Nice looking title screen.
Every once in a while I cruise the indie games market. My wife and I have found many cheap gems like Baby Maker Extreme 1 & 2 and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1. However I have only played on good indie sports game and that was the College Lacrosse games. So while I browsed the indie store I came across Ace Gals Tennis.
From the preview page this looked like a throwback to the arcade tennis games of our 8 and 16 bit days. I ponied up my dollar (80MSP) and crossed my fingers. The first thing I noticed is that the art work is great. From the opening screen to the character design this game does look good. The art has a Japanese flavor without being hyper-sexual. I had hope as I went to play my first match.
Trainer select screen 1
I was wondering why my character was called the trainer. I quickly found out that the trainer was just a pretty picture that added modifiers to your real avatar. I have mixed feelings about this. I like my avatar in the game but it also feels lazy of the developer (Haruneko) to not model the beautiful character art. I know it is hard but maybe next time. That said the game itself looks very good for an indie title.
Crisp looking playing area
Gameplay was not as good. I was horrified to learn you do not control the movement of your avatar. I didn’t expect much depth but to not control player movement doesn’t seem fun. You only control your shot direction and timing. The better the timing the harder the shot. One nice thing is you get more time to setup a return shot mot controlling movement. This is good because aiming auto-centers and seems very finicky while I played.
This game does do a lot of things right. It has two unlockable trainers and uses the avatars quite well. Gals also has a trophy system that is small but gives this indie game Live like achievements. The music is catchy and in game sounds are acceptable. Ultimately though this game didn’t satisfy my old school tennis jones. It was very nice looking but ended up being a one button game. I wasn’t looking for Top Spin but I didn’t even get Mario Tennis.