Girls' Frontline

The gameplay involves the acquisition of T-Dolls through gacha game mechanics, where the amount of resources spent on construction can affect the T-Dolls acquired. T-Dolls can then be assembled into squads known as echelons and sent into battle to complete combat missions, simulations, or logistics support tasks. The T-Dolls are moe female androids, each representing a personification of real-world small arms. They are categorised into different classes such as handguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, rifles, machine guns and shotguns. Missions consist of a turn-based strategic battlefield where the player directs echelons across a map consisting of linked nodes with the goal of fulfilling pre-determined mission requirements, such as capturing an enemy command node or rescuing hostage units. Players are able to deploy and move echelons during their turn by expending action points, which depend on the number of heliports and echelons deployed by the player. The enemy units move during enemy turns based on preset instructions. If a player's echelon meets an enemy unit on the same node, a combat sequence is initiated. The combat is largely automated, but players can activate offensive and defensive skills specific to each T-Doll in real-time as well as move individual T-Dolls across a formation consisting of a 3×3 square grid. The position of T-Dolls within the echelon's starting formation provide stat enhancements to other T-Dolls, and the individual stats and abilities of the T-Dolls altogether determine the outcome of the battle against the enemy team. In later stages of the game, the player will unlock Heavy Ordnance Corps (HOC) units, which are dedicated fire support units such as mortar teams and anti-tank weapons that can provide supporting fire to echelons in combat. The end-game content also introduces the Protocol Assimilation system, where enemy Sangvis Ferri units can be captured and then sent into battle. Outside of combat, the player is required to manage their supply of in-game resources, level up facilities within the base to gain economic bonuses or access to different features, and improve the combat stats and abilities of T-Dolls through skill training and other character-raising mechanics. Cosmetic items such as T-Doll costumes and furniture used to decorate the dormitories of T-Dolls are obtained through another separate token-based gacha system. Decorating dormitories also increases a T-Dolls' affection stats through collecting hearts daily. Additionally, some cosmetic items for the commander avatar can also be bought using gems that can be purchased through real-world microtransactions or procured via daily login. When a T-Doll's affection stat reaches 100, the player is able to give them an OATH ring, which may be purchased through gems in the shop. Their affection cap will increase to 150 and they will receive a slight stat boost. ==Synopsis==

, MP7, ST AR-15Bottom row: WA2000, SPAS-12, Negev The game is set in a war-torn future where tactical dolls, more commonly known as T-Dolls, are almost exclusively used for combat in place of humans, some having been repurposed from their previous life as civilian androids. The majority of the world is uninhabitable due to contamination from the Collapse Fluid, and much of humankind is dead. In 2062, the artificial intelligence of Sangvis Ferri (SF) spontaneously rebels against humanity, with their T-Dolls and robots killing their human masters and taking over nearby areas. In response, the private military company (PMC) Griffin & Kryuger (G&K) is hired to contain and eliminate Sangvis Ferri forces; the player assumes the role of a recently promoted G&K Commander. The base storyline focuses on the adventures of this commander and the Anti-Rain (AR) Team consisting of M4A1, ST AR-15, M4 SOPMOD II, M16A1, and RO635. Other important characters include the commander's logistics officer, Kalina, AK-12, AN-94, AK-15, RPK-16 and Angelia of Squad DEFY and Squad 404, made up of UMP45, UMP9, 416, and Gr G11. ==Development and release==

MICA Team originally started as a dōjin club consisting of three people, however during the development of Girls Frontline, gradually expanded into a company of 117 employees. The game's premise was inspired by Kantai Collection, but with anthropomorphized warships replaced with that of firearms, based on the team's anticipations that similar moe anthropomorphism games would become popular in China. The difference from Kantai Collection is that rather than having combat sorties fully automated and only having the player take control over resource management and base raising, Girls Frontline gives players greater control over the outcome of combat. During the initial stages of the game's development, game producer Huang Chong (), more commonly known by the pseudonym Yuzhong (), worked in partnership with his former university-era confidant Yao Meng () who was tasked with operations management while Yuzhong handled development. The game was originally planned to be published under Yao Meng's company, Array Network Technology. However, due to personal conflicts, the two parted ways, and Yao Meng would eventually start a new company, Yostar, which would later publish Azur Lane as its first major game. One major cause of the conflict arose as a result of network issues during the game's testing phase, with both parties insisting that the other side was responsible for resolving the outage; while reflecting on this era of development, Yuzhong later explained in a 2016 interview that his team only had prior experience developing dōjin games, and had limited understanding of online games and backend development. Artist Zhong Qixiang (), more commonly known by the pseudonym Haimao (), served as the game's original art director, but later left MICA Team in 2016 to form his own game development company Hypergryph, which would eventually release Arknights as its first game. After Sunborn initially responded with a statement explaining that "there has been no evidence that any K7 illustrator belongs to a certain extreme feminist organisation", South Korean players responded negatively to the announcement, and K7's character was subsequently removed from the game by the developers. In an August 2020 interview, Yuzhong remarked that during the 2014-2015 era of games, many players felt spending 10 to 20 minutes on daily tasks was a chore. Thus, he aims to make game time more fragmented when designing his own games. The other servers remain unaffected. In January 2025, MICA Team announced a new PC version of Girls Frontline, and allowed players on the Chinese server to transfer game progress from the mobile version to the Steam version. On September 4, 2025, a Steam release for the Japanese version of the game was announced, which later released on September 26, 2025. ==Collaboration events==

The game has had several collaboration events with other game companies. On 4 September 2018, the PlayStation 4 rhythm game DJMax Respect introduced three songs from Girls Frontline as DLC, while time-limited DJMax Respect mission events were added to the global release of Girls Frontline in May 2020. A collaboration event for Honkai Gakuen took place in November 2017 for the Chinese release of Girls Frontline, and featured characters from that game as guest T-Dolls. On November 20, 2018, Girls Frontline featured a crossover event with Arc System Works where Noel Vermillion and Elphelt Valentine from BlazBlue and Guilty Gear respectively would appear in the game as recruitable allies. In 2019, the game featured a collaboration event with VA-11 Hall-A, which included the addition of mission events and VA-11 HALL-A characters as obtainable T-Dolls. In 2020, a collaboration event with the Gunslinger Girl franchise took place where 5 of the cyborgs were obtainable T-Dolls with added mission events and puzzles themed after the franchise. In January 2020, Girls Frontline collaborated with Ubisoft's ''Tom Clancy's The Division where the T-Dolls of Griffin PMC join an online tournament of the Division game. The event also introduced two new characters to recruit; Agent 416 and Agent Vector, who are alternative universe versions of the characters HK416 and Vector that joined the Division. In February 2023, a Zombie Land Saga collaboration featured seven characters from the anime as recruitable units. A collaboration event with the anime Dropkick on My Devil! began on November 16, 2021, featuring the main character Jashin-chan and four other characters as recuitable characters. In May 2024, a collaboration with Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 featured Motoko Kusanagi and two other characters as recruitable units. In November 2024, a collaboration event for Arena Breakout was held on the Chinese server, with the event releasing on other servers the following year. In July 2025, the season 7 event of Call of Duty: Mobile implemented crossover content featuring Girls' Frontline'' cosmetics. On November 16, 2025, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra made their first collaboration with Sunborn for the "Girls' Frontline 10th Anniversary" concert, performing a live orchestral arrangement of the ''Girls' Frontline'' soundtrack composed by Vanguard Sound at the Jaguar Shanghai Symphony Hall, conducted by resident conductor Sun Yifan, with vocals by Kinoko and the Echo Festival Choir. File:201706 Girls Frontline livery on AC08 at Zhongshan Park Station.jpg|Promotional campaign featuring "Grifon Express" train stopped at Zhongshan Park station File:9M-XXB@PEK (20190517072736).jpg|AirAsia X Airbus A330 in Girls Frontline livery ==Media==

Anime A chibi-style television anime series featuring 12 short episodes titled aired on Tokyo MX and BS11 from October 5 to December 21, 2019. A second series of animated shorts titled streamed on Bilibili and aired on Tokyo MX and BS11 from December 28, 2019, to March 14, 2020. The Bilibili releases of both series are voiced in Mandarin Chinese, while the Japanese broadcast versions are voiced in Japanese. On January 22, 2021, an anime television series adaptation produced by Warner Bros. Japan and animated by Asahi Production was announced. The series is directed by Shigeru Ueda, with Hideyuki Kurata handling series composition, Masaki Yamada designing characters, and Takashi Watanabe composing the music. It aired from January 8 to March 26, 2022, on Tokyo MX, BS11, and AT-X. The opening theme song is "BAD CANDY" by yukaDD, while the ending theme song is "HORIZON" by Team Shachi. Funimation licensed the series outside of Asia. Muse Communication licensed the series in South and Southeast Asia. The English dub streamed on Funimation's website on February 4, 2022. Characters Main characters appearing in the 2022 ''Girls' Frontline'' anime. Episodes Manga Beginning in July 2019, an official manga series titled and illustrated by Miharu has been published online monthly in Chinese by Bilibili, and serialized in Japanese within the Monthly Comic Rex. There are also four official manga anthology volumes published by Dengeki Bunko titled consisting of one-shots by various manga artists, A second theme performed in English titled "What Am I Fighting For" features vocals by Akino and is included within a 31-track original game soundtrack released on July 24, 2019. The game's soundtrack also features guest tracks composed by Basiscape. English and Japanese versions of "Frontline!" were later included in the second original soundtrack released on June 17, 2020; the limited edition release of this soundtrack also included a Blu-Ray for the Girls Frontline Orchestra: Dolls with Lycoris radiata () concert events which took place in Shanghai and Tokyo. A character song collection entitled "ECHOES" was released on August 26, 2020. ==Reception==

at the 30th Asian Animation Creation Exhibition Girls Frontline was the 3rd top-grossing game by revenue on Google Play and the 5th top-grossing game on the Apple App Store for the South Korean region in 2017. The perception that the game doesn't force players to use pay-to-win microtransactions compared to other mobile games, along with its encouragement of player interaction during automatic battles, are often-cited reasons for the game's popularity in South Korea, where it is the first Chinese-developed game to be able to compete with domestically created rivals. According to the "2025 China videogame industry trends and future potential analysis report" released by Chinese analytics firm CNG, the game franchise has over 30 million players worldwide. Prior to 2010, games targeting "otaku" players in South Korea were largely absent; while the introduction of Kantai Collection in Japan during 2013 significantly influenced the trajectory of otaku-focused games there, Kantai Collection had very little impact in South Korea, presumably due to it not having an official release in the country, likely out of concern of the potential for controversy over the game's theme of World War II Imperial Japanese Navy warships. South Korean games media ThisIsGame argues that it was Girls Frontline which filled the void left by Kantai Collections absence in South Korea, and that gameplay designs originally introduced by Kantai Collection such as its monetization system and character construction mechanic were well received by Korean players of Girls Frontline. Hong Kong Inmedia describes ''Girls' Frontline'' as more like a novel that the player needs to clear missions for in order to continue reading, rather than a mobile game, noting that the ultimate focus of the game revolves around the narrative involving the game's characters, and that the storyline serves as the game's most defining strength. ==Spin-off games and sequels==

The tactical role-playing game Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery () developed by MICA Team and published by X.D. Network was released for Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, and smartphone platforms. Set 30 years after in the same universe as Girls Frontline, it is a remake of the original dōjin game Code Name: Bakery Girl, featuring new art, character voices, story, and game mechanics. In May 2020, a sequel titled ''Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium () was announced for release on smartphone platforms, alongside two spin-off games titled Girls Frontline: Glitch Land () and Girls' Frontline: Neural Cloud (). Exilium'' stills follow the core design of turn-based tactical combat, however introduces 3D modelling for the characters. Under producer Yuzhong's direction, the games feature different aesthetic styles, with Exilium and Glitch Land featuring a more realistic, cinematic style, Code Name Bakery having a more grave and stern aesthetic, and Neural Cloud with a more exaggeratedly cuter design. On September 4, 2025, a mobile third-person shooter spin-off game titled ''Girls' Frontline: Fire Control'' (formerly known under the development title "Project NET") was officially announced. The game was developed by Hecate Team, a subsidiary studio of Sunborn. It was made in the Unity3D engine. The game was launched in select regions starting from October 23, 2025. According to Sunborn, this game was intended to reach emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East and CIS, which the company has yet to properly establish a foothold in prior to this game. Fingertip Breakthrough () is a standalone singleplayer survivors-like spin-off game based on the ''Girls' Frontline'' universe, announced in November 2025 for release on iOS and Android. ==Notes==