The Quarter Game is a top-down Action title in where we play as Mashiro, a young girl with dreams of being CEO of a company. Luckily for Mashiro, the current CEO just got kidnapped by some dangerous black-market group, and she hopes that by saving her, she will give her the job. With that motivation in mind, she takes off with nothing but a sword to take down any villain that stands in her way. It is a cheeky plot, and while more is revealed later on, I wouldn’t come here expecting a gripping story.
Mashiro’s only weapon all throughout is her trustworthy sword, and all the enemies will have ranged attacks to try to take her down before she gets anywhere close to them. It has a slight bullet hell element to it as you try to weave through all the projectiles to cut down your foes, but we have two trump cards in our sleeve. The first is that she can dash at insane speeds and distances at the press of a button. It can be a tad tricky to control it as you near instantly zoom all the way across the screen. However, once you get it down, it becomes second nature. Your second ability allows you to reflect projectiles right back at your enemies. You’ll need good timing to make use of this as the time it’s active is quite brief, making it pretty dangerous to stand your ground when you don’t need to.
Both those abilities have their own separate bars that once empty, will make them unavailable until they slowly recharge. It adds a bit of a tactical vibe to it since you can not overly rely on them and dash your way to the end of the level at mach 10 speeds before enemies can react. The foes you will encounter range from human, aliens, and dogs. Each have their own styles of fighting and require several blows to slay. Aliens have a shotgun-like spread attack while dogs fire a 360-degree blast of projectiles as two examples. They telegraph their attacks, so you will always know it will be coming, though with the screen’s ever-increasing bullet count as the battle continues, it may be in your best interest to put them down quickly as to avoid being overwhelmed.
It is not a difficult game by any means, you will be able to take quite a number of hits, and foes frequently drop healing orbs to boot. The only parts where you really want to pay full attention are when you encounter a boss. These lads are much more dangerous than your typical enemy, and all contain a bit of dialogue before starting the fight. It is the only time the game will stop to drop a bit of story on you, with the rest of it focusing on pure gameplay. All of the bosses have unique portraits to them and are rather well-drawn. It is a curious artstyle decision to have that anime look during cutscenes and the game itself looking like it could have been on the Gameboy.
The only colors are black, white, and blue. Blue, in particular, is the one you’ll want to pay the most attention to as it signals when an enemy is about to unleash an attack. The projectiles themselves are blue as well, making them very easy to spot against the background. Not surprisingly, it runs very well on even ancient computers due to its minimalist artstyle. It is all fast and fluid, with only yourself to blame if you get hit. Enemies aside, there are some other hazards in the form of moving traps. Avoiding them is hardly difficult with the most dangerous of them being the turrets that can quickly fill the screen with projectiles. They can’t turn around, however, so if you get close enough, dispatching them will be quite painless.
While rampaging your way through the levels, you will encounter a few puzzles. They are so simple that calling them a puzzle is a bit of an overstatement. At most, you just need to push a nearby object onto a pressure-sensitive tile or hit neighboring switches that are practically next to the locked area. Looking at this title’s achievements, it seems they are really trying to push speed-running, which explains the very minor inconvenience puzzles pose. My first time through it took me a bit under half an hour to complete, and it seems that beating it under 8 minutes will be the goal for people that like to 100% their titles. It is undoubtedly a fun enough game to instantly want to start a new run and try again.
Enhancing the gameplay will be a pretty catchy soundtrack. It does a decent job at getting one pumped to rush through an avalanche of projectiles and Strider the heck out of your enemies. Said enemies are not too bright and could definitely do with better AI, though are enough to pose a danger. The Quarter Game is a title that knows what it wants to be and proudly does so keeping its tongue in cheek story to the minimum as to let the gameplay shine. While it is too easy to a fault, it is a ton of fun and costs a single dollar. If you are looking for a quick pick up and play action game that you can complete in a lunch break, look no further.
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