I've been too busy to pop in here lately due to an insane schedule + GDC scheduling. Maybe I'll see some of you there though??
Anyways, SP is also doing a 7 day Steam cards campaign where a set of cards will be published every day through Sunday. There's lots more fun stuff coming March and April so I'll try to say hello more often and answer questions.
I've been too busy to pop in here lately due to an insane schedule + GDC scheduling. Maybe I'll see some of you there though??
Anyways, SP is also doing a 7 day Steam cards campaign where a set of cards will be published every day through Sunday. There's lots more fun stuff coming March and April so I'll try to say hello more often and answer questions.
Last I heard, it's on track for its intended release date of March, yes. Should the dev come with any change I will be the first to let you know.
Overall everyone left happy with the end result. I am speaking purely as a private person and not as a representative of SP or them in my answer here, but *I* think that it was a learning experience that continues to surprise Japanese developers who are not familiar with crowdfunding and the ever evolving nature of a campaign.
But hey that's the beauty of life, the challenges and the successes. Me and dovac literally worked around the clock to get everything done, even long before the campaign started we were locked in and trying to get things properly settled in.
Overall everyone left happy with the end result. I am speaking purely as a private person and not as a representative of SP or them in my answer here, but *I* think that it was a learning experience that continues to surprise Japanese developers who are not familiar with crowdfunding and the ever evolving nature of a campaign.
But hey that's the beauty of life, the challenges and the successes. Me and dovac literally worked around the clock to get everything done, even long before the campaign started we were locked in and trying to get things properly settled in.
I really hope we will get more 'mystery' games out of it.
While I don't really mind the usual 'ero' stuff most companies seem to focus on, I don't think they sell all that well all things considering. Niche that they fulfill is orders of magnitude smaller than the niche things like Danganronpa or 999 seem to have.
Just my $0.02 though.
I really hope we will get more 'mystery' games out of it.
While I don't really mind the usual 'ero' stuff most companies seem to focus on, I don't think they sell all that well all things considering. Niche that they fulfill is orders of magnitude smaller than the niche things like Danganronpa or 999 seem to have.
Just my $0.02 though.
Those VNs are the best selling ones in the PC market though. Mystery visual novels haven't really proven they can sell outside of adventure games like Danganronpa or 999.
Good for them. Sucks that we won't be getting free steam keys for our purchases anymore from MG now and they have bugs to fix for that new processor, but at least now they can release Haruka.
Edit: Oh, they released Beat Blades Haruka already XD
Phew, I finally bought Kindred spirits. Missed out on the first week promo price but oh well. I'll take it as showing appreciation for a good localisation in light of recent events.
I've already posted about it in the OT, but I guess I should take some time to write my impressions on Danganronpa 1 after having finished it a couple days ago. I apologize for the incoming wall of text, but I felt like summarizing everything I could rather than just talking about the game as a whole in very broad strokes was worth it:
While the who/howdunnits can be answered very early on due to how generous the game is with hints and foreshadowing, I've got to praise the game because it sets up fair-play mysteries. At first I thought it was kind of annoying that characters would often bring up some piece of evidence halfway through a class trial, but then somebody pointed out that it never ended up becoming an actual piece of evidence you could use, and it was true. It did help gain some insight on the case most of the time, but it wasn't vital like clues that showed up in a similar way in the Ace Attorney series. The class trial minigames were a mixed bag: While I really liked the statement-shooting one and wrapping cases up by correctly filling panels in a manga that narrates what happened, hangman's gambit was boring as hell and the rythm minigame was shallow and somewhat annoying for the most part. I particularily liked how the truth bullet-absorption mechanic was used to tie mechanics with narrative in a particular end-game segment.
One character actually liked was Sakura, mostly because she gets a fair bit of character development both on her own and through her relationship with Asahina, who undergoes character development herself thanks to Sakura and ends up becoming a (halfway) decent character on her own as well! The rest of the cast, sadly, was too one-note and stereotypical for me to enjoy except for the mastermind. As for characters I kind of wish could've gotten more screentime,
Kiyotaka could've used some after that whole mind fusion thing with Mondo (whatever that was), since such a radical character change could've led to some interesting developments, but he ends up getting killed a couple scenes after his appearance instead, which was a shame
. Hifumi, Celeste, Mondo, Byakuya, Touko and Yasuhiro were all flat as a board and stayed like that through the whole thing, and even Kirigiri's character development fell flat for me because it was hard to sympathize with a Rei Ayanami expy that barely showed her emotions at all throughout the game. I guess Chihiro showed some promise though, and Leon starting out by saying he never actually liked baseball was interesting but was left as that. Oh, and I'd better not forget Sayaka, that manipulates Makoto in a particularily obvious way and gets her just desserts very early on.
As for the general plot, it was nice that it neither got too serious/edgy nor too comedic, except for the whole final stretch with the mastermind, that was hammy in a good way but hurt a whole lot by the pile-up of plot twist upon plot twist in the span of a couple minutes, including the cliched-as-hell climax. Still, things such as the first case's punishment being incredibly grim and then later ones being really cartoony was very weird, but I think they went the right direction since going to the realm of torture porn would've made me the prospect of playing it a lot more iffy, since it's already grim enough that the whole story's about a group of high schoolers forced to kill each other without getting caught to escape their confinement anyway.
The environment design was really interesting, since it managed to have its own aesthetic identity while being fairly simplistic to accomodate the hardware it was originally made for. The rooms folding in and out like in a pop-up book was a nice touch (even though the force transitions got a bit tiring after a while) that worked well with the farily sparse use of 3D geometry and textures. The school setting as a whole wasn't fun to traverse at all though, mostly since characters would always stay in the same place and there was nothing interesting to do while walking around from point A to B. I ended up fast-travelling all over the place as soon as I was done with chapter 1 and had realized that actually walking through the school was nothing but a time sink, and I don't think I missed out on anything but a couple monokuma coins that you get around 80 of after each chapter you clear, anyway.
All in all, I liked the game despite some of its shortcomings, and am definitely looking forward to the sequel.
Phew, I finally bought Kindred spirits. Missed out on the first week promo price but oh well. I'll take it as showing appreciation for a good localisation in light of recent events.
I'll have to get back to you on that next week. Haven't played it yet as I'm heading to Japan for a concert (FictionJunction, yay). I'll have to finish it in a hurry though. I want to clear it before lyrical rainbow stage releases.
Jast seems to be having a panic attack about the Flowers reception, Meru (a friend of mine) got hired for TLC, and apperently they hired another translator as well as a bunch of testers.
So instead of a very inaccurate translation with a bunch of spelling and grammar errors we'll just end up with a probably inconsistent one that still has some TL errors but not as many.
I backed it for a Steam copy. Almost no hope of it not being vaporware at this point. I consider it gone, if it does ever get released it'll be a pleasant surprise.
I backed it for a Steam copy. Almost no hope of it not being vaporware at this point. I consider it gone, if it does ever get released it'll be a pleasant surprise.
However much they paid in the first place. The quick (by their standards) release may be an attempt to shake off their image of delaying games forever.
‘Parascientific Escape:Cruise in the Distant Seas’ is now out on 3DS, and yes, that's the real title of the game.
Shizuka made a thread for it on the gaming side, maybe someone who’s played the Japanese version could post some impressions there? The setting and gameplay give off a strong 999/VLR vibe, but there hasn’t been a lot of information about the story yet.
Parascientific Escape:Cruise in the Distant Seas is now out on 3DS, and yes, that's the real title of the game.
Shizuka made a thread for it on the gaming side, maybe someone whos played the Japanese version could post some impressions there? The setting and gameplay give off a strong 999/VLR vibe, but there hasnt been a lot of information about the story yet.
I'm still getting in touch with Circle Ent for a review code, we got one last week, but it wasn't working. As soon as we get one and I start playing it, I'll post my impressions here.
I'm still getting in touch with Circle Ent for a review code, we got one last week, but it wasn't working. As soon as we get one and I start playing it, I'll post my impressions here.
Now that I've had a few hours to reflect on the Flowers news, I feel like Payne thinks he's in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation where if he delays it again then JAST continues being delays: the company, but if it gets rushed out it's just going to hurt the quickly dropping reputation for quality of JAST games even more. I see one of those things as obviously right, but I could see it being a little less clear on the inside.
Now that I've had a few hours to reflect on the Flowers news, I feel like Payne thinks he's in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation where if he delays it again then JAST continues being delays: the company, but if it gets rushed out it's just going to hurt the quickly dropping reputation for quality of JAST games even more. I see one of those things as obviously right, but I could see it being a little less clear on the inside.
I'm in Japan now, and am deciding whether I should briefly mention my disappointment in the localisation in the flowers summer feedback postcard I intend to send to innocent grey. On one hand, I'm afraid it'll totally screw up any chance of seeing any of the other Flowers sequels, but on the other hand, I really don't want spring to be released in that messy state.
Basicly , VITA version can't be made as their estimations for making the vita version were over estimated , and the fact that sony won't allow the patch for unlocking the 18+ content on vita as of now.
With our limited funding time frame, the cost to achieve our Vita goal has become unrealistic, at least for now.
