Grief Syndrome

Overview

Grief Syndrome is a doujin ("fan") game of the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica developed by Twilight Frontier (or Tasogare Frontier, often shortened to "Tasofro") and published on their website as a freeware game.

Up to three players, after selecting their character from a pool of six, take on many opponents and hazards across a handful of 2D stages, each of which concludes with a boss. Each of the six characters have different strengths and weaknesses. Each character has a health bar and a soul bar; the soul bar can be drawn from if the health bar is emptied or the player falls into a pit. Only when the soul bar is empty does the character become permanently dead. If a character perishes, they remain dead for the rest of the playthrough and this affects the ending the player receives. If there are fewer alive characters than players, they take over a small creature called "Kyubey" that can't be killed but can't affect the world either, though can be used as a distraction.