A vertical, split screen Shoot 'Em Up in which players compete to be first to finish a jigsaw puzzle.
A jigsaw puzzle is displayed at the beginning of each round, after which it disassembles and becomes a stack of capsules in the center of the screen. Both players shoot enemies on their side of the screen and collect gems dropped by defeated enemies. The gems fill a gauge which in turn releases a capsule into the play area. Putting pieces in the right spot produces gems and fires an attack at the other player. The first player to finish their puzzle wins.
Has Cute 'em Up visuals styled to look like a Japanese arcade game from the 90's.
Developed by Essencey, and released on Steam in 2020.
This game provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Five of the eight playable characters are female.
- Alliterative Title
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Alternate costumes can be unlocked for each character.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The pieces you earn during a match will never be duplicates of ones you already have.
- Similarly, new puzzles can be unlocked one piece at a time by playing matches. There are quite a few puzzles to unlock this way, but you'll only ever be earning pieces for up to three of them at a time.
- Astral Finale: The game manages to subvert the typical shooter setting... until the last stage.
- Big Fancy Castle
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Green enemies are small and fast, blue enemies are big and slow, with red ones falling in the middle.
- Cute 'em Up
- Cute Owl: Crow's sidekick - and means of attack - is a round, cuddly owl.
- Collision Damage
- Continuing is Painful: Losing and retrying a match in arcade mode means you're basically guaranteed a bronze medal for that run - except if you're still on the first match of the tour, which won't affect your score.
- Edible Theme Naming: Arcade mode's tours all have food-related names. "Mint" "Orange" "Truffle" "Vanilla," and "Cake".
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Bugs? Cookies? Mushrooms? Checks out.
- Flash Step: The Frog Prince's special attack, combined with his sword.
- Forced Tutorial: Averted. The game offers a tutorial on first boot, but you can decline it (the tutorial is always still available from the menu, however).
- Genre Mashup: Between Shoot 'Em Up and jigsaw puzzles.
- Giant Poofy Sleeves: The Ice Cream Mermaid Princess, and the Frog Prince both sport these as part of their Requisite Royal Regalia.
- Girlish Pigtails: Sparkle wears her hair in giant pigtails.
- Green Hill Zone: The first area is comprised of some grassy castle courtyards.
- Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Amy neglects to wear a helmet, despite being an astronaut... in space.
- Iaijutsu Practitioner: The Frog Prince can do this, as he re-sheathes his sword when not attacking.
- In Name Only: Whatever Crow is, he's almost definitely not a real crow. Also, the Ice Cream Mermaid Princess does not seem to have any actually mermaid features.
- Interface Spoiler: The game has a Sound Test which will allow you to listen to music from stages you haven't reached (and thusly unlocked) yet.
- Invincibility Power-Up
- Invulnerable Attack: Both special attacks and correctly placing puzzle pieces (with a corresponding shockwave) will make the player character invincible for a few moments.
- Meaningful Name: Toast is a girl named Toast who rides a flying piece of toast while eating toast.
- Mercy Invincibility
- Our Mermaids Are Different: Or in the case of the Ice Cream Mermaid Princess, seemingly not really even a mermaid at all.
- Recoil Boost: Firing Spark's special attack pushes him backwards, albeit after a short delay. In a pinch you can use it to save items about to disappear off the bottom of the screen.
- Replay Value: The game directly rewards players for being able to correctly assemble puzzles without mistakes, so it's sort of expected that you'll be replaying puzzles you've become familiar with.
- Retraux: The game's graphics resemble a mid-90's arcade game, and the "cover art" assets are all made to look like old, worn out boxes or posters.
- Sky Surfing: Characters mix and match methods for achieving flight. Spark rides on some kind of machine, Sparkle rides on a fish, while the Frog Prince stands on a lily pad. Others seem to be able to do it without any mechanism at all.
- Special Attack: The term used in-game. They fill the role of bombs in this game, although they aren't all the screen-clearing variety.
- Spread Shot: Toast's default attack.
- Sprint Shoes: There's a powerup that increases movement speed. It should be helpful, but it can be disorienting if you're not expecting it.
- Timed Power-Up: Most items are this variety.
- Toast of Tardiness: Toast seems to be holding a piece of toast in her mouth at all times, except in the cover art for some reason.
- The Voiceless: Toast seems to never speak.
- Verbal Tic: Crow tends to add "Nyah!" to his sentences.
- Versus Character Splash: Before each round in arcade mode.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Spark's special attack.
