The creative team at Acquire has always had a knack for blending traditional Japanese storytelling with experimental gameplay structures and, in recent years, a particular flair for 2D art. Its upcoming title, Monster Eater, being published by Red Dunes Games, continues that tradition. At its heart is a striking idea:…
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Acquire may not be a name you recognize, but the developer has probably made a game you’ve heard of; it was founded in 1994 and its portfolio includes Octopath Traveler and Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed. Now, it has announced its third self-published game with Scars of Mars, a real-time…
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It took a little over 15 years to get Kamiwaza localised in the west, and while this is an incredible niche title, it’s well worth trying. To this day it comes across as overly ambitious to what developer, Acquire, perhaps had the resources to deliver, but this game and its…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Through Shinto-based storytelling and mythology there is a fun concept in Japan; Hyakki Yagyo, which translates as “The Night Parade of 100 Demons”. That’s only a rough translation, since the “parade” is made up of yokai, which are not really demons, but rather spirit creatures. Nonetheless…
Read MoreVideo by Matt S. Katana Kami: A Way of The Samurai Story came out of nowhere. I didn’t realise that Spike Chunsoft was localising it, and going into it, I didn’t really know that much about it. It will be one of my favourite games of 2020. It represents a…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. Scrap Rush is what you get when you combine the multiplayer hijinks of Bomberman with Pengo; an obscure arcade game about pushing blocks around an arena to squish enemies. Four little robots are dropped into an arena filled with scrap metal cubes, and they are tasked…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. It’s a little confusing, but the first Akiba’s Trip that we got here in the west (Undead & Undressed), was actually the second title in the series. The first was a Japan-only release. Now, however, we’re getting a fully remastered version of that game with Akiba’s…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. Acquire, the talented developer behind the likes of Octopath Traveler and Akiba’s Trip, has come back to Akihabara as the setting for its new game, which it is developing in collaboration with Nippon Ichi Software. Only this time around Akihabara isn’t the vibrant city of anime…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. Why Sony insisted on restricting its major E3 stage show to an hour of the nonsense blockbuster stuff is a mystery that will be lost to time, but that doesn’t mean the PlayStation 4 is lacking for quality at the show by any means. One great…
Read MorePreview by Matt S. Due out in the west in around a month, Akiba’s Beat is a sequel to the delightfully oddball Akiba’s Trip (though it plays nothing like it), and comes to us from the very talented, and often underrated, development house, Acquire. Related reading: Matt’s “review” of Persona…
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