Don’t Stop, Girlypop! Channels Old School Shooter Fun Alongside Y2K ‘Tude

By Elijah Gonzalez | October 8, 2025 | 9:14am

Video Games Features don't stop, girly pop!

Don’t Stop, Girlypop! Channels Old School Shooter Fun Alongside Y2K ‘Tude

In a post-E3 world, where game announcements are (for better and worse) far less centralized, dedicated gaming fans are bombarded with countless reveals across too many events and livestreams to keep track of. However, despite this endless flood of information, Don’t Stop, Girlypop (originally called Incolatus) is one of those few titles that managed to cut through the noise when it was announced a little over a year ago. The main reason probably goes without saying: this game delivers its late ‘90s, early 2000s vibe with confidence.

This movement-based shooter is a non-stop assault of sparkling shotgun blasts, exploding pinks, and translucent flip phones, its aggressive look delivered at approximately a million miles per second. And having played the Steam demo that dropped this Monday, the game isn’t just an emulation of a bygone era’s aesthetics, but also cleverly engages with the core of what made that period’s fast-paced FPSs tick.

As for the setup, you play as Imber, a revolutionary defending their candy colored planet and its fairy denizens from the advances of a colonizing mining corporation, Tigris Nix. To do that, you’ve got to blast a whole bunch of guys in arena shooter-style battles where you wipe out enemy forces to reach the next room.

Because, on top of channeling the fluorescent colors and visual stylings of the Y2K era, the game heavily borrows from a specific breed of shooter that was popular during that time period (even if they looked completely different). Basically, it moves at a Quake-esque breakneck pace while incorporating a central movement mechanic inspired by Counter Strike’s bunny hopping.

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Here, the flow of battle is based around wave hopping, which lets you move at an impressive clip when used properly. There are three parts: hit Ctrl to boost straight downwards, do a jump after you’ve bounced off the ground, and then, as you rebound, perform a dash to maintain this momentum. While in many older titles, bunny hopping and other means of tricking a game’s physics were largely happy accidents, Girly Pop very intentionally incorporates this style of emergent gameplay into its core design, resulting in a gratifying experience that rewards swiftness.

Case in point, the tutorial goes out of its way to explain wave hopping to you several times, and shortly after, you’re expected to pull it off several times to get through the brief stints of platforming in between combat. There’s also a persistent on-screen UI element to make it easier to time these button presses, as well as sparkling decals that appear in the corners of your vision if you nail one, providing plenty of visual indicators to make things easier. Wave jumping is definitely a skill you’ll want to master because maximizing your speed with this technique not only makes it harder for enemies to hit you, but it also increases a multiplier that impacts how much damage your shots do and how quickly you heal.

It’s the central element of the experience, and for good reason: if you’re doing hopping just right, you’ll fly across the screen in a haze of gunfire and accumulated points, giving the experience a hypnotic tempo that makes it come across like a rhythm game (because it sort of is one). There is also a great sense of momentum here that mimics the feel of bamboozling a game’s physics engines to go past limitations, and it’s impressive that the game both provides ample tools to pull this off while still maintaining the sense you’re doing something tricky and freeform that offers room for player expression. Meanwhile, a very 2000s pop song plays in the background of each battle, this main theme’s sugary lyrics acting as a perfect accompaniment to all the corpo blasting good times.

Adding to the fun are the weapons, a punchy shotgun and a projectile-spewing SMG that both come with worthwhile secondary fire modes as well—the shotgun fires an orb that can be targeted to unleash a blast of bullets, while the SMG sends out bubbles that stick to foes and explode on impact. Add in a melee finisher and a grappling hook, and you have all the means to cut through combat arenas with impressive efficiency, resulting in high-octane levels built around a scoring system that rewards speed.

It’s honestly quite impressive that despite the alarming number of elements on screen—numerous enemies highlighted with floating heart outlines, as well as UI elements that track your current multiplier, health, and damage—the game remains coherent, with just enough means to track the bedlam to make this busy presentation feel energetic instead of completely illegible.

While I was already sold on Don’t Stop, Girlypop’s aesthetic, its blazing-fast arena shooter gameplay proved an excellent partner to its overstimulating Y2K sensibilities, granting you the means to rain down girlypop justice as you destroy one corporate stooge after another. Between its carefully tuned core feel and its charming details, like how much of the game’s narrative is given via live action footage of one of the game’s developers on a flip phone, I’m eager to continue dealing out ecojustice, one deadly combat arena at a time.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.