Thank you to Kwalee for sending us a review code!

Don’t Stop, Girlypop! (DSG) has got to be one of the most interesting and clever shooters that I’ve played in a while. The idea is that it combines the ever-popular movement shooter idea with a Y2K aesthetic and a style that can only be described as “girlypop.” You take the role of a robot named Imber who’s goal is to take down the corrupt leader Auctus while spreading as much love as possible. Despite being a robot, you have a lot of room to personalize and make your experience unique.

A big selling point of DSG is the movement. The primary encouraged “movement tech” is called wave hopping, featuring a quick succession of ground slamming, jumping, and then dashing for a fluid spin on the traditional famous bunny hopping technique. It’s shown off in the tutorial, and it is the fastest way to gain speed unassisted. The directions for initiating one is also always on screen in the HUD. The movement being the way it is is very nice considering that extra damage and all healing is based off of your current momentum. This makes any enemy arena, open or cluttered, engaging and dynamic to zip around and blast enemies you fly past. Something that isn’t quite preferred would be the hookpoints in some situations. They let you grapple to them, and are usually a good way to increase speed and get around the levels, but parkour sections based off of them often don’t feel very good because of how poorly they preserve momentum.

The weapons are all pretty useful, and I think all of them have their own niche, though some may be dominated pretty heavily by others. For example, the shotgun, which you unlock quite early, has pretty solid damage at long range as well as short range, and can be used for almost everything until the fourth or fifth gun unlock. The shotgun only has three shots for it’s notable reload time, but I discovered a game-changing glitch that pretty much lets you ignore this. At the time of writing this, the game does not store the amount of ammo a gun has left before reloading. Because of this oversight, switching quickly between weapons works as a substitute for this, and only takes a split second. While I didn’t abuse this too much in favor of experimentation and finding weapon synergies, I found it effective to clear out the tankier enemies with spamming the shotgun in parity with the railgun.

While there are many different enemy variants, I find that a very small margin of them are actually threatening. Some might cling to a wall or go to very remote locations of the room to cause chaos, but their attacks are so easy to parry (which, by the way, increases damage and makes the projectile home into the enemy), and they die in one or two hits from almost any weapon. If the enemy might have a larger health pool, then its attacks might be repetitive, or it might just be annoying to kill solely because of the amount of hits it takes. Most of the bosses are later repurposed into regular enemies, but the ones that aren't are definitely unique and engaging.

Don't Stop, Girlypop!’s soundtrack is very fitting and definitely motivated to keep me playing a lot of the time. I really loved all of the tracks, with one exception. A lot of the OST is honestly quite listenable outside of the game. I really liked the ones with breakbeat or house inspiration, and there are some clever vocal chops on some tracks. Outside of the music, the sound design isn’t awful. The sound effects feel in place and don’t hurt or anything like that, and the voice acting is quite impressive. A lot of lore is revealed through echoes that you can find and choose to listen to, but a lot of them are several minutes long and just eat into your level time (which receives a grade) if you don’t listen while playing the level. Generally, there isn’t an issue with doing that, but I did find that if you get to a spot where scripted dialogue plays, the voice lines for all of it will play simultaneously, and it creates some hard-to-follow sounds.

The graphics aren’t impressive, but they get the job done when it comes to conveying a good vibe for the game. Enemy models are fine, but their textures are generally uninteresting. Some lights have too much bloom and completely cover the screen, though that’s rare. Other than those, I really like the HUD and menus. The mouse controls by default are not very good, but the keyboard ones are pretty intuitive and easy to work with. I mentioned a few bugs and oversights already, but I did find a few more. For example, some of the collisions in the levels don't feel right. Another issue was that if a large enemy spawns on top of you, it may trap you until you die and respawn.

There are moral issues to be expected in a game like this, namely with blood and gore, though even there, DSG isn’t too bad. Enemies will fall apart by their limbs when dying, and will spray pink blood on the walls, but it doesn’t look gruesome in really any case. There is some lighter language used throughout the game (d*mn, *ss), but never excessively. There aren’t really any sexually explicit characters, but the main antagonist does look rather unruly, with a very large exposed belly. Not really sure if it’s too concerning, considering how un-seriously the game takes itself, but the announcer that will sometimes commentate your battles sometimes says “Stick it to the man!,” which I assume to be a joke, but is worth noting either way.

Overall, this is a very good game. I enjoyed most of my time playing Don’t Stop, Girlypop!, even through its imperfections. I think it’s alright for the price, and would be worth playing if you enjoy other movement shooters like ULTRAKILL or other Quake-like games.