AHEGAL (PC)

AHEGAL hearkens back to some of the oldest adult video games with its format. In what might be called “reveal games”, early erotic titles did not always tie their action to lurid activities directly. Instead, they would often copy a successful game’s design like the territory capturing action of Qix but reward the player for doing well by revealing more of a saucy picture of a woman or having a lady gradually undress. AHEGAL is a reveal game, but instead of choosing a simple and familiar gameplay format, AHEGAL decided you’ll need to survive a bullet hell to earn you chance to see some nudity.

 

AHEGAL’s Steam page speaks of a narrative where you’re the last man on Earth and you need to sensually undress women as part of your efforts to repopulate the human race, but not even a shred of this appears in the game itself. The player is not represented by a character in any way, there is no story-telling at all, and you just select the level you want to play from a fairly basic menu. There are seven buxom women for you to undress in AHEGAL, Harumi, Momoko, Hina, Naomi, Akane, Emi, and Sakura all posed differently in their singular bit of art. Sakura seems a bit more playful in her sitting position and maid outfit while Emi’s view from behind offers a more unique perspective compared to most girls who are standing straight up, and you can at least get a little bit of personality from expressions like the fox girl Akane seeming more composed and seductive than a girl like Naomi who seems a bit more innocent. Unfortunately, there isn’t too much to these girls beyond a single appealing image in the game’s anime style. A little bit of context, even just a paragraph, would help to add some fun personality to these ladies you’re undressing, because as it stands, it can be hard to interpret if Sakura is actually a cat girl or just dressed as one while a girl like Harumi feels nondescript.

That single piece of art of a girl will be the background as you play, the image actually made fairly large to the point your screen might be completely filled by their chest as it scrolls around the body over the course of your bullet hell battle. This might make you think the titillation of a bare naked woman could be distracting as you try to dodge incoming fire to survive, but it’s more amusing than anything that your screen is filled by one massive exposed breast as you’re trying to focus more on the bullets that could end your life. Every image can be viewed after you’ve completed a level in the gallery anyway where you can more simply remove clothing or change the lady’s expression if you do want to view it free of gameplay concerns, but you will need to clear a stage first either on easy or hard.

 

The gameplay of AHEGAL is a bullet hell where your mouse cursor will guide a small blue dot around the screen trying to avoid fire from an array of food-based enemies. Also playable with a controller if you so wish, AHEGAL isn’t a particularly difficult bullet hell even in the harder variant for each level, but it’s still one that demands close attention and some solid reaction times. It’s entirely unclear why the enemies that appear are food, and in fact, they are even adorable food items with faces on them, but that does aid you in one way. For the most part, a food item will attack in the same way whenever you see it, the player able to anticipate the bullet patterns of a burger or watermelon slice and be prepared to dodge appropriately. While the choice of enemy appearance is odd, AHEGAL is actually fairly creative when it comes to the types of attacks the food foes dish out. There are times where it’s only about filling the screen with plenty of energy bullets, the player needing to find the small gaps to slip through to survive, AHEGAL even electing to have the game be a pure survival challenge where you never fire back at your foes. Some foods though will use unique attack types, often mixing with regular bullet fire from simpler foes to make for interesting encounters. One miniboss for example makes an energy maze you’ll need to navigate as some sushi lays covering fire, some attacks will be based on your current position so you’ll need to bait the attacks properly to have room to dodge the incoming lasers, and exploding sandwiches make parts of the screen off-limits which means you can’t use the common bullet hell trick of micro-dodging to just barely slip past bullets in a comfortable spot.

Neither difficulty for a level is particularly tough but still manages to engage because of the frequently shifting attack types you’ll need to weave your way around. However, during a stage you’ll also need to undress the lady in the background, the player occasionally needing to sit in a set area for long enough to make a piece of clothing disappear. AHEGAL isn’t quite as mean as they could have been with this mechanic, often given you a fair bit of breathing room to do the undressing, and when a piece of clothing does come off, nearby enemies and attacks disappear so you can even have that bail you out if things were about to get testy. One thing that does potentially lessen the difficulty a bit much though is the upgrade system. Each time you beat a level, either on its simpler or more challenging mode, you’ll get a small reward that carries into other levels. Beyond enemy bullet patterns and abundance, the main differentiation between the two difficulties is the amount of health you have at the start of a level, 5 hits for easy and 3 for hard. However, one common upgrade is earning an extra heart for removing a clothing piece while the other is the less impactful size increase to the region you need to sit in to undress a woman. The mid-level healing can make success fairly easy to achieve, the player still needing to be an active dodger but not necessarily consistent. The leniency can certainly help people less familiar with bullet hells stay in the action, and while it never means you can just sit back and tough your way through a level, you can just eat hits if you think it’s easier than dodging since there’s no motivation to play perfectly and the only danger is needing to restart your current stage should you lose all your life.

 

One thing that should be mentioned about AHEGAL though is its odd emphasis on the ahegao in its name. Ahegao is an expression often meant to express an overwhelming degree of erotic ecstasy, to the point someone’s eyes roll back and usually their tongue hangs out as if panting. They may drool or clench their teeth in other expressions of the extreme sensory stimulation they’re experiencing, AHEGAL even having two girls elect to do this for their ahegao, and those ones are actually the best of the bunch since it feels like it’s conveying the proper emotion. The woman who do stick out their tongue in AHEGAL are doing it more like they’re doing it to to tease someone rather than having the more flat and wide tongue shape typically associated with the expression. The ahegao is already mostly an expression tied more to lurid fantasies than reality so using a humbler and closer to life look for sticking out the tongue feels odd, but it’s not the only expression each girl has. While the screen will scroll over the large image of the lady as you play, when you are near the face, you can see her reacting somewhat to your play. If your cursor isn’t on her body she’ll have a more neutral expression, and if you start removing a piece of clothing the women do react differently. One might show a bit of tearful embarrassment while another can be a little excited, this again an area that hints at some personality but doesn’t quite fully get there.

THE VERDICT: AHEGAL is fairly shallow at parts, not giving its seven ladies much personality to make the undressing more fun and only having the one pose for each despite the range in expressions. However, rooting it all in a survival focused bullet hell style actually does work fairly well for the experience. The food enemies have some creative attack patterns and are mixed up effectively enough to keep the action interesting even if the cursor focused movement and upgrades can make it easy enough to survive. At the same time, that means you’ll get your saucy rewards without it being aggravating, the action appealing enough that it doesn’t just feel like a barrier to seeing bare naked ladies.

 

And so, I give AHEGAL for PC…

An OKAY rating. Were it not for its emphasis on sexual content, AHEGAL could almost work as a nice introduction to the bullet hell genre for people nervous about the perceived difficulty of the format. One barrier to players trying bullet hells is the concern that a screen full of attacks is incredibly difficult to dodge around in when more often it’s just about managing your movement in a limited part of the screen, something that’s easy to pick up on AHEGAL. Your mouse cursor is not only easy to move anywhere you want it but easily able to do micro-dodging, and the emphasis on survival with no need to strike back means you only have to worry about dodging the bullets coming your way. While the degree of challenge won’t be there for people who are very familiar with the genre, it’s not a picnic either thanks to the range of bullet types. You’re not just finding the small gaps between fountains of energy bullets, you’re weaving around barriers, timing your movement to trick attackers, and the health upgrades that do lower the difficulty level do at least give you wiggle room if you’re only just becoming accustomed to the demands of a dodge heavy game. The range of attacks keep the survival challenge interesting to the point it didn’t need an erotic element to be interesting, but the ladies of AHEGAL are all fairly cute or attractive even if some of their ahegao faces feel a bit off. A sequel called AHEGAL SEASONS exists that may just be an overall improvement to the formula featured here, but the thought put into the action side of what could have been a cheap bit of adult entertainment actually has me curious to check out the sequel.

 

With far too many erotic games that are glorified jigsaw or slide puzzles, it’s nice to see an adult game try to have some decent gameplay even if it is disconnected from the real draw of the experience. AHEGAL might not do the best with the particular interest its title invokes, the ahegao faces not looking the greatest at times, but having a cute and fairly breezy bullet hell element makes it easier to appreciate your time playing AHEGAL over taking the path of least resistance and just looking up lewd anime images on the internet.