Today DMM Games hosted a livestream to provide an extensive look at the upcoming free-to-play game Muv-Luv Girls Garden.
During the livstream, Muv-Luv series chief producer Kazutoshi “Tororo” Matsumura and writer Hayato Tashiro explained that this is basically a Muv-Luv fantasy, designed to be enjoyed even by players who don’t know the original series.
We also get the debut of an anime trailer, which you can enjoy below. Incidentally, it provides the first look at the familiar mecha from the Muv-Luv series (with a bit of a twist), which appears in Girls Garden as well.
It also reveals the theme song “Fukutsu no Fanfare” (Unyielding Fanfare), performed by Mitsuki Nakae.
We already learned about the story with the previous reveal, but today we get to hear more, including the setting, a school called “Zaltoum Academy.”
It’s actually more than a school. It’s an educational center that nurtures all kinds of talents, including sports and art on top of academic subjects. It’s independently governed and has its own residential, commercial, and even industrial areas.
Students with high “Maze Aptitude” are recruited into the Pilot Department and are trained to become Maze Guard pilots.
The Maze is a mysterious underground labyrinth located under Zaltoum and its full extension is still a mystery. Yet, it’s also the source of a valuable natural resource named Tatsumiya Mineral.
To explore the Maze, special mecha named “Maze Guards” have been developed, equipped with high mobility thrusters and weapons capable of facing threats within the labyrinth.
Speaking of threats, the Maze is inhabited by many species of highly territorial and extremely mysterious creatures defined “Maze Shifters.”
The game is an idle RPG, so the focus is more on the storytelling than on the challenge of the gameplay. Battles are conducted automatically. A lot of resources have been dedicated to writing the story, and there are multiple routes depending on player choice.
Important choices that will make you change route will be clearly marked, while you can just pick whatever you like if there’s no warning.
Dialogue and narration happen visual novel-style, which isn’t that surprising considering Muv-Luv Girls Garden’s pedigree. Much like many similar games, the player takes on the role of a commander who has lost his memory, tasked with assembling a team of students to explore the Maze.
Funnily, the commander instinctively calls the Maze Guards “Senjutsuki” which is the Japanese name of the TSF mecha from the classic Muv-Luv series. So there’s likely a hint about his identity.
When it’s time to enter the Maze you pick a team of 6 characters, 3 in the frontline and 3 as rearguard. Different characters have different affinities for the front or the rear.
After each battle you can pick “relics” to improve your combat effectiveness and then pick a next stage, which can be another battle or a rest stage. This is basically a rogue-lite element, challenging the player to go as deep as they can.
You can also increase your intimacy level with the characters, which is done by giving them gifts. This unlocks dates and special episodes.
You can find all the gameplay that was showcased below. Incidentally, a release date was not yet shared, but development is 90% complete.,
For the moment, the game is entirely in Japanese and it’ll be playable on PC (via dedicated client or browser) and Android. There is no information about any English localization. Muv-Luv mobile games have, unfortunately, never been released in the west.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Muv-Luv franchise, it was created by âge and it’s mostly focused on sci-fi visual novels that debuted in Japan in 2003.
The original game for PC (which actually includes two visual novels, Muv-Luv Extra and Unlimited) was followed by Muv-Luv Alternative, completing the original trilogy in 2006. It’s considered by many to be one of the best visual novels ever written.
The trilogy was ported to several platforms, including PS3, Xbox 360, PS Vita, Steam, and recently Nintendo Switch, and it was finally localized in English in 2016 following a very successful Kickstarter campaign.
Several additional visual novels have since expanded the franchise’s universe, and we also have games featuring different genres like the action RPG Project MIKHAIL: A Muv-Luv War Story and the upcoming simulation RPG Muv-Luv Tactics.
Incidentally, the enhanced edition of another of âge’s most popular visual novels, Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien, which is widely considered Muv-Luv’s prequel, has recently been released on Steam with an English localization for the first time.
Recently, the creators of the series revealed a fairly extensive roadmap of games aiming to revitalize the series.
