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