A first glance at Imps in Tokyo ($1.99) might not really reveal much about what type of game it is. A picturesque style and a dark purple-blue motif are at the forefront of information you can see from screenshots. Developer We are Vigilantes have crafted a game that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Imps in Tokyo is, in broadest strokes, a pattern recognition game. Passing most stages will require flying around, dodging some enemies, killing other enemies and collecting as many magic pellets as possible.
Simply passing a stage will earn you a star, but like many games, achieving greater feats will grant you up to 2 more stars and a higher overall score for the stage. While this is very much an overused scoring system, I don’t really mind it. The gameplay is smooth, the graphic and audio quality is top notch, and the light-dark comedic vibe works for a pretty wide ranging audience. The nature of the game reminds of me of a bullet hell type shooter. Most instances wont have quite as many obstacles to dodge, but you are going to need to navigate very tight space to earn all 3 stars in many stages.
At first the controls felt a little on the sluggish side due to the follow distance your imp will trail your finger at, but the first quick swipe to a side reveals a very satisfyingly responsive control scheme. Outside of the obligatory ‘reverse the controls’ insanely frustrating boss fight, the only negative thing that I can say about it is that your own finger can obfuscate part of the screen from view at very inopportune times. There are also a few stages where you are in first person view, shooting down enemies. Controls for this are just as solid. It may have been a bit risky to change up the control scheme so drastically for those stages, but it turned out to be a nice break from the normal tap and fly gameplay.
When I saw screenshots of the game, I was not sure of what to expect. It looked artsy with story book textures. The music sounds like it escaped a Miyazaki film. What I didn’t expect to find after I started playing was that each pellet you collect pings a note that is part of the chord being played in the music. It’s not a technological feat, but it is such a great little touch that you don’t normally see in a game that isn’t centered around music and rhythm. For a light arcade-y game, the visual and aural experience is almost hypnotizing.
There are 5 imps you can control and you usually get to choose one of two possible imps for each stage. There is the scruffy guy that takes down big enemies in one punch, the magic twin who avoids one hit per stage, the older twin who has a trail that slows enemies and the flatulent one that can set enemies on fire with his farts. The fifth I will let you discover on your own. I enjoy the different imps, but I can’t really say the fact that they exist as separate entities really impacts gameplay much. The different imps serve much more of a story line/unified team feeling than a gameplay feature.
If the game has a fault, it is that there are only 15 levels to play through. Considering the amount of time I have invested, I don’t think that counts as Monument Valley ($3.99) territory, but it’s within throwing distance. It’s hard to say what amount of gameplay $2 is worth. Go to an actual arcade (do they still exist?) and you could spend that amount in under an hour. Regardless of what your personal expectation of the dollar to gameplay ratio is, Vigilantes has plans to add more content for free.
Playing this game is fun, and at times pretty frantic. Based purely on gameplay, it feels solid but not outstanding. What ultimately put me over the top is that through the silly jokes, secret cat level, and relatively stunted life span of current content is that the game is an ensemble accomplishment. I have seen better looking games, and I have heard better sound tracks, and I have played more complex arcade games. But not very many at all that have managed to combine them half as well as Imps in Tokyo.
