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Fans of Level-5’s Little Battlers eXperience series of action games might remember that back in 2018, the series got a browser game spin-off in collaboration with DMM called Soukou Musume, or Armored Girls. It focused on pretty girls wearing armor based off robots from the main series and was set in a parallel world from the main games. The game only lasted five months, from January 2018 to June 2018, and was then taken offline to undergo a major overhaul to improve it. In a recent interview, the director and producer of Armored Girls talked about why the decision was made and what has changed. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]
Here are the highlights:
- In the first place, the development of Armored Girls was handled by an outsourced developer, but has since been returned to development by DMM Games proper. The game was taken offline in 2018 because players weren’t having a satisfying experience playing it due to problems with missions and more. However, seeing as the game was actually quite popular with fans of the series in Japan, they didn’t want to let the game end there, and decided to revamp the game instead.
- When asking the playerbase on their opinions on the game, 70% of them replied that the battle system wasn’t fun. The art and story were decent, but could be improved. The overwhelming opinion, to put it basically, was that “there weren’t enough LBX elements in the game.” In the end, the game was basically remade from scratch for relaunch this year, though in order to have Armor Girls stand as its own IP, they couldn’t add in too many elements.
- The new Armored Girls is set in a parallel world created after the events of Little Battlers eXperience W, where LBX didn’t return to being just a hobby, and rather became used by the military.
- Meanwhile, the battle system has been remade to be simpler, but with more Little Battlers eXperience elements, such as a stronger focus on customization. Essentially, the battles are on autobattle by default, but winning will require strategic usage of special attacks. The original robots from LBX also make an appearance in-game, now created as full human-size machines that assist the Armored Girls in battle.
- Currently, the game is nearly complete, and the development team is focusing on bug-checking and balancing. The game is set to launch by early Summer 2020 and will release as a PC Browser game (that can also be accessed via smartphones), while the dedicated smartphone app will release later.
Here are two more screenshots below:
Armored Girls will launch for Android devices, Apple iOS devices, and PCs by early Summer 2020 in Japan.
