I thought I had seen everything an old-school retro-styled shooter had to offer. I thought that tying its gameplay to heavy metal rhythms was the pinnacle of the subgenre’s creativity, but I guess I was wrong. Here we have a shooter featuring an ultra-maximalist, Y2K-era “girlypop” art style, hyperpop music, and an emphasis on never stopping to move, as the more you move or jump, the faster you can breeze through a level. This is Don’t Stop Girlypop, and I don’t think there’s anything else like it out there in the market.

Don’t Stop Girlypop features its own Gravity Gun-esque… uh, gun.

Don’t Stop Girlypop‘s entire premise is centered around the following phrase: “fhe faster you go, the more damage you deal and the more you heal”. And it couldn’t have been more self-explanatory. You control a faceless (albeit phabulous fashion-wise) “creature” wielding a handful of different guns, fighting against an oppressive mining company hellbent on draining the world of the most valuable resource of them all, Love. You do that by clearing wave after wave after wave of enemies with your weapons and your powers. The more you move around, the more you jump, the more you bunny-hop like a lunatic, the faster and more powerful you become. It’s a momentum-based gameplay loop taken to the extreme.

I can’t say I bothered too much about the plot, nor did I like any section in which all of my movement was halted by a flip-phone from yesteryear taking up half of the screen’s real estate to just spit out truly uninteresting exposition. What made Don’t Stop Girlypop stand out was its frantic gameplay coupled with an art style that, sure, is ultra-saturated, full of strobing lights (people who may suffer from seizures, be advised), and maximalist to the extreme, but once again, is unlike anything else in the market. It might not be to everyone’s taste (at times, it wasn’t even for me), but I have to respect the vision and the creativity.

And to think there will be people reading this article, looking at this picture, who have never seen or touched a flip phone before.

I do appreciate the fact that levels are short, and that the gameplay loop is very arcadey, because there is one slight issue with it: the game gets stale after a while. Hopping around, killing foes with style to the sound of dance-pop, and racking up as many bonus points as possible is fun, without a doubt, but it’s also quite one-note. Once you’ve experienced Don’t Stop Girlypop for, say, half an hour, you basically know what to expect from it until the very end of its duration. Playing it for long sessions will bore you, without a doubt. Considering it’s currently a PC exclusive, this game works best in a portable gaming rig such as Steam Deck or the ROG Ally.

Most weapons have (super useful) secondary functions that work under a cooldown meter.

It’s slick, it’s stylish, and its gameplay loop is fun and centered around short levels. There’s a lot to like in Don’t Stop Girlypop, especially when it comes to how unique it looks and feels next to pretty much any other first-person shooter out there. You will need a minute to get used to its “the more you move, the faster you move” gameplay premise, and it’s best enjoyed in smaller sessions (it does get repetitive after a while), but I nothing but the utmost respect for the sheer amount of creativity put into it. Even if its ultra-saturated art style and ambience aren’t your thing, there’s still quite some fun to be had with its gameplay alone. At the end of the day, that’s what matters the most.

Don’t Stop Girlypop is available now on PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Don’t Stop Girlypop was provided by the publisher.