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DEEP SPACE WAIFU Review


This arcade vertical-scrolling bullet hell shooter by Neko Climax Studios and Hammerfist Studios features a male protagonist King bear on his space bike, various anime girls and enemy spaceships. Over 12 levels and another 8 levels in DLC (not required for achievements), gameplay involves destroying enemy ships and collecting stars to build score up to 5 stars, shooting at various relevant parts of each girl's clothing where hit boxes with a number will be shown until it reaches zero where a tear or hole will be created. When the clothes or underwear are torn sufficiently, it will flash with each hit until it breaks off entirely. Earning 5 stars in a level will unlock additional levels, while reaching progress of 100% by breaking off all available girl's clothing will enable one-handed mode (auto-fire mode) on King bear's space bike making it easier to score more points and unlock certain achievements.

Although the game looks like an arcade old school retro shooter with pixelated graphics which look similar to the EGA (Enhanced Graphics Adapter) 16-colour graphics used by computers nearly 3 decades ago in the 80s, the game has surprisingly fun and interesting gameplay where in addition to shooting at enemy spaceships and a boss ship, an additional optional goal in each level are to shoot and deal enough damage to break off each girl's clothing where there is sufficient clothing, shape and scripted level route variety in each girl's stage.

For players who prefer a more challenging arcade bullet-hell shooter, players can also choose to play the stage in Gentleman's Mode where the stage will immediately be over if any part of the girl's clothing is torn or a hole is created. This challenging game mode is entirely optional and is not required for Steam achievements or additional further unlocks.

The game has more than 5100 positive reviews at the time of this review, nice vaporwave background music (BGM) and 2 songs with vocals by Funny Death which are both pleasant and stirring and is appropriate for the 80s arcade themes and there is a bit of humour in this game in the form of somewhat exaggerated character biography descriptions on each girl at the stage selection menu.

Full BGM with soundtrack list on YouTube by 狐美羽-KitsuneMiu Gaming

The Steam achievements feature cute anime girl portraits and pink letter icons, making it attractive to showcase on profile with cute Steam profile backgrounds and emoticons. The achievements are also easy to obtain without spending too many attempts as a short casual and relaxing game with fan service.

The Academy DLC adds at least an hour of additional gameplay with 8 additional levels, 3 additional new soundtracks, 7 remixed and original versions of the featured BGM and songs from the base game with a different soundtrack album cover.

For players who prefer to uncensor and play with the adult content, it can be done easily by simply creating a blank text file with a certain name in the game's data folder (published Steam community guides are available to describe and walk players through the method, or at 9:05 section in accompanying video below). One player has also commented on my Steam review, clarifying that the game's one-handed mode is for players to be able to multitask for obvious reasons.

Gameplay video on YouTube by Marusame

Overall, the game is recommended with soundtrack and Academy DLC for those who like an arcade vertical-scrolling shooter with nice soundtracks, easy and forgiving gameplay mechanics (the game allows playing each level with up to 8 lives) and like or don't mind the fanservice (In censored Steam version, all girls will be wearing indestructable skin-matching underwear to hide all adult NSFW content) and light tongue-in-cheek humour in the game.

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