Short Peace is a five-part anime/video game collaboration. The first four parts are all anime shorts: Possessions, Combustible, Gambo, and A Farewell to Weapons. The fifth and final piece is game created by Crispy’s Inc and Grasshopper Manufacture – Ranko’s Tsukigime’s Longest Day.
The game is a revenge story with the title character obsessed with getting revenge on the murderer of her mother: her father. Ranko looks like a normal high school student, but really she is a violin-sniper rifle-wielding assassin. Considering the game’s roots being in the world of manga and anime, the story makes perfect sense.
For most of the game, the game play is that of an infinite runner. You are moving from left to right being constantly chased by an all-powerful force. Sometimes that force is masked men called The Veiled, and sometimes that force is a giant Pomeranian. Nope, you read that correctly, watch the video of me playing that scene. When you aren’t running, you’re in specialized boss fights that mimic other popular game styles like an original Mario Bros. duel and a shmup-style battle (shoot’em up) against a giant dragon.
The game has great control and the controller latency is low. This is extremely important in a game like this. There is some re-playability here, especially if you’re the type of person who is obsessed with collections and trophies. Built in the Unity engine, the graphics and art style look great and it plays smoothly.
Overall, Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day is both weird and wonderful. The game itself is a lot of fun, but it obvious that this game is influenced by Suda 51 in some of the aspects as far as the weirdness factors to the gameplay, visuals and story. Don’t let this dissuade you, though, there is plenty of fun to had, especially if you are into anime, manga or Suda games.