Mimizu Panzer

Genre: Shooter, Snake
Dimensions: 2D
Setting: War
Players: 1


Mimizu Panzer is shooting game that resembles the game snake. You move around and shoot enemy turrets and for every one you destroy you become longer (it’s a tank I think). You only have 2 buttons out of which you’ll only use one the one for shooting (the other is self destruct). Shooting might be effective at the beginning but in later stages when you go against turrets that are much more resistant shooting at them is useless.

So how do you going around defeating enemies? Well there is an interesting twist if an enemy attacks your body (not the head), the segment starts to glow and if you shoot it after that it becomes a huge flame thrower. So you should make a path next to the enemy turn around and shot that segment and it’ll destroy anything in its path. Your segments remain intact even after you shot them, but you need to recharge them with enemy fire to use them again. Every destroyed enemy will give you a new segment, and every time you get shot in the head you die and lose half of your segments. The length of your tank is both you greatest advantage and disadvantage. The longer it is the easier enemy fire will hit it and the easier you’ll shoot at it. Also you’ll be able to hide behind it for defense. But the problem is the longer it gets the less space you have to hide so you’ll have to conserve space and hurry to finish the level.

The enemies are varied. There different kinds of turrets that come in all shapes and sizes. You’ll also come across helicopters that can easily fire at you from the side you are hiding. There are also boss fights which require you to change your tactics.

The game starts in a desert and there are some objects you can destroy, but you are confided in a boxed space in each level. From what I’ve seen later levels have a change of scenery. The graphics are ok and the explosions are nicely done. The music is nice, but the sound effects aren’t too impressive.

The game allows you to record replays so you can show your mad skills to other people. And there is an option to continue so you can resume the game from the level which you last died at. You start with number of segments you had on your last try.

This is a nice game which can get hard at times, but considering there is an option to continue from where you left off (you can continue an infinite number of times), the games is playable even if you are not a hardcore gamer.


Graphics: Nice but nothing spectacular. Effect of your tank when it blows up is good.

Controls: They are really good. I never had a problem with them. Only 2 buttons (fire and self-destruct). One big minus is there is no pause button.

Story: There are 3 screens of dialog at the beginning, but after that there is no story until the boss battles.

Gameplay: A very fun shooting game, requires a lot of thinking and planning. It can get very hard at times.

Replay value: I am not too sure how much replay value this game has. But it’s always fun to see how many levels you can pass without dying (it can be really frustrating then).

Best moment: Killing an enemy while being destroyed, and still getting a level clear.

Official site: http://nepiaworld.com/menu/works/mimipan/index.html

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Sispri Guantlet

Genre: Bullet hell shooter
Dimensions: 2D
Setting: Si-Fi
Players: 1


So today I’ll do the review for Sispri Guantlet, this has to be one of my favorite doujin games. The name is short for Sister Princess Gauntlet, the characters are based on the ones in the anime Sister Princess.

At the beginning you pick a character with each having her own distinct weapon and special attack. The first thing that will happen to you is you’ll be beaten down a few times until figure what you should destroy first. You have to make you way to the exit of every level, on the way you’ll see tons and tons of enemies various shapes and sizes (who are all the same gender if you don’t count the giant robots), killing them will give you a little exp which will help you level up. Not getting hit by bullets that are very close to you greatly fills your level up meter. Once you gain a new level you become invincible for a few seconds, so it’s vital to know when to start going close to bullets to level up. Also on the map you’ll see floating hearts. The enemies keep coming out of these forever until you destroy them so you better be sure you destroyed every single one of those spawn points otherwise the enemies will multiply like bacteria. I am not kidding. A part of the level you previously cleared can get covered up with enemies in a minute. To aid you have power ups such as stronger attacks (a potion you get), food for healing (which never heals enough), hovering pods that shoot (very useful for small enemies) and even other characters. If you find another character you can pick her up and switch whenever you want. The plus side is you have another continue if you main character dies. The minuses are you have to level every character independently and also give them power ups and food independently but they really can help when you just want to survive to the next healing food item.

Leveling up from what I have seen just raises you max hp bar by one pixel, while you remain having the same amount of hp. Besides the invincibility, you get different looking weapons or more bullets on some levels. For example on level 7 the disk weapon starts to look more deadly while a character with a gun fill fire more bullets at a time.

The game possesses a timer and once it runs out its not game over, but small enemies spawning in random locations will appear, as time passes they will spawn faster and faster. The only way to stop this is to get to the exit as soon as possible or to find a hourglass that will restore some time. But be warned some hourglasses are invisible until attacked enough.

There is also one very interesting thing, it’s an object which once you touch you spend all your time and enemies start spawning, but you get exp for the time that was spent. So it’s your decision if and when you spend time for exp. If you are skilled you can get exp and find an hourglass and get exp again.

The levels are varied from beaches, underground bases, mansion gardens, and a great thing about it is that the game isn’t linear. As early as the second mission you find two exit points and chose which one you want to use. This makes the game interesting for multiple playthroughs. There is quite a bit of exploring to do on every stage. Sometimes you need a keycard to go through a door, there are even times when the door you have a keycard for has an exit and another keycard enabling you to find another exit.

The music is pretty cool I got quite addicted to one tune. The graphics are cute, like I said all the characters are female. There are usually a huge number of enemies on screen at any time. You’ll see screens filled with so many enemies that they are unable to move until you rid them of their suffering and stop their sisters spawning. The bullets they fire come in all shapes and sizes from circles, stars, hearts, fire, light sabers, pompoms, cutlery, tools, lasers, bazooka that fires tons of bullets (but is limited to 3 shots then it just shoots one bullet). Some weapons can even be shot down.
The game seems to have quite a few versions. Depending on the version of the game you’ll have more or less characters. The one on the official site has only 4. Besides those I haven’t seen any other differences.

The game is fun years after I first played it. It never seems to get boring and repetitive, because it has quite a lot of interesting decisions. On the other hand the game is frantic and merciless. I got beaten down a ton of times before I got a hang of it. But unlike old games where the difficulty is based on the memory of where you last died, here its sheer skill.

Sispri Guantlet is a cute fun and very well made game, unfortunately the difficulty will turn down a lot of potential players, but since I guess anyone reading this will like hard doujin games have a go at it!


Graphics: Cute, everything is exploding with effects (and enemies) during the whole game. Sometimes it’s hard to see what’s going on. 

Controls: Precise, the movement and shooting is always accurate. But I have a hard time doing the special.

Story: No story, none needed.

Gameplay: Fun, addictive and monstrously hard.

Replay value: I’m still playing after a few years, it never once got repetitive.

Best moment: Finding a spot where I could just hold the button and keep destroying every enemy that spawns, after that I put something on the button, and went to eat.

Official site: http://d5-dot.net/sg/index.html

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Touhou Typing Reverie

Genre: Typing
Dimensions: 2D
Setting: Visual Novel
Players: 1


Considering that I started making reviews of doujin games I had to do this one. Years passed since the first time I played this game, I hardly managed to find the name of this game again.

Touhou Typing Reverie is like the name says a typing game, you see letters, words and  characters and must type them like a super human. The first time I played this game I was mercilessly beaten again and again, and once I finished that stage the next one had 3 battle against the same enemy in one go, I played and played, it was frustrating, and with all my skills I managed just to complete half of the words required before time runs out.

So years after that I accidently hit space and figured out that if you press space before typing  the word you type will count as 2 (also if you make a mistake it’ll do double the damage). And then I finished easy without a retry.

Still this game is very fun and entertaining. The words you get aren’t English instead they are Japanese and there is a lot of English words in Japanese (making it hard to forcefully type English words wrong – like sofutoku-rimu instead of soft cream). There is a lot of dialog in-between stages and by holding enter it can quickly be skipped. The game starts out by typing syllables, with a mini game after that where you type falling letters, and then you fight enemies by typing what is written, there is always some new twist to the stage and it’s never boring. In one stage the lights keep going out and you must type as quickly as possible when they are on, in another stage each mistake freezes you for a couple of seconds, when you fight against a rabbit girl most of her words are usagi (meaning rabbit in Japanese). There is always enough variety for it to never feel monotonous.

The graphics are 2D and pretty cute. The game plays out as a visual novel, during the typing parts text is at the bottom and characters are at the top.

If you want to practice typing using a fun and interesting game which at the same time is challenging this is a great must for you, but even if you are not into typing games you might enjoy it.


Graphics: They look just like in any visual novel, but really what would you expect from a game where you type text?

Controls: If you know how to type you know how to play. I had no problems with the controls at all.

Story: A lot of dialog between every stage, a lot of different characters.  Everything is in Japanese.

Gameplay: Fun and educational, you’ll have a hard time to find that somewhere else.

Replay value: I could play the same stage over and over. I think the game will always be fun and exciting except if you are an expert typist then this game probably will be boring with the first play through.

Best moment: Finding out the spacebar does something.

Official site: http://www.geocities.jp/hrhkd234/yoshii/siou/index.html

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Blood Over

Genre: Side scrolling, Shooter
Dimensions: 3D
Setting: Horror
Players: 1


The first thing you will notice about blood over is that it is all rendered in 3d. The game is fast paced, and it has a variety of attacks. The story keeps the player playing and wondering what will happen next. Even though I didn't understand what they were saying, most of the time it’s pretty obvious from the cut scenes.

The gameplay might be a little repetitive. You use 3 buttons, shoot, kick and the call maid. The interesting thing is that you can fire a gun by inputting different commands (down forward shoot, forward down forward shoot), that also works for the kick. You have a maid with you who doesn't do anything until you press the button for her, then she uses a minigun and kills most of the enemies on the screen, but you are limited to how much you can use this. The boss battles are always fun interesting and well designed, but they are at the same time very frustrating. During the boss battles usually one enemy hit can take almost all your life so it's crucial to be able to dodge enemy attacks in split seconds, be it jump or slide. Usually one maid call won’t kill the boss, but it makes you invulnerable during it so it’s a big help. There is also a blood mode, which you get once you kill enough enemies, but any hit from an enemy will disable it.

One of the most interesting things I saw in this game is that if you play the game perfectly from the begging and keep getting huge combos the game will go to hard mode, but you can't select hard mode when you start the game, so it’s always a challenge playing it.


Graphics: The graphics are fine, they are 3d, but they are not very detailed and the models are low poly. The effects have little detail.

Controls: The controls do their job, but sometimes the character doesn't behave the way you want her, so it can get frustrating during the boss battles and parts where you need to dodge.

Story: It seems deeper than in most games of this type. There are numerous cut scenes. You also see a lot of dialog between missions. From what I understand the story is very interesting.

Gameplay: The toughness of the game keeps the player always at the edge of his seat, it can get a bit too hard and unfair at times (try fighting 2 bosses who are faster than you at the same time), but all in all, the variety of the levels and bosses keeps you going.

Replay Value: The game is fun, but at the same time it’s not a game you'd play again. The combos and rankings help this a little, also the auto hard mode is interesting and it’s interesting to see what the next level is and who is the next boss is. If you die in a later part of the game it's pretty hard to force yourself to play it from the beginning.

Best moment: The game going to hard mode on the first stage.

Official site: http://arthearts.net/9th-night/

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