You might recognize Strikey Sisters from a UPF segment a few months back. It was one of Jason's choices, which meant he was left to play it on his own while everyone else discussed sodas or wrestling or whatever. It was evident enough from the footage that it was another "one of those" like Wizorb; an old-school "bat-and-ball" Breakout/Arkanoid type of game with a cute pixel art aesthetic and common genre accoutrements like wandering enemies and power-ups which changed the properties of either the ball or the bat. However, I'd argue that Strikey Sisters, though fairly repetitive, is perhaps the best game of its genus both past and present. And that's not something you could've easily picked up from poor Jason's attempts to sell it to a distracted GBW crew.

The humble bat-and-ball genre, which our wiki also calls "Block-Breaking", doesn't get a whole lot of love even from the Indie circuit. The only two notable Indie examples that come to mind are Wizorb and Shatter, and maybe Peggle if you really want to stretch the definition. That absence of competition allows Strikey Sisters to devise their own distinct spin for the genre, perfecting the ever-present risk vs. reward aspect inherent to its games that sees you paralyzed, "Buridan's ass" style, between dashing for the precariously distant ball or a power-up/collectible dropping in the opposite direction. The goal of each stage is to first clear all the blocks and then defeat the remaining enemies - enemies continue to respawn while there is still a single block remaining. Destroying a block always drops a coin - you can grab it or you can not, it's not essential to completing the stage - and defeating an enemy, which usually takes three hits, drops a power-up. Power-ups come in three stripes: player boons, which include a faster horizontal speed or a one-hit shield; ball boons, which include a fireball that drops enemy-damaging flames wherever it goes or a multiball that splits the ball into two; and destructive "spells", of which only one can be held at a time until the player activates it with a separate button, like the power-ups in the Mario Kart series.

Right from the start, the player is given the option of slowly but surely destroying blocks with careful ball control and collecting the gains, or gunning directly for nearby enemies for a chance at some screen-damaging spell that will destroy multiple blocks quickly. Each enemy in the game - and there's over sixty unique breeds - has their own behavior and resistances, from batting away frontal attacks to regularly sending projectiles your way, but eliminating them is often the fastest course to completing stages. The eponymous sisters can swing at the ball to reflect it, but their swing can also destroy incoming projectiles and any enemies that wander too close to the bottom of the screen: players regularly have to keep an eye on their surroundings and their vulnerable avatar, as well as where the ball is and whatever blocks still remain to be destroyed. This is doubly true for the game's many boss fights, which has you take down a powerful foe tossing all sorts of bullet patterns and other hazards your way.

However, destroying too many blocks means potentially missing all the coins they drop. There's no big reward from grabbing every coin on the level, besides an achievement for doing it at least once, but acquiring enough of them causes the actually valuable collectibles to appear in color-coded chests: red chests drop a gemstone collectible, blue chests drop keys which open up secret levels, and green ones drop "capture cards" that can be thrown at enemies to add them to the bestiary. If you're looking for 100% completion the game won't force you to find every coin, but it does require finding enough (usually around half) to make these chests appear.

With this, the game has enough hooks to keep you on the line for each of its sixty-plus stages. The genre-wide combination of carefully aiming the ball where it can be trapped by a layer of blocks as you deter nearby enemies and use their power-ups for the greater good is still present, but now must also share situational awareness real estate in your head alongside running around for falling coins and power-ups, dodging and bashing incoming enemy projectiles, eliminating enemies that wander too close to you because it's a way easier kill than trying to bounce the ball off them three times, and remembering to liberally use any spell you have before a new one comes along to replace it, all without ever letting that ball disappear off the bottom of the screen. Juggling all those elements is exhilarating throughout the story mode's moderate run-time, helped in no small part by some excellent arcade-like sound design like the satisfying whack noises from the ball or the dramatic power-up announcements from the narrator, and there's plenty of post-game levels to try out too. Add to this a very cute presentation where every cutscene has chibi-fied versions of bosses come face-to-face with the sibling heroes - the brash and crude Marie and the polite and demure Elene, the latter of whom always ends up causing fights to happen due to misunderstandings - and some charming voiceover acting which doesn't always nail the intonation they're looking for but nonetheless adds to the game's homespun appeal. That's nothing to speak of the game's very accessible and gentle difficulty curve (on normal, at least) where losing your three lives only resets the level you're on, and there's ample opportunity to recover those lives with chicken power-ups that are more likelier to appear the more dire straits you're in. In spite of all this magnanimity, I still spent close to half an hour on the final boss alone, so it's not like the game is pulling its punches either.

I walked away very impressed with Strikey Sisters, despite expecting another Wizorb which I ditched after losing a half-hour of progress for the fourth or fifth time. Though I have a few issues with the game - there's nothing to spend all those coins on and it would've been nice to have a shop selling a few passive boosts or even one-time power-ups for tougher stages, or even just a frivolity like buying furniture for the sisters' home; there's a pointless charge-up attack that that appears to do nothing except speed up the ball, which is the last thing you'd want; and there's no real getting past just how repetitive the game can be in longer sessions - I found I liked it more than any other game of its genre. The music is both pleasant and catchy at times - it reminded me of '80s/'90s shoujo anime, which is fitting for the sisterly theme - and the pixel art looks great once you go into the game's menu to turn off the inexplicably-on-as-default smoothing. Just adorable and wonderful from start to finish; from an archaic genre I thought had nothing left to offer me, no less.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

(Purchasing note: The game is presently available on Steam, but will also be out on Switch on Valentine's Day 2019. Seems well suited for that platform, especially with its simple controls and two-player mode.)