Girls' Frontline

Overview

Girls Frontline is a free-to-play tactical RPG independently developed by the studio Mica Team, software house affiliate to the group Digital Sky, exclusively developed for mobile platforms. Players collect and manage multiple squads of anthropomorphic guns, known as "T-Dolls," as they attempt to rescue a group of M4s trapped behind enemy lines and defeat the evil faction of Sangvis Ferri.

The game is considered a prequel to another game called Codename: Bakery Girl (released in 2013, with an international release scheduled for 2022 under the name Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery), which itself is loosely based on the Chinese visual novel Girl of the Bakehouse.

Story

Set during the 2050s after the events of World War 3: one of the major producers of T-Dolls and military hardware, Sangvis Ferri, was embroiled in an incident where a rogue AI program took control of the entire company and directed its T-Dolls to slaughter all the human workers at the company. In response, the PMC of Griffin & Kryuger was contracted to contain Sangvis Ferri before the AI expanded its operations any further. With a lack of manpower to handle the large-scale response, G&K recruited a new human commander to deal with the AI uprising.

Gameplay

As the commander, the player must collect T-Dolls of various types and organize them into Echelons to fight the enemy forces of Sangvis Ferri. In combat missions, commanders direct their Echelons in turns across a map and must capture the enemy base, while avoiding the capture of their own base or the forced withdrawal of all player units.

When in combat, each T-Doll within the Echelon can be separately moved to another square within the grid to shield them from enemy fire or place them better in real-time. Each T-Doll can also launch a special move that can buff themselves or their Echelon, or debuff enemies. The skills can also be set to auto-activate once their cooldown period has ended. T-Dolls will automatically withdraw from battle the first time their health reaches a critical threshold, and will be out of commission completely if they are not withdrawn before expiring. The Echelon can be forcibly retreated from the field if all its members are dead or withdrawn, or if an enemy unit reaches the player's end of the field.

The player can conquer the level if they capture the Command Post, and lose if their own Command Post is captured, regardless of the number of units still on the field. If the player's Echelons are all destroyed or withdrawn from the map by their next turn, the player loses, even if they have Echelons left to deploy.

T-Dolls

Tactical Dolls, or T-Dolls, are all droids with feminine appearances who are named after guns that exist in real life, and carry the weapons that they are named after. The weapons fall into these categories:

Handguns (HG)

Usually have the lowest attack power, but make up for it with low deployment cost and the ability to buff any other T-Doll in their Echelon regardless of type. Also the only unit that provides extended sight on Night maps.

Submachine Guns (SMG)

Relatively weak and low accuracy, but very agile and hard to hit compared to other T-Dolls, combined with a high firing rate. Can buffs AR in their Echelon.

Assault Rifles (AR)

The all-rounded type that can complement most Echelons, with modest health, damage, accuracy and firing rate. Can buff SMG (and some can buff other AR) in their Echelon.

Rifles (RF)

Snipers and single-shot rifles with high damage and accuracy to make up for their low firing rate and evasion. Can buff HG in their Echelon.

Machine Guns (MG)

High damage output and a high firing rate that can shred enemies in seconds. However, the MG has a long reloading animation and very low speed, on top of consuming more ammo than any other unit every time it resupplies. Can buff SG in their Echelon.

Shotguns (SG)

Rare T-Dolls that can only be obtained through Heavy Production in the Factory. High damage up close and high health supplemented by heavy armor, balanced out by slow reloading time and lower accuracy at long range.