Kamikaze Lassplanes

My first impression of Kamikaze Lassplanes was mild skepticism. A visual novel grafted onto a side-scrolling shoot-'em-up, built around women who literally transform into warplanes, developed by a studio out of Krakow with clear anime influences but a distinctly European sensibility. The recipe reads like a dare. By chapter two I had dropped the skepticism entirely. The structure alternates between dense visual novel chapters and arcade shmup combat missions. You play as Walter, a newly stationed pilot aboard the Sky Fortress of Velestia, a steampunk kingdom sustained by magical Light ore and protected by a barrier called the Veil. The two Lassplanes you are assigned to pilot, the bubbly Alba Trossé and the battle-hardened Hannah Brandenburg, are fully realized characters with their own histories and contradictions, and the choices you make shape which of the game's eight endings you reach. That number is real and it matters: branching here is not cosmetic. Fate Drone moments signal genuinely story-altering decisions, and a smart skip-dialogue-already-read feature on subsequent playthroughs keeps replays from feeling like punishment. The shmup sections earn their place. There is real old-school craft in the enemy wave design: power-ups that bounce across the screen and demand timing to collect properly, helper drones, airstrike summons, a shield mechanic, a screen-clearing mega attack, and boss encounters that do not hold back. The game runs buttery smooth even during dense bullet patterns, and the difficulty ladder is honest. Story mode makes you invincible in flight, Easy eases you in, Normal is the intended experience, and Hard is genuinely hard. A standalone Arcade Mode exists for players who want to separate the shooting from the storytelling entirely, though Noisy Pixel's review rightly noted that the Arcade mode lacks deeper customization options like loadout control or persistent power-ups between runs. The one mechanical complaint I would echo from the broader critical reception is a late-game bullet-time ability mapped uncomfortably close to the fire button, a small but real ergonomic stumble. On the visual novel side, the art is crisp, colourful, and handcrafted in a way that rewards attention. The audio is the quiet highlight: the soundtrack moves from upbeat and propulsive during combat to genuinely melancholy in the heavier story stretches, and those tonal shifts land. Critics have been split on the writing. Walter overthinks in text, and some dialogue sections run long before the next flight mission breaks the tension. Hannah is also introduced later than she deserves, which puts her at a structural disadvantage compared to Alba. These are real friction points, not deal-breakers. The narrative underneath those rough edges engages with questions of humanity, sacrifice, and the cost of war with more sincerity than the ecchi presentation initially suggests. Tonal whiplash between dramatic and comedic scenes is a fair criticism, though for fans of anime pacing that register will feel familiar. This one is for visual novel readers who have always wanted a more physical stakes to punctuate their choices, and for shmup players curious whether a story can make each bullet-hell survival feel meaningful. It is not going to convert genre purists on either side, and the sparse voice acting (only the Lassplanes are voiced with any regularity) does flatten some dramatic moments. But as a handcrafted indie experiment from a small Polish studio, it knows exactly what it is and finishes the job cleanly within its 6-to-10-hour runtime. Kai, Scout Team

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