Deathsmiles

Deathsmiles is a horizontal side-scrolling bullet hell game where the players must stop monsters from invading the world of Gilverado. There are 5 playable characters: Windia (Wind Magic), Follett (Fire Magic), Casper (Death Magic), Rosa (Spirit Magic) and Sakura (Magician).

There are 8 stages in total, with one being optional. After selecting a character, the players can choose from one set of three stages: the Port Town, The Forest of the Lost, and the Lake Shore. After completing any level from the first set, a second set of levels, the Graveyard, the Swamp Wastes, and the Volcano, appears, and a level must be completed there in order to access a level from the first set again. After all 6 initial levels are completed, players can either play a difficult extra level, the Gorge, or head straight to the final level, Hades Castle.

After the release of Progear, Tsuneki Ikeda believed that horizontally scrolling shooters weren't a good fit with the idea of dodging bullets, hinting a potential development switch to vertically scrolling projects instead. A few years later, he decided to revisit the concept, but with an aim to appeal to a broader audience, deterred by hardcore shoot-em-ups. Ikeda pitched a concept for the game that would later become Deathsmiles, explicitly instructing the lead programmer Takashi Ichimura to break out from the usual style of the previous developed games.

Cave modeled the characters around the gothic lolita theme, trying to make use of a then popular Japanese fashion style. The team's idea was to apply a new artistic take to a shooting game, while lending itself to creating "cute" designs at the same time.

The game received "favorable" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. In Japan, while Famitsu Xbox 360 Monthly gave it one eight, one nine, one seven, and one eight, for a total of 32 out of 40.