Shantae: Half-Genie Hero

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, stylized as Shantae: ½ Genie Hero, is a 2016 platform video game developed and published by WayForward Technologies.

Plot
One night Shantae is contacted by a messenger from the Genie Realm, warning her about incoming darkness. The next day Risky Boots attacks Scuttle Town yet again and steals some blueprints from Shantae's uncle, Shantae defeats her yet again and recovers the blueprints. The Mayor of Scuttle Town fires Shantae again after the attack and hires a replacement Half-Genie.

Shantae's uncle shows her a device called "The Dynamo", which when fully completed with the blueprints it'll produce enough electricity to generate a defence mechanism for Scuttle Town and get Shantae's job back, but it's still lacking several key components. Shantae sets off to find the missing components while also fighting against the Barons of the Sequin Land who have their own evil schemes.

Eventually Shantae gets all the parts needed to finish the Dynamo but when they activate it the Dynamo malfunctions and zaps Shantae with dark magic. Risky appears and reveals that she swapped the blueprints during her initial attack and tricked Shantae's uncle into bulding the Dynamo the way she wanted, now it's a machine that can turn genies evil. She steals the Dynamo and plans to upgrade it in order to take over the Genie Realm.

Shantae is able to resist the dark magic and confronts Risky, she destroys the Dynamo but is too late to stop the Genies from being corrupted with dark magic. Shantae is forced to destroy the genies to stop Risky's scheme for good.

In the aftermath the mayor hires Shantae again and the genies are revealed to have survived the Dynamo.

Why It Can Dance Through the Danger

 * 1) Great soundtrack especially the song Dance Through the Danger.
 * 2) Beautiful 2D art style with 2.5D elements, very colourful visuals, detailed backgrounds, and great animations.
 * 3) Expansive level design with lots of secrets and hidden areas to find treasure.
 * 4) Shantae's transformations return and are much easier to use than before. The transformations allow her to reach areas previously inaccessible and some of them can be upgraded.
 * 5) Creative boss fights.
 * 6) Fun NPCs to interact with.
 * 7) Smooth controls.
 * 8) Alternate DLC story modes that can be played with different characters and a "hard mode".
 * 9) An unlockable artwork gallery where you can unlock concept art as well as art made by fans of the Shantae series.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Just like Risky’s Revenge, Pirate’s Curse, and Seven Sirens, Shantae doesn't have any lives, meaning running out of health requires returning to the last save point.
 * 2) *Saving isn't automatic for that matter, so if you forget to save or choose not to you could lose a large amount of progress.
 * 3) There are only a handful of levels that you have to revisit multiple times each.
 * 4) Holly Lingerbean is a (fittingly) forgettable character whose role has little relevance to Half-Genie Hero 's plot.
 * 5) Sky's role in the Friends to the End DLC would later be contradicted by her severe character derailment in Shantae and the Seven Sirens.

Reception
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero received an 81/100 aggregate review score on Metacritic. The game is considered a good example of crowdfunded video games done right.