By unfortunate accident, I missed this title when I did Japandemonium earlier this month. Arc System Works was kind enough to have a demo available for Seisou no Amazones (Starfrost Amazons, or maybe Time Amazons, depending on how poetically you read the kanji), so I gave it a shot. First, let's have some exposition.

Somewhere out in the far realms of space, there's a lovely world with an ugly purpose. It is a prison colony, and from its gravity well there is no escape. For some ineffable reason — i.e. Japanese developers can be pervs — it is an all-female prison. (Actually, according to the official story, males went extinct a long time ago, but I like my explanation better.) One particular inmate has some inside information, though. Hidden somewhere on that planet is a mothballed spaceship. It's old, but it's also the only ticket off this rock. Pulling together a cohort of oddball ladies, she's off to find her freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, Starfrost Amazons falls squarely within the dungeon-crawl sub-genre, though the map functions are less in-depth than in the Etrian games. In combat, the party gets a number of battle points per turn to be used for attacks. I could either have a string of weaker 1BP attacks or go for one or two bigger attacks. The BP must increase over time, because in the demo I couldn't even have all my inmates attack in one round.

The visual style is exactly what one would expect, and my party of five inmates covered the entire range from "washboard" to "udders." Cheesecake factor aside, the game handled well until the end of the demo. Upon defeating the boss, the main character decided to teach her the error of her ways via a punishment game that amounted to me poking random spots of nubile flesh for half a minute. Are we sure we're not playing Criminal Girls here? Oh well, there's always a market for this sort of thing in Japan. The final bit of the demo just left me feeling dirty, though.