Noitu Love

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Noitu Love is a indie game series consisting of two side-scrollers developed by Konjak.

The first game is a mix of an Action Game and a Platform Game. The second one eschews the platform element to make a significantly faster paced Action Game.

The plot from the games is relatively simple. The first game set in The Future pits the protagonist Noitu Love against Mad Scientist Darnacus Damnation and his army of Mecha-Mooks, the Grinning Darns. The second game takes place in The Future of The Future and pits Noitu Love's Distaff Counterpart and Action Girl Xoda Rap against the Grinning Darns who've mysteriously risen again.

The first episode can be freely downloaded here while the second episode is available for purchase on Steam.

Tropes used in Noitu Love include:
  • Action Girl: Xoda Rap (and how!).
  • After the End: The sequel.
  • Animesque: The games' art-style features some influences from Japanese video games and anime.
  • Animorphism: Used in the first game to help Noitu Love get places and defeat bosses.
  • Artifact Title: Evolution is very meaningful in the first game, but absolutely not in the second.
  • Auto-Scrolling Level: Two segments of Devolution are like this, both involving a continuous stream of Darns walking in on a balcony and attacking from above, while ground obstacles (Darns Scraps in Level 2 and swinging axes in Level 3) are also present.
  • Background Boss: Omega Darn in both games.
  • Bird Run: Xoda Rap.
  • Bishonen Line: The final boss of Noitu Love 2 crosses it between forms two and three.
  • Breather Level: In the first game, Level 4 is noticeably easier than either 3 or 5.
  • Camp Gay: Darn Fab. Less so in the second game.
  • Charged Attack: Xoda Rap has two Hold Type attacks.
  • Dark Action Girl: Rilo Doppelori and Tango.
  • Distaff Legacy Character: Xoda to Noitu.
  • Easy Mode Mockery: The first game ends prematurely on the easiest difficulty level.
  • Excuse Plot: both games boil down to "there are bad guys, go kill them." At the end of the second game, Almond points out several remaining questions, then dismisses them with "ah, never mind. Well done, Xoda."
  • Heroic Mime: Noitu Love and Xoda Rap.
  • Humongous Mecha: Omega Darn in the first game (he gets scaled down quite a bit in the second game).
  • Lampshade Hanging: Sergeant Killburne's Weak Spot is a banner that says "weak point".
  • Mecha-Mooks: The Grinning Darns are Darnacus' robot army, with many different types within.
  • Metaphorgotten: At the end of Xoda's Story Mode, the final Boss and our heroes talk about the villain's evil plan, where Almond says it is Playing God, but the villain retorts that they will Become God, and then goes back to the Heroes' statement, pronouncing, proudly, something along the lines of "It will be Just like playing with myself." I don't think they thought that through... Although given some of the humor present in the games, it could be intentional on the part of the designer.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Almond inadvertently gives away the locations of the Darn bases, which the heroes couldn't find and would eventually destroy all human resistance.
  • Non-Action Guy: Almond, to the point where (when you play as him) he does nothing except dodge. The mouse cursor can shoot enemies and cause Almond to fly, but neither action appears to be performed by him on-screen.
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Doppelori states that only Darnacus and his true servants (meaning herself) are allowed to take over the world: this is her reason for stopping Tango from doing that.
  • Puzzle Boss: O2-Joy (in both games), and Father Boogie (in the first).
  • Rank Inflation: The sequel gives letter grades based on your performance (time spent, damage taken, highest combo gotten) at the end of each stage.
  • Rashomon Style: If you play as Xoda, then in the Japanese level, you're ambushed by Doppelori, then when the dragon strikes, she helps you, but quickly falls off. If you play as Doppelori, the roles are reversed. On the other hand, in Darnacus's fortress, the ending cutscene for Xoda and Doppelori mesh perfectly (Xoda goes off with Almond, whereas Doppelori goes in the other direction to set the self destruct).
  • Robot Girl: Rilo Doppelori. Also, any female-looking Darn.
  • Rule of Cool: Flying skateboards, dash kicks starting from mid air, spinning somersault kicks, wall jumps, etc.
  • Rule of Funny: Almost all of the bosses.
  • Sdrawkcab Name: Noitu Love and Xoda Rap.
  • Squick: In-universe, one of Darnacus's lines after Noitu Love defeats Rilo has this effect on the others.
  • Super-Deformed: The series is presented in this style.
  • Theme Naming: Tango and Waltz. Pretty much every other enemy is some variation of "Darn Enemy".
  • Unusual User Interface: Okay, so you fire the plane's missiles by evolving into a psychic, pushing two buttons, evolving back into normal, shoot a wind-up gear about a dozen times to make a teddy bear come down, devolving into a monkey and jumping on the button on top of the teddy bear. How realistic!