Shini Sou is a dungeon-brawler-without-stats made for RMN's 10th birthday event jam, an event where developers were given 10 days to create something with the theme "retro". Optionally, you were also allowed to create a game within 10 hours, and thus Shini Sou is one of those entries conforming to the latter restriction - 10 hours of development only by superstroke, developer of the contemplative surreal side quest game Sideways, the puzzley Trial and co-creator of the out-of-this-world lawyer visual novel Space Attorney. It is a joy that for a game made within such short time constraints, it's a breeze to play and a short coffee break length burst of fun.



The game uses Momeka's and Sated's graphics that they hosted on this site as resources, cute pixelated tilesets and characters and animations that lend a vibrancy to the retro stylings of the game. Background music is short, plinking strings highlighting suspense. Graphics are well-used, with doorways letting you walk straight under them and through them, a purposeful design. Sound effects are pretty loud, though. Scratch that - they're ear-piercingly loud. The developer would do well to either turn the background music up, or turn the sound effects down, because I turned the volume up to hear the beautiful music, only to be assailed by these massive screeching battle sounds. R.I.P. Cash's ears.



The story is spelled out in broken Engrish, calling to mind translations like that of Zero Wing.



Our protagonist is a knight who has been alerted to a mission to save 4 heroes who have been stuck in a dungeon. He has only one chance, apparently. The narration evokes games of old that were translated badly, and this brings a lot of charm to the game. One of the biggest draws is seeing the heroes congratulate the protagonist in all sorts of weird and wonderful flawed language - and it is utterly hilarious.



And soon after they disappear in a flash of white light to the shrine area. (So they didn't need a knight to save them after all? Why would they need us if they had teleportation powers? Or does the knight have the power to teleport himself and others?) "Wow I thought that nobody would see anymore" a surprised hero says. He means that he thought he wouldn't see anybody anymore. Each hero you save gives you a hopeful message and flatters you warmly... then they disappear in a flash of white light. The ending of this game is very cute and purposefully naive and I love it... it makes me feel like I AM THE HARDEST OF THE CORE for defeating that optional boss (I suppose minor gameplay spoilers don't matter for a game of this scope. Spoiler: The optional boss is hard and a little unfair but satisfying when you beat them).



Using Z to attack, and X to escape the dungeon when you're not in a shrine area, you are a forward, sideways, and backwards attacking character. But that's half the fun. Soon things get satisfying as you are dispatching foes, left and right in real time. There is a degree of strategy to not getting hit, but not much to be fair. At first, I thought it was always possible to spam "Z" to attack everyone around you and win, but there is some dodging and evading to be had, so you can heal up for your next batch of dispatches. In a short game like this, the simple battle mechanics benefit its charm. It's light and easy and you're always progressing.

If you get hit, your screen turns red for a short time, and if you get hit again while the screen is red, you die and are transported back to the shrine. The simplicity of this hit system makes for easily comprehensible gameplay and a reduction that makes this game seem truly retro. Once you enter certain areas, chokepoints will cause lightning bolts to occur on certain tiles, making the following troop inescapable.

However, I was very disheartened when I got to near the end of the dungeon and I pressed "X" by accident (because it's right next to the attack button) and I was transported to the beginning of the game! Little did I realize that there were actaully transportation tunnels that lead you to various checkpoints in the game, so you don't have to lose that much progress. Me? I went the long way. Because I didn't know there was a shorter way.



There is a bit of non-linearity in the game - a splitting of paths, which makes it fun. This game could be expanded into something greater if there were spells added, and perhaps a health bar. Alternately, one can just zoom past enemies, since it's not compulsory to kill them all.

The final boss was a little irritating, since if a couple monsters spawned near you, you would likely be killed instantly - no check of twitch skill required... just unfair instadeath. So that was a bummer. But it didn't really stop me from trying again and again, and I started figuring out that the more enemies I was surrounded by, then the more time lag I would receive after each hit in order to dispatch the next enemy. A little bit of evasion later, and I also realized that enemies only spawn near where you last were fighting them. So you would have to move to another area to prevent getting destroyed instantly when they get revived by the boss character.



Shini Sou let me bash some enemies for a little while gleefully, with controls intuitive, and dialogue errors adorable. That this was made in 10 hours only proves that some developers have the true talent of using their timeframe wisely to provide a clean and polished finished product.