The young girls who fight the Blankers that swarm the skies are known as "Fräuleins."These girls wear wings on their backs, becoming the weapon that faces the darknessfor their sake, for their friend's sake, and to protect those that cannot protect themselves.
Wing of Darkness is a mech action third-person shooter developed by Japanese independent game studio Production Exabilities and published by Clouded Leopard Entertainment Inc. The game is divided into two parts. The first part is an exhilarating, action-packed shooting game featuring the girls and their battles.The second part is made up of beautiful cutscenes featuring their everyday life and their struggle to overcome their differences. Experience the Fräuleins from two contrasting aspects! The game is scheduled to released for PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch on February 25, 2021.
Examples for general tropes:
- Aliens Are Bastards: The Blankers, who are said to be from outer space, want to destroy humanity, and they achieve this through violent methods. Their units that do speak also establish themselves to be Smug Snakes who look down on their human adversaries.
- Amazon Brigade: The Fräuleins who pilot Anti-Blanker armaments known as the HELT-Systems to combat the Blankers in the air.
- Big Good: General Rudolf Dettman, the commander of the Federal Air Force's Frauleins, is the highest ranking figure shown in the story, and is the one giving out orders to both Erika and Klara.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Blanker invasion is defeated, with mothership and their advanced Fraulein units destroyed. However, Erika is left wheelchair-bound, while Klara ends up with failing eyesight, meaning that both their combat careers are effectively over. The end up serving in administrative positions, working as aides to their commanding officer.
- Break the Cutie: Klara following the events of Missing 5, where the prolonged effects of using the Held System and her failure to protect Erika from an enemy attack cause her to become a Blood Knight hell-bent on wiping out the Blankers.
- Career-Ending Injury: Twice over.
- In Mission 5, Erika ends up severely injured and paralyzed from the waist down following an encounter with a brand-new Blanker Fraulein unit.
- Following the end of Mission 6, Klara is left with failing eyesight, which essentially ends her combat career.
- Computer Voice: The advanced Blanker Frauleins speak with an obviously synthetic tone to them, particularly when taunting Klara. Klara herself also ends up having a similarly synthetic-sounding voice in Mission 6, as a side effect of using the Held System for too long.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Prolonged use of the Held System eventually causes its users to end up thinking they are nothing more than weapons, and it very nearly happens to Klara during the Final Battle, down to her voice beginning to sound electronic.
- Defiant to the End: Even as the advanced Blanker Fraulein units are defeated by Klara, they remain defiant to their opponent and continue taunting her to the very end.
- Determinator:Klara becomes this following Erika getting shot down by the advanced Blanker Fraulein model. Despite having her weapons jammed by said Fraulein, she manages to get them to work and engage her enemy. Then, in the Final Battle, despite suffering from the horrific side effects of the using the Held System for too long, she manages to destroy the Blanker mothership and the advanced Blanker Fraulein model protecting it, all the while surviving and managing to keep her humanity.
- Dragon-in-Chief: The advanced Blanker Fraulein models serve as these for the Blanker Forces as a whole, being their most advanced combat units and capable of competently leading their forces thanks to their advanced AI.
- Evil Knockoff: The Blankers produce and use Fraulein units that are simply Cannon Fodder compared to the ones used by the Abendflugel. The Reveal however inverts this, as it's all but stated that the Held System and its weapons were originally created by the Blankers, and that the ones used by the Federal Air Force are reverse-engineered copies made from destroyed units.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The Computer Voice of the advanced Blanker Fraulein units is deep and intimidating, and the ones that Klara does encounter and fight are nothing but Smug Snakes towards her, and are helping the other Blankers in their attempt to destroy humanity.
- The Faceless: The other Frauleins and the General's faces are never shown, with their character models instead having black, blank faces.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Klara and Erika initially don't get along and often argue due to contrasting personalities and beliefs.
- Gratuitous German: In spite of being a Japanese game it has German sprinkled out all over the place.
- It Can Think: The Blankers aren't mindless machines as originally thought, and their most advanced Fraulein models are capable independent thought and human emotion, down to treating their opponent Klara as nothing more than a pawn who will soon become like and eventually join them.
- Locked into Strangeness: Following the Final Battle, Klara's hair permanently goes from blonde to gray, a possible side-effect of using the Held System for too long.
- The Reveal: The Held System used by the Abendflugel is actually of Blanker origin, and was reverse-engineered to fend their invasion off as it was the only effective weapon against them. In addition, the Blankers themselves (at least the advanced Frauleins) are revealed to be cold, calculating Smug Snakes who look down on humans.
- Schizo Tech: The Federation's civilian tech looks to be from the late 18th century to around the 1940s, while their military technology is around that of the present day to futuristic. In the latter case, this is due to having reverse-engineered the Blanker's technology for their own use.
- Screaming Warrior: Klara ends up becoming this by the Final Battle, screaming her lungs out against the advanced Blanker Fraulein units she encounters.
- Smug Snake: The advanced Blanker Fraulein units. They're the most advanced weapons of their type wielded by the Blankers, and can and do easily run loops around the Federal Frauleins, even shooting down Erika effortlessly. Unfortunately for them, their hubris gets the better of them each time, when they severely underestimate Klara while taunting her, and pay dearly for it.
- Underestimating Badassery: The advanced Blanker Fraulein models underestimate just how determined and skilled Klara is, and ultimately pay for it with their lives and their invasion fleet in shambles.
- War Is Hell: Played straight by the end, as the protagonists are left permanently physically and mentally scarred from months of incessant combat against overwhelming numbers of enemies.
- Wham Episode: Mission 5. Erika is shot down by an advanced Blanker Fraulein model. Said Blanker Fraulein is also revealed to be capable of sentient thought, and belittles and mocks Klara during their fight.
