REVIEW: Waifu Breaker

A substandard first entry into the adult bullet hell game ranks.

Released: Steam
Type: Single-player
Genre: Action, Indie
Developer: Hentai Atolyesi
Publisher: Hentai Atolyesi
Release Date: 6 Jun, 2020

Introduction

Waifu Breaker is the debut title from indie developers, Hentai Atolyesi.

It’s an adult bullet hell / dodge-bullet game in which you encounter a series of 10 anime-style “waifus” and try to “break” them, whatever that means. It doesn’t sound like it’s something very nice, in any case.

Wait, what do mean “break”?

Gameplay is very simple. You control a glowing ball and move about over a single screen-sized static background image of the waifu you’re currently trying to break. A number of glowing red balls move haphazardly about the screen and if you touch one then you lose a life. Lose four lives and it’s game over.

The image is initially smothered in darkness, but as you move about you temporarily light it up, as do the glowing enemies, allowing you to faintly see the image underneath. Your goal is to collect hearts to fill up the heart meter on the left of the screen, while avoiding the red balls. Three thresholds within the heart meter require you to stop collecting hearts and instead position your ball within a glowing circle on the screen. Stay there long enough and that part of the image is permanently brightened. After brightening three areas you’re prompted to “Break Her”, which involves collecting more hearts until the meter is full. No, after playing through the game I don’t know what “break her” actually means in this context either.

You can pick up shields, which last for a few seconds and protect you from collisions with the enemies, and you also have a special ability on a cooldown timer, which allows you to move once rapidly over a short distance or slow down time, depending on which of the two initial abilities you choose.

There are three types of enemies: small glowing balls that follow mostly predictable patterns as they bounce around colliding with the edges of the screen and each other; big glowing balls that behave similarly; and small glowing balls that stop, fade away, brighten again, and speed towards your position before gradually slowing down and doing the same thing again. As far as bullet-hell games go, it’s a very limited set, and the game quickly becomes repetitive because of it.

There’s also an endless mode in which you collect as many hearts as you can until you die, except this only features one of the enemy types, but in numbers that increase as you progress. Do well enough at this and you unlock a third ability for the normal game play mode: temporary invincibility (it’s like the shield, but stops collisions with you entirely). Do even better and you unlock another waifu.

Control is pretty terrible, both with keyboard and controller (mouse isn’t supported). There’s too much inertia, I think, making it feel slippery and unresponsive. Controller is much better than keyboard, but it’s still not great. Especially with lots of enemies on screen I felt like I was battling the controls rather than the enemies. In any case, I’d prefer mouse control similar to the Deep Space Waifu or Ahegal games, which play much better than this.

The game advertises 11 waifus, however, one is a trap, the gallery doesn’t work for another, and a third requires considerable frustration in endless mode to unlock.

Presentation

The game appears to be made in Unreal Engine and boasts some nice dynamic lighting and particle effects. Models are very simple: glowing balls!

It features 11 static CG images — one per waifu — and these images are used both in the game levels and in the gallery. Some feature breasts and buttocks, but genitals are mosaic censored with no obvious patch available. They’re reasonable quality and look okay at 1440p resolution, but some appear a little amateurish, with slightly distorted features; you can find better in other games. I believe they’re all by the same artist, as they have a similar style. The obligatory catgirl is present, so it gets +1 for that.

The menus and the UI are functional and don’t detract from the game, and I experienced no slowdowns or other graphical issues.

The music is pretty good, comprising a number of tracks with techno and house – style beats. I liked it enough that I’d be happy to listen to the soundtrack when not playing the game, but I probably wouldn’t buy it. Sound effects are limited and include some “oohs” and “aahs” and spoken lines in Japanese, in one of two voice types: “adult” or “teen” (um …). They’re both a bit annoying, though.

Issues

Apart from the gameplay issues already mentioned, there are a surprising number of bugs and missing features for a game this simple. In the interests of brevity, I’ll just list them:

– The final (10th) waifu doesn’t get unlocked and selecting “next level” after breaking her takes you to the second waifu
– Steam VR starts with the game, presumably because the developer has forgotten to disable it in the Unreal Engine options.
– No controller or key binding / remapping available
– No mouse control
– Broken physics: enemies sometimes collide with nothing and change direction, and sometimes don’t collide with each other, passing through when they should change direction.
– Achievement spam: completing each level gives you 10 meaningless achievements. Why not just one?

Verdict

Some nice lighting and particle effects, passable techno music, and a core gameplay idea that’s reasonable, if a little uninventive, are the highlights of Waifu Breaker. The art is substandard and pixellated/mosaic-censored; controls are slippery and unresponsive — and there’s no mouse control!; and gameplay is short (less than an hour to complete the 10 levels), but still repetitive and frustrating..

Stay away from this one for now and try games from the Deep Space Waifu or Ahegal series, or even 7 Sexy Sins instead. They play better, have better art, and are better put together.