Back in 2017, Studio Koba announced Narita Boy, a game named after Tokyo’s second-biggest airport that seemed custom built for Kickstarter. It had slim-fit pixel art characters in a neon side-scrolling world. It had nostalgic ‘80s anime vibes with modern visual effects. It had a story of a developer — former Friend & Foe team member Eduardo Fornieles — going back to his hometown to make the game he always dreamed of.
It was just a concept at that point, but it was gorgeous, and that was enough to push the inevitable crowdfunding campaign over the top.
Four years later, the game shipped and turned out to be one of the better Kickstarter video game success stories, looking like a playable cartoon and playing like a surreal version of a classic action-adventure game. With simple combat and text-heavy screens slowing the pace, though, it never felt quite as good as it looked.
The team’s follow-up, Haneda Girl, doesn’t have that problem.
Announced last year with a demo now on Steam, Haneda Girl — named after Tokyo’s biggest airport — isn’t a direct sequel, despite the name. It’s an action-platformer with faster movement, more responsive controls, and the kind of precision required when you have to bounce between wall jumps while avoiding shots from all directions.
You play as a girl named Chichi Wakaba who has a sword and can dart around the screen in fractions of a second. She has no ranged attacks, so she has to sneak up on enemies, go into “ghost mode” to hide from lasers, or slice through panels to drop platforms on enemies below, BurgerTime-style. She’s also highly vulnerable and will die if hit by a single bullet.
The twist is she has a mech partner, M.O.T.H.E.R., that she can hop in and out of. The mech moves slowly and can’t jump as high, but has a machine gun turret and can absorb multiple shots before blowing up and respawning a few seconds later.
Playing the demo, I found myself constantly jumping in and out of the mech, using it to charge Wakaba’s attacks, take the brunt of enemy attacks, or just spray bullets in an area and hope it worked out — which it often did. The level designs pushed me to switch between the two styles, offering narrow paths or high walls that only Wakaba can fit through or climb, and rooms filled with enemies that M.O.T.H.E.R. was built to blast through. It feels like there might be a way to speedrun the game primarily using Wakaba, but the balance between the two is what made the demo work for me. I constantly felt the temptation to fly towards the goal, only to think better of it and settle for a few moments of planning, followed by a few moments of chaos.
Or I just went for it and died. As the trailer suggests, that’s going to happen a lot.
