Matt S. is the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of DDNet. He's been writing about games for over 20 years, including a book, but is perhaps best-known for being the high priest of the Church of Hatsune Miku.
Well, fellow Final Fantasy fans, here’s our chance. For years now we’ve been begging Square Enix for a new 2D, pixel-based Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy Resonance isn’t Final Fantasy XVII, but after the success of the Octopath Traveler series and Dragon Quest remakes, it’s pretty clearly an effort by the company to see just how much appetite there is for…
A persistent issue I have with video game adaptations of stories from other mediums is that the developers might latch on to the characters and setting of the base material, but almost inevitably the game lacks any understanding of the themes and depth of meaning that made the original work…
For some time, Konami has followed the trend with its Castlevania series,…
Time really does fly. If you had asked me when Earth Defence…
Ikai is so close to being something special. The premise of the game is strong, it has the occasional moment of inspired horror design, and you can tell that the developers entered into this with some genuine intent and vision. Unfortunately, at other times it comes across as amateur and…
Read MoreI’m a big fan of itch.io for the freedom and open platform that it allows for developers to be creative, experimental, and directly canvas the audience for feedback for games that are not yet ready for primetime on Steam and its ilk. In addition, itch.io allows you to be transgressive,…
Read More
DigitallyDownloaded.net wouldn’t be the website it is without its mascots. Dee Dee, Nettie, Lorin and Amelia don’t just appear in our visual novels (don’t forget to check out the free demo for the upcoming A Week on the Water if you haven’t yet!). They also appear across the website, representing…
Read MoreRelayer is God Wars, but located in space. That comparison isn’t going to help you if you were one of the many people that unfortunately overlooked God Wars (and therefore missed one of the finest tactics JRPGs ever), but if you imagine a heavily narrative-driven fantasy adventure, backed by traditional…
Read MoreBack in 2015 (seven years ago!), in my review of the original Submerged, I wrote: “Submerged is at its core a deeply frustrated warning against humanity ignoring the 97-odd per cent of climate scientists that insist we’re set for a bad time if we don’t hurry up and start dealing…
Read MoreIdea Factory International announced at the New Game+ Expo that it will bring us a brace of new visual novels, and is taking on the publishing duties for the sequel to the well-regarded Dusk Diver. Dusk Diver 2 Dusk Diver 2 is a direct sequel to the original, as an…
Read MoreNew Game+ Expo happened recently, and as usual, the Japanese publishers were there in force to make their announcements. NISA has always been one of the most proactive, and it has a bevvy of interesting new titles on the way. Prinny Presents NIS Classics Volume 3 As with the previous…
Read More
I should love Dark Deity more than I do. The developers clearly have passion for what they’re doing, and the thing that they’re doing is copying one of my favourite games of all time. In its entirety, Dark Deity aims to clone the two Fire Emblem titles that were released…
Read More
In this video (the third part of this month’s podcast, see below), Harvard, Trent and I talk about the game canon. We often assume that a game becomes canon when it sells well (that’s not it) or even that it reviews well (not that either). You only need to look…
Read More
Once upon a time, before BioWare announced itself to the world with Baldur’s Gate, and long before Atari got the rights to Dungeons & Dragons and then all but buried the iconic property (in terms of video games, at least), there was a company called SSI. SSI was perhaps better…
Read More