Indie metroidvania game about a demon girl going around and… paying off her debt to some bath owner into saving the underworld. I guess.

This is one of those odd ecchi things. It has the aesthetic. Bikini armor fox girl demon lead, plenty of art of that bikini armor girl, a bathhouse plays a major role and most of the bosses go there after you beat them up and take baths. I just don’t think anything is actually all that pervy.

Story-4

So Scarlet, our heroine, meets a plucky fairy and after beating up the guard dog that heats the bathhouse’s baths Scarlet is sent around to make up for destroying the bath house’s business. After that, the nun looking co-owner of the bathhouse goes to some lost Fountain that is said to be able to get rid of the frenzied state that is poisoning the entire population of the underworld.

Then, as the opening tells you, Scarlet actually saves the world because, instead of the holy looking women.

The fairy doesn’t really matter? She’s just there and leaves near the end. She’s not even really a Navi style thing, she’s mostly something to point out some hidden walls and some background lore stuff.

Gameplay-5

It’s a combat focused short metroidvania. You have a light and heavy attack, there’s 6 movement upgrades, you find powerups and buy at least half of them, dodging perfect gives you a time slow down to do some attacks, killing stunned enemies gives you an execution which heals you, and you have Dark Souls healing flasks.

You get a Navi like fairy to help explains stuff like hidden walls and needing certain power-ups. Of the 6 powerups, 5 of them are movement skills that also can be used as attacks. The gun specifically gives you a triple jump and a range attack and makes the huge enemies way less scary. They can often one shot you if not for the food buffs. You can have 4 at a time and having any means getting killed is stopped in exchange for all your current food buffs.

The economy is actually strangely important. Food costs money and you always want at least one food item buff, around half of the powerups require money, some save points require cash, and you can get some movement upgrades early by buying them. The last one is actually purchase only. This makes finding money chests and killing enemies needed, as money never loses it’s importance. You lose half your money when you die and can pick it up by going back to claim it, so the game has two souls-like mechanics.

The highlights are the boss fights, as they tend to do more sane damage then the huge enemies between bosses while moving and dodging and having far more attacks. The gun isn’t an auto win against bosses like basically all the normal enemies. If you are good at timed dodges though the game probably falls apart. I’m not.

The game is a bit clunky though. Some wall collision is really off, there’s a feeling of floaty jumps and sometimes delayed inputs with dodges(or maybe I’m bad?). It works and I had fun, but it’s obvious this is a small team(1 person!) project. It’s impressive for that.

Lewdness-3

There’s plenty of art, no gallery. It’s art of a girl in a bikini, but not really bikini art if that makes any sense. She’s not displaying herself to be looked at, she’s just there doing whatever the art is of. Scarlet is this weird horned fox girl mix. She has a few different armor sets you can find that affect her model, these don’t change the drawn art. They might reduce damage?

Honestly the lewdest bit of the whole game is the nun girl’s magic girl transformation thing in the opening movie.

Final Thoughts

I always like when a game makes it’s economy actually matter up to end game. Making cosmetics be drops from end game bosses gave them something to drop at all which was nice and made the optional bosses more then just another stat buff. The movement was fun when it worked, which was most of the time.

Boss fights were the highlight. I enjoyed those bits, while the rest of the game was okay. A to B travel was fine, though the economy might be an issue here for some. You want to fight a lot of enemies for cash, but the normal enemies aren’t really fun to fight and big enemies can crush through your HP. So I fought a lot of general enemies which wasn’t all that interesting. Not sure how to fix this that isn’t just making the economy pointless.

Anyway, the game took me 5 hours and at least 3 of those were generally enjoyable. That’s a good amount.

Save for Scarlet City of Devils

Save at the end sitting in front of the final boss, has the boss rush unlocked. All movement upgrades and I think armor sets unlocked.

Gameplay: 5/10 Eroticness: 3/10 Story: 4/10

Completion:

Just beat the game. This unlocks the boss rush. I did beat the hidden boss for an armor set. So I think I got everything.