Magical Princesses: Forest Journey. Save the Day!! is a really short and simple bullet hell prototype, with a really long title (─‿‿─), about two magical girls defending the forest against a horde of monsters. The game has good magical girl designs, however the gameplay could use a bit of improvements.
Magical Girl Concept:
The game features two magical girl characters, Violetta and Passione as magical girls (I assume the former has blue hair and the latter has red hair?), with them clearly exhibiting frilly dresses and magical accessories. Both character possess magical powers where they can shoot magical bullets that are used in eliminating the monsters emerging from the forest. Violette fires a range limited spread shot while Passione fires a rapid single direction shot. Besides that, there isn't a transforming scene or animation present while there are no familiar or animal companion in their designs. Anyway the developer made use of the magical girl concept in the game so it qualifies as a magical girl game.
Mechanics:
The game utilizes basic movement controls where the player character can move anywhere on the plying field limited to 1/3 of the area in the middle. There is the attack button which fires either a spread shot or single direction shot depending on the character chosen. On thing I notice is that the attack button is mapped to the Z key, which is normal for most games, and there is the Y key, which to me seems strange and is not common practice. Moving on, there is the switch button which allows the player to switch between the two characters, giving the player two different play styles or weapons, namely attacking the enemies at an angle or head on. To me the spread shot is the most effective play style since it allows players to hit enemies incoming from the side of the screen. Since the player is only allowed to move withing the 1/3 of the game area and enemies are spawning from the sides, it makes the spread shot a more reasonable weapon of choice in this case. In addition, on thing to highlight is the changing environment and background music when switching between the two characters which is an interesting mechanic. I think more can be done with the switching mechanic, say changing the enemy type when switching the characters since in the theme description, it is written "same world different perspective". There is also the special button which fires a single shot which will evolve into a circular burst shot, similar to a bomb, but the effectiveness is limited when the bullets spreads further leaving gaps in between the bullet spaces. The game uses the life point setup where by when the player is given a chance to respawn after after several seconds when the character is hit by an enemy bullet. The implementation could be improved since after respawn, there is no invulnerable or grace period for the player to reposition the character to a safer space before getting hit by the next shot. Besides that, the character's number of life is represented by both the text indicator and the changing condition of the character on the right. The changing expression from each shot makes a nice qualitative indicator but is not a clear indicator of how many lives are actually present, hence keeping the text indicator compliments the quantitative side of it. The enemies follows a predictable movement pattern while firing at specific intervals. It seems on several play through, the number of enemies spawning seem to vary each time and I'm not sure if it is intentional or it could be due to some spawning issues. The types of enemies is limited to different shot configurations and movement pattern and I find the different enemy color doesn't seem to make them distinguishable from one another in behavior. I think since the game only has one level, its is acceptable that the game starts off with lots of enemies but for a longer game, when more levels are present, the difficulty and enemy presence has to scale from easy to impossibly difficult.
Visual:
The cute and cartoony character art style fits the magical girl genre really well and the different expressions they make at different life points tells a lot about their current condition. I find that the character art is done with a lot of thought and effort put into it so kudos to the artist. Both the player character on the game area are animated with a continuous walking/running cycle. The enemies comes in different hues and are animated in a simple manner. The simple animation gives the game an additional appeal to it and it should be improved on a lot more. One odd thing I notice is that the resolution for the player character sprite seems much lower than the enemy sprites. I assume the two is made by different artists. The title screen text is really well made with the colorful font, it gives a fun and inspiring impression. I find that the title screen commendable since there are particle effects included while the sleeping magical princesses gives a casual impression. The background art used during gameplay is suitable for its purpose is not distracting or gets in the way when shooting at enemies. The forest canopy could have been a little transparent so its easy for players to spot the enemies and bullets coming from the sides. Since the art assets was made, I would say the artists gave good effort in fulfilling their role.
UI:
The title screen has both Start and Quit button with a simple centered layout, giving players easy access to a list of level (currently only one level present). I think the buttons could be located somewhere at the corner of the screen as it does not overlay on top of the animating background. There appears to be no settings/options menu in the main menu or in-game. Most of the indicators in the gameplay are straight forward but the line up of enemies on the left is not clearly explained, I assume it means the type of enemies present in the game area. The death scene has buttons to return to main menu or quit the game but the ending scene doesn't have any way to return to the main menu.
Audio:
The music used in the game is suitable for its genre where the main menus music is a nice short easy going loop while the two in-game music are composed for each character. I notice that each characters music is slightly different, albeit plays on the same base tune but some instruments are replaced by different percussion instruments. I believe that Besides that Violetta has some bass drums and piano while Passione instruments are tambourine and claves, giving the former a creepy and dark tone while the latter has a brighter feel to it. I find that using the different musical elements is a really good point as the music is utilized in such a manner where the two character background is revealed without the need for words. There seem to be no sound effects used in the game.
Theme:
The magical girl theme is present in the game as the characters are designed to be magical girls. As for the theme, the developers picked Relativity, which I think in their context and description, relativity is about the different view that the two magical girl sees which is especially apparent in the switch mechanic. Violetta seems to see the world as dark (seems to be night for her) and twisted (due to the low bass and creepy music) while Passione sees the world as bright and vibrant (high pitch music). To me the term relativity does loosely mean different perspective since it does touch on the point of observation but its more relevant when it is put in terms of the different environmental/physical conditions when the observation is made. Simply put that the same person sees a different thing when located at two very different places, e.g. the passenger on a moving train sees the background moving and when he gets off, the trains is seen moving away. The interpretation for the game seems like a psychological one since its coming from two different person seeing the same world. Anyway, its still within acceptable reason in the abstract notion of it.
Challenge / Engagement:
The game can be challenging when the enemy population is not controlled and on the other hand when enemies are killed fast enough the bullet spawns are much lessen and the game can be beaten easily. The game isn't too engaging since there isn't much to do other than defeating enemies while there isn't any story to follow in the game.
Originality / Creativity:
The characters are pretty original and the use of the different perspective especially the music is creative.
Story:
The game doesn't have much story to begin with and the only known fact that the magical girls are tasked in defending the forest from a horde of monsters without any reason. Some story can be derived from how the two magical girls sees the world when players switch between them. I think based on context, Violetta sees everything as dark and Passione sees everything as bright. In the comments below, the developers mentioned planning for some VN elements and story but it did not make it into this prototype version of the game.
Overall:
The artstyle and characters are done really well and more could have been done especially in the story department. The game mechanics feels good and doesn't have any issues happening during gameplay. Only drawback is the lack of invulnerability or grace period when respawning. Basically the game has the base line mechanics for a bullet hell game and tremendous improvements could be made in bullet pattern and enemy behavior. One thing to note is that a bullet hell games isn't about filling the entire screen with bullets rather creating a pattern that players can have a fighting chance of beating the game.