Game Thoughts - WOWOWOW KORONE BOX by tian nya

I have been seeing this game for a while, but I've only started playing it when it released on Steam. As I had said in a blog post, I find it pretty fun!

To be honest, I thought it was something like Holocure/Vampire Survivors, but it turns out to be a different game altogether. And I like it a lot!

What's It About?

In this game, you play as Inugami Korone of Hololive. There's no real overarching story or anything, but the goal is to collect as many boxes as possible while avoiding and attacking various enemies and bosses with whatever you have on hand. (Or with your hands, in the case of Finger Gun and the Double Finger Guns, which are literal finger guns...)

Art

The look for everything is really cute overall (my fave stage visually is the Bread Box), even the enemies. It's really nice seeing all the Korone-related references too, from the mascots of her fanbase, to the weapons, to the various other creatures coming from drawings and other stuff.

I like the contrast between the slightly muted backgrounds and the more vivid characters and bullets. It makes things fairly easy to see.

Audio

The music matches the gameplay well, as it's also upbeat, and the little Korone voice clips that play whenever a run starts, she picks up a weapon, and a run ends are really cute. And just like the enemy and weapons, the music and sound effects are also references to Korone.

Gameplay

The main loop is simple enough for most players to grasp. You control Korone with WASD while aiming and "shooting" with the mouse (which buttons apply depend on your current weapon), and the goal is to go where the red arrow points and grab boxes. Whenever you grab a box, you change your weapon into a random one from the pool of available ones. You only have one life, so a run ends when you get hit by a bullet or touch enemies. Thankfully, the hitboxes are really tight, so there's a point when you can see Korone kind of touch something but it doesn't kill her yet.

Movement is pretty smooth, and I'm glad that movement and "shooting" are always separate (unlike in Holocure, where you can change modes). By the way, I put shooting in quotes since your weapon isn't always a projectile, as in the case of the Bonkhammer. The weapons themselves can take some getting used to, as they are all different in terms of range, strength, cooldown, and other effects (such as destroying enemy bullets or bouncing off walls), and you're switching between them at random.

Once you get at least 11 boxes (at least in Normal Mode), you will also start seeing boss enemies. As of this writing, I haven't really beaten a boss yet, but it can happen! Either way, I still find it fun.

You start out with a small weapon pool at first, but it expands the more boxes you get. Some of them you get for cumulative numbers of boxes across all runs, and some of them you get for certain scores in one run. I like that even if you're not particularly good at the game, you can still get something for your time.

Another thing that I appreciate is how it's not really a game that forces you to take a long time in a run, so you can just play it in small bursts and doesn't need to get in the way when you suddenly need to do something else. I know some people get way too obsessed over getting a high score, but I see it as a game that you can just enjoy in your own time. Of course, how you play it is up to you.

Overall

It's a really fun, quick-paced shooter that's fairly easy to pick up and play if you have a bit of free time on your hands (and also let go if you need to do something else). While there are achievements and unlocked weapons for getting to certain scores in one run, it also rewards you for being persistent and trying again. So HAVE CONFIDENCE!

You can get it for free on Steam. (It was originally on Itch, and the game page there is still up, but the release is now on Steam.)