Tokyotoon and Hobibox are bringing the popular niche anime Null & Peta to the realm of gaming with Null & Peta: Invasion of the Queen Bug. The game is a side-scrolling, sci-fi metroidvania featuring to the two waifu characters as Null helps her sister Peta battle through countless bugs ravaging cyberspace.
The game is a comedic take on the traditional metroidvania archetype, where instead of playing as a dangerous bounty hunter or deadly warrior out for revenge in a war-torn world, or alien hive, you’re a Japanese school girl arming up with a number of wacky and crazy weapons, ranging from wrenches and hammers to chainsaws and plasma rifles.
You can check out some of the gameplay from the free demo that you can download from the Steam store, courtesy of YouTuber Jonas’s Afterbirth.
The gameplay is a mixture of melee combat, projectile-based side-scrolling shooting, and platform-style challenges.
Interspersed between the level progression are visual novel CG sequences, where the characters interact with each other throughout the journey.
The game is definitely themed around the whole moe-genre of cutesy characters and lighthearted storytelling. So don’t go in expecting some kind of gritty, Maggot Bait themed gameplay or story scenarios. Now to be fair, I’m not a big fan of the Flash-style of animation. I’ve made this known many times before. I understand how cost-effective it is for developing 2D games, but it really does take me out of the game as far as immersion is concerned. Also, the animations themselves are kind of stiff and disjointed, when it comes to the jumping and movement.
These are things that can be addressed in future updates, so hopefully they take time to do that, even if it’s in a post-patch release.
Still, if you like cute girls, wacky weapons, simple enemies, and modern-day looking levels, then you might want to give Null & Peta a look-see when it finally drops on Steam starting January 31st, 2020.
For more information or to wishlist the game, or to download the free demo, you can head to the Steam store page.
(Thanks for the news tip Erobotan)
