Visual novel ghostpia Season One is described much like other visual novels: it’s a movie you can read. The genre gets a lot of heat from “gamers” for being boring and having no action, but I quite love them. There’s something cozy about visual novels, even the most horrific ones.…
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Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent is a game that seems to have a lot of promise. Unfortunately, the launch in Japan hasn’t set the world ablaze, but perhaps PQube will be able to turn it around with the Western localisation. The game is one of those immediately recognisable grid-based JRPGs,…
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White Day: A Labyrinth Named School has proven to be quite the enduring horror property. Remakes and remasters of this thing have been appearing on consoles, phones and PCs since its original release way back in 2001. And now it’s on Nintendo Switch. Perhaps the best platform for it of…
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A deluge of Harvest Moon/Rune Factory/Stardew Valley-likes have come out of nowhere, but there really has been a lot of them in recent months. Perhaps it is something cultural. Perhaps developers are observing an increasingly tired and agitated community around them as the ongoing terrors of climate change, pandemics and…
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Contracts are a tricky thing, especially for indies. On the one hand, having a publisher can be enormously beneficial, as they provide resources, marketing, PR and more. More than a few indies would never have had hit games were it not for the support of a publisher. But there’s a…
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“Princess Maker-likes,” like Lair Land Story, are a niche within a niche, but it’s a genre that can be oddly compelling. They’re spreadsheet simulators, in which 90 per cent of the game involves carefully managing a girl’s development by carefully selecting her daily activities. But while that might sound dull,…
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It’s an immersive storytelling atmosphere brought together with a calligraphic art style. This is how I’d describe Labyrinth of Zangestu, an up-and-coming turn-based dungeon RPG currently in development by KaeruPanda. Sounds good, right? We’re keen too. This is a significant departure for the team, which was previously best known for…
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Super Bullet Break is a happy, colourful thing. I know it’s going to rankle some to suggest that as overtly fanservicey as it could be “wholesome” or “innocent,” but that’s what Super Bullet Break is; a happy, high-energy, bubbly and wholesome thing. The game is a combination of two things.…
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When Matt S. reviewed White Day: A Labyrinth Named School for PlayStation 4, he described it as “a masterpiece in building tension and in the way that it plays within the classical approach to horror, without relying on jump scares and endless bloodshed.” PQube is now bringing the game to…
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PQube is a publisher with a knack for finding quirky and interesting projects. Its latest, Super Bullet Break, might just be one of its most interesting. This “deck-building roguelike,” features a lot of super-cute anime girls, and draws inspiration from everything from rhythm games and dating games right through to…
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