while being able to micromanage resources that is required in upgrading the spells. The creativity is found in the visual design and mechanics employed which makes the game interesting in its own way.
Story: There doesn't seem to be any story besides fighting against a hoard of cat like monsters. Which is a story by itself but not clearly defined.
Overall: The game is really rough on the surface and around the edges. However, the basis, mechanics, concept and idea of it is something that is worth working on since a lot has been done to make the game playable so a good long polish would do some justice for this really rough gem. Balancing the game difficulty and possibly adding stages or enemy waves would make this game more enjoyable to play.