Ever since it was released for the PS4, PC players have been waiting for Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash to arrive. Based on the franchise's track record, it's only a matter of time before the busty ninja students are equipped with aquatic weaponry for a giant water fight. Until then, the small team at Dranya Studio decided to beat them to the punch with Trianga's Project: Battle Splash 2.0, a game that was recently released on Steam Early Access.

On the surface, the game plays like a standard character-based shooter. You have a choice of grenades, pistol, rocket launcher and sniper rifle. They all have infinite ammunition, but they need to be reloaded, so you can't always lay down a constant stream of fire. Each character also comes with a special ability of her own, whether it's laying down a shield or using a portable hair dryer to resurrect a fallen character.

The key difference is that you're playing with water, which has some familiar mechanics. Getting hit with water increases your saturation meter, so you're knocked out of the match if you reach a level of 100%. You begin to dry off almost immediately, so it feels akin to the regenerative health system in other shooters. Using water also means that splash damage plays a big part in the game. This seems obvious when using water balloon grenades and the rocket launcher, but you'll still get some water sprinkled on you if you're near a pistol or rifle shot. In essence, this means that you'll have to stand clear of any shot to make sure you stay completely dry.

Interestingly enough, the use of water and anime-style girls doesn't mean it falls under the fan service umbrella. On the contrary, all of the girls are fully dressed and show no hints of cleavage. Getting soaked with water doesn't render those clothes translucent, and even when knocked out, they don't go into suggestive poses. There's no way to customize their outfits, so those who love the anime aesthetics but dislike the constant foray into more suggestive territory will like Battle Splash.

The one flaw thus far is balance. Everybody is equipped with all of the weapons at all times, so it feels useless to equip yourself with anything other than a rocket launcher and maybe a sniper rifle, since they have a wide splash area and high damage, respectively. Conversely, the game is pretty bad about hiding spawn zones, and since everyone spawns at the same spots, this means spawn-camping is a sure-fire way to success.

The game sports three different gameplay modes, all of which are different from one another. Team Free For All has everyone split up into three teams as they fight for a predetermined amount of time and score as many KOs as possible. Team tactics takes on more of a Counter-Strike approach; the game is played in rounds, and each person has one life per round. Finally, SBot Guidance has you and your team subduing a robot and guiding it back to your base before another team tries to do the same.

At the moment, it's rather difficult to play with other people in any of those modes, since the servers seem to be empty. After various preview sessions with the game, not one person showed up on a server we created or a server that's been up since the game's Early Access launch. Luckily, the game lets you play with bots, and while those bots aren't exactly the smartest , they provide enough of a challenge that you'll get an idea of how the game is supposed to play.

Aside from the aforementioned issues, two things are keeping Battle Splash in Early Access. The first is the small amount of levels. The current version has four stages, and three more are grayed out — presumably being developed as the game presses forward. The second element is mod support, which currently has a menu option available but no content yet. The extent of the modding capabilities are unknown at this time, and while you'll expect some of the mods to be more risqué, the fact that mods get official support is still exciting.

Though rough in many places, Trianga's Project: Battle Splash 2.0 is intriguing. The family-friendly combat is well thought-out, with smart use of the splash damage mechanic to add some depth to the gameplay. Its modes and characters may be limited, but what's here works, and the game only needs some balancing and gameplay tweaks to really shine. Provided this can get a community together by the time it releases, Battle Splash will be an interesting shooter to keep tabs on.