Video Game / Shing!

Cover Art by katen_bd

"Shing!" is a retro arcade side-scrolling beat-em up developed by Polish studio Mass Creation.

Set in a Eastern style world run on Magitek, when the Starseed a MacGuffin, and the source of power for mankind, is stolen by a mysterious thief, four warriors set out across the land to retrieve it, cutting through any of the rampaging, and mysterously now organised, Yokai that stand in their way.

Sporting a freestyle combat system and a unique controls scheme where the direction of the players strikes is controlled with the right analogue stick, It was released digitally on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC and Steam, on February 4th 2020.

Launch Trailer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BWeisTG9LVI

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Shing! contains examples of:

• Amazing Technicolor Population: The Yokai enemies come in various colors to display their rank and what they drop upon death. For example, green: Health, red: Attack buff, etcetera...
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: The heroes love to exposit how skilled they are during combat. They can back that talk up, but so can the Tengu warriors, a special class of elite enemies they encounter, who dress in bird masks and like to use condescending Sarcastic Clapping to coax the player into fighting them.
• Bleak Level: The Forgotten City level takes place in the ruined remains of a once great settlement long ago destroyed by reckless experiments with the Starseed, leaving a giant crater behind along with ash-covered abandoned homes and deadly cracks in the earth that shoot out deadly gases. The very prospect of having to go there makes the usually irreverent player characters act significantly more serious and somber for almost the entire level.
• Cargo Cult: It's revealed that the Starseed and the Worldsprout, are in truth some type of energy cores which fell from a crashed starship, affecting the environments they landed in before later being utilized by the locals who presumed them to be mystic artifacts. The one who stole both of them, did so at the behest of the ship's AI, who needs them all to restart the ship, she reveals to the heroes the cores were poisoning the planet when they arrive in search of them.
• Cultural Translation: The faces of the female characters were changed in the Japanese release of the game to match their beauty standards.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Each player character has their own unique clothing color. Tetsuo: Black. Aiko: Blue. Bichiko: Red. Wilhelm: Grey.
• Cosmetic Award: Doing well in each stage, earns the player tokens which automatically unlock new costumes for the characters, once a certain number has been reached. While they have no gameplay benefits, they look really cool.
• Feudal Future: The main characters dress and arm themselves with Asian style medieval equipment, but things like bars, neon signs, energy shields, and power armor all show up in the story, thanks to the energy provided by the Starseed.
• Magitek: The Starseed provides a substance known as essence, which the people use to power the city and other devices. Later revealed to actually be a case of Schizo Tech.
• Gorn: In most beat 'em ups, the violence can be pretty tame with opponents just getting knocked-out. Not in this one, here one can bisect, dissect, decapitate, defenestrate, amputate and, probably, discombobulate, every Yokai encountered.
• Horned Humanoid: The most common variety of Yokai have horns on their forehead and they reflect their size too, so the bigger the Yokai, the bigger the horns.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Despite having no reason to trust her, should you choose the alternate ending by heeding the AI's request to turn back to the elevator and leave without the Starseed, the quartet will comment on how it felt like a strong, overwhelming force was telling them it was the right thing to do, during the ride up. Wilhelm remarks that the will of the gods is not to be questioned.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Burrowing scaled creatures known as Dragonworms once helped humanity build before they started using essence-based technology. You encounter and help one inside a mine. That Dragonworm's labeled as being young, but it dwarfs the heroes nonetheless.
• Multiple Endings: Should you just walk away and not engage the final boss, a different set of images appear in the end credits, showing the AI leaving in her ship, and humanity rebuilding its city with the help of the now returned Dragonworms.
• One-Word Title: That being the sound effect Shing!
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Dragonworm, which is as it sounds—a giant, red, scaly worm.
• Poor Communication Kills: Had the AI ever tried to peacefully contact the locals and explained to them about the cores, they might have believed her about how they are damaging the planet. Instead, because she just had her minion take them, none of the heroes have any reason to trust her warnings when they finally meet her and they just take them after defeating the final boss. Unless the player just has them leave.
• Story Breadcrumbs : Not much of the history of the levels you visit is disclosed, but from the ruins, remains, and artworks displayed in the background, you can piece together hints of past events that might have happened.
• Shout-Out:
  • Some of the background posters in the mine level are based on recognizable ones from real life, like Rosie the Riviter, but with an Asian aesthetic.
  • A number of the achievements are named after famous quotes from works of fiction, like Lord of the Rings, 300, Watchmen, and Dragon Ball Z.
  • Just as the group is about to skate down the side of a crater, Tetsuo let's out a familiar catchphrase; COWABUNGA!!!
• Sequel Hook: Before shutting down after the cores are removed, the AI that took back the Starseed ominously says,"They' won't, be happy about this." and that it's too late to stop the reanimation process. The Stinger shows a satellite in orbit, which begins to awaken its spacesuit-wearing inhabitants from cryosleep.
• World Tree: Wilhelm makes mention of hailing from a tree so big, his entire civilization lives in its branches, and that it formed from a device similar to the Starseed, that his people call the "Worldsprout" which has also gone missing.
• World of Buxom: Both the female player characters and the female npc's have very attractive frames and busts.
• World of Snark: There's hardly a voiced character who isn't filled with irreverent cheek.