Marfusha announced: A dystopian action shoot-‘em-up about young girls surviving military conscription

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-02-17 16:24 (JST)
Translated by. Ari Clark

On February 17, solo game developer hinyari9 made an official announcement about their new game, Marfusha. The game is scheduled to be released in summer of 2021 for PC (on Steam), in Japanese, English, and simplified Chinese.

Marfusha is a dystopian 2D action shoot-‘em-up about young girls guarding a national border. The protagonist of the game is Marfusha, a young female garrison soldier who has just been assigned to guard a gate on the border. Marfusha was raised in the middle class, which is vanishingly small in her country due to its extreme economic inequality, and used to be employed at a bakery.

However, the country is suffering from an ongoing shortage of military personnel, and this state of affairs led to Marfusha being conscripted. Girls from the five social classes of the country are sent to guard the border gate, according to the instructions of an inspector.

The enemy presses close around the gate that Marfusha and her peers are protecting. The goal of the game is to survive and protect the gate, while facing down the guns of armed foes encroaching by land and drones of all sizes approaching by air. Each battle lasts about 15 seconds on average. After the battle ends, three different cards are randomly displayed, and the player chooses one of them. The cost of the card is paid for out of Marfusha’s wages, which are severely reduced due to taxes, and the character grows stronger.

There are over 50 different varieties of cards in total, including power-up cards that make characters and defended targets stronger, barricade cards that obstruct enemy advances, firearm cards that provide new weaponry, helper cards that add to the protagonist’s allies, chance cards that make something happen, and canine cards that allow you to keep a pet dog.

Whenever the cast grows due to a helper card, interactions with the new character are also shown in locations like the barracks. The game features seven individual characters, including Strelka, a girl genius who was forcibly enlisted to develop biological weapons but demoted after failing to produce results, and Albina, a cheerful and narcissistic shock trooper who dyes her hair to hide her origins.

The goal of the main mode is to survive 40 days of military service. The game also comes with a challenge mode, where players compete to see how many days they can stay alive for. According to a press release, the game is designed to be easy to pick up and play within a short period of time.

Part of the appeal of the game is its 2.5D graphics, depicting cute girls and a dystopian world. Although Marfusha and her fellow soldiers spend day and night in a constant round of firefights with their robot foes, in their moments of rest, they are shown reading among mountainous stacks of books or relaxing on the windowsill.

There’s an ambient lived-in feeling inside the bare concrete rooms, with laundry hung up to dry and old-fashioned furnishings lining the walls. The game also has functions that allow you to view information about weapons, character profiles, and so on.

Marfusha is scheduled to be released for Steam in summer of 2021.