Want To Chop Up Robots And Have A Cute Girl Step On You? Play Motorslice

If you didn’t grow up watching anime on your PS3 web browser like me, you may not know the term ‘Tsundere’. And no, I don’t want to think about anyone younger than me having a different life experience. In essence, it basically means a character in anime or manga who alternates between a duo of distinct moods.

One is cold, harsh, and confrontational (tsun) while the other is warm, loving, and affectionate (dere). Such switches can be sudden, but also incredibly adorable if you’re fond of the archetype. My first exposure to the tsundere archetype in a character was Lucky Star’s Kagami Hiiragi, a smart yet prickly high school girl who wasn’t afraid to let her lighter side show, but only her closest friends would ever manage to wear down her defenses.

This brings me to Motorslice, a recently released action platformer starring a heroine called ‘P’ who will blush if you dare to poke her face with the mouse cursor, and turn your game off if you do so more than once.

P is also played by Kira Buckland, who players will recognise as the voice of 2B from Nier: Automata. The tsundere bloodline is alive and well.

As you navigate her through a variety of lo-fi brutalist environments and slice machines into pieces with her trusty chainsaw, the camera won’t hesitate to leer at her behind or spend a ridiculous amount of time putting you in situations filled with fan service. But rather than the more obvious showings of boobs and butts in something like Stellar Blade, what’s on display here feels oddly refined.

It’s as if the weeaboo aficionado behind this knows exactly what they want from this tsundere spectre they’ve created. I can respect that, but I also don’t know how to feel either.

Motorslice Is A Lo-Fi Action Platformer Well Worth Your Time

It feels like developer Regular Studio popped Nier: Automata, Super Meat Boy, and Uncharted into a blender and the end result was Motorslice. An instantly confident and charming game that has you navigating a number of sprawling environments dominated by sandy dunes and busted machinery ready and waiting to come back to life in defiance of your presence.

It also reminds me of early Prince of Persia titles as you learn to run on walls and shimmy on long poles in the first few levels, growing accustomed to mechanics that are bound to get far more punishing as you progress. Platforming and combat eventually combine to establish an incredibly satisfying rhythm where you will jump between obstacles and enemies with grace.

P isn’t tasked with saving the world or anything, but instead has a routine job that takes her deep into a megastructure filled with hostile machines. She treats the situation with such a refreshing level of banality, even if darker aspects of world building are being cemented in the background. You’re not alone either, accompanied by a spherical machine affectionately known as Orbie who follows P around like an embarrassed crush (they’re also the camera).

But Its Anime Stylings Won’t Be For Everyone

I was serious about poking her face earlier, by the way. On the main menu, you can use the mouse to continually prod at P’s face until a blush forms on her cheeks, and she decides to hit the quit button and close your game entirely. It’s a cute touch, and also defines most of what Motorslice wants to do with her character. She is an adorable girl designed to evoke the tsundere archetype to maximum effect, and it works an absolute treat.

You can activate a selfie mode at any time and change her expressions, with P’s dialogue addressing Orbie into an almost sultry tone as you line up the perfect shot. There are rest points located across the game world too, which are designed for Orbie to pick from a few different dialogue options purely to watch how P reacts to your antics. She might scowl, or laugh, or blush, or anything in-between while the camera frames her body in a way that has almost certainly been done to honour its pixelated approach to fan service.

If you move the camera low enough near P’s body, she will step on Orbie like some sort of dommy mommy. This game knows exactly what it’s doing, and I respect that.

The game underneath is great, and I love the unique retro charm it has going on, but it’s also not afraid to infantilise P for the sake of its core tsundere trope, and I’m unsure if deep down I find it unbelievably adorable, weirdly creepy, or somewhere in-between. The thing that cemented it as uncomfortable for me was the strangely gory ways in which P is killed whenever she hits the ground. You’d think the screen would fade to black, but instead we are treated to P’s body being reduced to a bloody pulp as her limbs go flying all over.

Maybe the vibes will feel more earned and consistent as I play, but right now it strikes this unusual middle ground between adorable and acidic that is begging for more consistency. But if you’re looking for a retro-inspired action platformer that’s just a little bit on the pervy side, Motorslice is on Game Pass and a damn good time. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.