Bring out all your Twitter memes for anyone who enjoys anime or My Little Pony… it’s time for a game that you’d initial think would be pure meme central but actually plays out exceptionally well! Get Your Tentacles Off My Waifu is a solo developed shoot em up pitching flying poneh’s against each other and against giant tentacle beasts intent on kidnapping your waifu. Behind this crazy set up is a well put together tactical shoot em up. This is because you have to destroy the beasts piece by piece. Think Chippy gone cute and crazy and you are part way there.
Most levels see you face off against an increasingly more aggressive and speedy tentacle beast. It’s like an octopus and a molboro had a baby. The beasts have many eyes that shoot lasers, muscles and brain parts that keep the eyes safe and tentacles that expand, contract, flail and swipe at you. Beasts have other attacks too such as sending flying beasts to attack you too. The trick is to kill everything but you have to start from the outside and work your way in. The eyes are protected by the tentacles and if you shoot at their roots you remove onto 1 health point, whereas catching the ends deals 8 or 9 damage. The tentacles then fall off and get shorter, allowing you to move in closer to start attacking muscles and eyes.
Whilst all this is going on you can try and save your waifu by damaging where she’s been caught up and collecting her as she’s tossed aside before the beast grabs her again. This doubles your shot power as she climbs on your pack to shoot away. A boost away from the ground or objects in levels gets you out of tight spots, although I didn’t use it often. What I did use a lot was a speedy fire option that means you can’t move whilst firing quicker. This lends the game to a dash, stop, shoot, dash cycle. If you spot a gap between tentacles, you gain sweep in and attack a muscle or eye and then dive out again. This is because your range of fire is shorter than tentacle lengths so you must keep moving. The landscape of the level also plays out here as you might end up getting swiped at the top of a hill or being caught at the bottom of a valley unable to escape without damage. As levels go on, the amount of attacks and bullet hell increases. What I really enjoyed about the bullet hell that comes to the fore in the later levels, is that the bullets have an arc. In so many games the bullets just go straight, but here they do fall down. As you are flying around and sometimes under the beasts at time, you’ll find its like battling in crazy rain that damages you.
Get Your Tentacles Off My Waifu has tons of potential and its still in development. It’s very playable with the alpha that’s out now. You can download it for free on Itch.io and links to support the developer Flying Realms are there too through Discord and Patreon. I have had the privilege of playing an advanced build of the game and it is great fun. One to keep an eye on.
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