An indie schmup/VN hybrid I had my eye on for the last year that finally came out. Has some ecchi and a swerve into a fairly serious plot, fitting for what is technically a war story.

At the end of this I’m going to talk a bit about marketing, as watching this game come out in real time and how it performed had me look around a bit.

Story-6

You are an ace pilot living in the Sky Fortress, a floating fort protecting the island of your kingdom. This kingdom is locked away from the rest of the world by the veil, which is powered by an energy called the light. Some super soldier girls can use this light to turn into super planes, and you just happened to get assigned one as a partner this day. She’s bubbly and happy.

Peace ends quickly, the veil gets breached for the first time in 100 years, and fighting occurs. Thing is that some shady stuff starts cropping up about your side and the Lassplane girls and the light itself. Who is actually an ally, and who’s worth fighting over? Eventually you get another plane and suddenly you have to pick this brooding girl or your bubbly but not stable companion.

It’s a light-hearted opening that turns into a drama. It’s a tone shift on the level of Song of Memories but more fitting what with this being a war story. I do kind of wish it was just a pure war and love story instead of this mystery, as there are few if any simple war story Vns. It’s not really a genre that needs variants and over complications.

The story becomes far more serious the I was expecting and the fanservice and slice of life stuff work making half the story a romance while the other half is more psychological stuff.

Gameplay-6

Left to right schmup, with a big focus on power ups. You have homing ammo, faster shots, explody bots, full special charge, shot level up, shield, heal, spread, and options(the helper shooting robots). These randomly spawn from defeated enemies and are the main spice of the game.

The schmup content has 7 levels, with only the last three letting who you picked of the two heroines decide who you pilot, otherwise it’s set. The last two levels throw in new mechanics, with 6 having time slow and 7 letting the other plane girl swoop in with her special/bomb attack on a timer instead of a charging bar the player’s plane has. The levels are distinct with plenty of variety in where enemies come from, how they attack, and some of the bosses even have fight gimmicks. I have no real complaints about the schmup segments, though I have seen someone say your hit box is to big.

When the game first came out though, you couldn’t skip these. Route is really decided after fight 4, so I’ve been through fights 5-7 like 8 times now. That was terrible. Japanese games coming out months late with guides ready to go have really spoiled me. Not that I’m new to grindy boring content. Every Compile Heart game is filled with it.

Vn wise, you have 8 endings. 4 bad endings triggered during the story(1 during the tutorial), and 4 proper endings. 2 happy, 2 still bad but you are alive and with the girl. I don’t understand the Fate Guide thing they have, where a robot with a scale will come down and move around based on your choices. I think it’s just showing that that previous choice mattered, since I swear it moves the same for every choice. Thing is, that robot shows up for 85% of the choices in the games. Might as well have made all of them matter or give me a progress bar. Would have actually been useful.

But yeah, overall the game works. Nothing super standout. It does have an arcade mode if you just want schmup, which is where you unlock the last two cgs which are concept art.

Last thing, I don’t get why the game ranks you on missions. There’s no achievement for these and no way to see how you did later so I don’t get it at all.

Lewdness-6

About half the cgs are fanservice stuff, so around 7-9 out of 18. Most of the early cgs are things like towel falling off as you end up in the baths with them, bikinis, and just general boob shots. The two happy endings also have some fanservice in them, with the blonde plane getting another swimsuit that does cover more and the bubbly girl getting a backshot, but it’s something. Most VNs don’t throw any fanservice in the endings so I’ll take these even if they were low on the perv spectrum.

I do like the towel standing art of the two girls. Bubbly girl gets some cheek in one of her two poses while both girls are pretty perky in them.

Final Thoughts

Decent. No real issues. I thought the romance with the blonde was great, especially the flirting. I do feel the game was redundant during the big choices near the end. Like I get what was happening was terrible, but bubbly girl specifically had to be comforted like 3 times during the not good ending path and when she started freaking for the third time I felt something was just off about the pacing of that.

Schmup stuff was fine. Power up focused isn’t something I see in them very often. Not having a move slower button felt off, but for the most part I felt the sections were fine.

Save for Kamikaze Lassplanes

All cgs, saves to the 4 proper endings.

Gameplay: 6/10 Eroticness: 6/10 Story: 6/10

Completion: Get all endings, go through arcade mode with both girls and destroy the drone of each level for the final cgs.

Marketing

So this game was brought to two Paxes, a fairly big convention. I personally learned about it when it was posted on r/VN. I think I’ve seen like 4 posts about it over the last year+. It was in this year’s s Steam Nextfest with like 200 other games. Then one of the voice actresses streamed a bunch of it with her Vtbuer setup. That’s all I’ve seen the game devs do to promote the game.

It has a website but unless you find the game somewhere else, like here, you would never learn of the game so that doesn’t do much. Pax is US only, and the convention scene isn’t really as big as it once was. I hope showing off a game there isn’t a huge cost, but I would expect a decent charge for a bit of extra coverage. I’ve never seen a post on r/schmup, or r/Games weekly indie game devs pitching their stuff. Those are free advertisement, and this isn’t a porn game so should be fine to promote itself on those things. Best Indie Games channel on youtube didn’t cover it at all the week the game came out, and he has a kit to help indie stuff market. I didn’t check /VNdev or any other game dev reddit so no idea there.

Indie games sell based on marketing. Steam is not a good tool to help a new release sell without outside marketing or fans doing leg work. Releasing on Steam without a platform of supporters already built is financial destruction. Devs should use every free tool they can to help them succeed. With Lassplanes, I don’t see that effort. It is getting a Switch release, and the Switch is honestly a better platform to be found on then Steam, as the Switch doesn’t have as many games releasing, though the days of basically nothing coming out each week is long gone. I wish the devs well. I sincerely want fanservice games to be given a chance. But no one can try your game if you don’t do the legwork to reach any possible interested parties.

Note that this isn’t unique to Lassplanes. Even recent releases I’ve seen people going “huh, I’ve never heard of “Most recent controversial game release 100’s of youtubers are making content about”.” I feel like marketing in general is in terrible spot as reaching anyone has become incredibly difficult.