I have a soft spot for independent fangames, not necessarily indie games as majority of those are the just variation of life simulators, roguelites and metroidvania style games.
Fan games are sweet, honest fun that’ll last a handful of minutes, typically made by just one individual and more often than not they don’t even want money, rather they just want to provide simplehearted fun to the masses.
And one fangame in particular has caught my attention, KANNAGI USAGI is a Japanese developed swordplay action fighter available as a free download on the Steam store.
Developed by Tonoji, the game is incorrectly listed as being adults only (R-18), which is more than likely a precursor given how the game itself features a cutesy rabbit girl.
Given the demonization of femininity in modern video games, it’s only a matter of time before attractive women in games will be artificially gatekept behind adult only listings, Steam have attempted to force certain “ecchi” games on its storefront to be listed as “adults only” despite not having any explicit sexual content within them so perhaps something akin to that is going on here.
As for the game itself, like most other single developer fangames it’s short, earnest and simplistic. KANNAGI USAGI is a boss battle-centric, stage-clear action game which is heavily inspired by SEKIRO in terms of its movement, combat and entire gameplay premise, unlike SEKIRO all characters within KANNAGI USAGI are all beautiful “anime” girls.
With a total of 8 stages, once you have a proper understanding of each bosses attack patterns the game shouldn’t last you longer than fifteen minutes or so.
It’s cute harmless fun, which is the main draw and appeal to these single developer fangames for me, they’re a long lost relic of the past where game designers actually made games they were actually passionate about rather than pure laziness and corporate greed which is so common nowadays.
KANNAGI USAGI isn’t an actual game, it should never be judged as if it were a proper indie title because it’s a far cry from that. The game is short, cheap and simple amusement to burn through half an hour of your life.
Not another garbage rehash filled to the brim with microtransactions or just so happens to be another 2D roguelike. Again I must reiterate that the game is completely free to download on Steam, though obviously you’re going to have to enable adult oriented content on your account to actually view the store listing page.
