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.
What if Harry Potter was an otome love game and not written by a horrible woman who seems obsessed with being a one-person “can you separate art from artists” talking point? Battlefield Waltz is a bit like that. It’s a story about a bunch of teens in a special, magical academy and you play as the one with a particularly…
I wrote this article for an arts publication – unfortunately, at the last moment they weren’t about to publish it for reasons, but the upshot of this is that I can publish it here! While it’s not specifically about video games, AI and Gen-AI in particular is going to have…
What do Mario 64 and Wingspan have in common? Both are games…
COVID lockdowns broke us all a little bit (or, at least, those…
The Nintendo Switch has become a real home to digital board games. It’s not quite up there with the PC or mobile devices, but the range of what is available does go pretty deep and broad now. Case-in-point: I hadn’t actually played (or even heard of) Concordia before I saw…
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I was a little hesitant to stream Duel Princess on the DDNet YouTube channel. The developer/publisher, qureate, is known for visual novels that have enough heavy fan service to get coverage of the games demonetised on YouTube. Nonetheless, the promise of fan service and Battle Cats-like light strategy was appealing…
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EPOS sure does release a lot of headsets. It was just a few months ago that I reviewed the last Bluetooth-enabled headset from the company, the H3 Hybrid, and I absolutely loved it. Now we have the H3PRO Hybrid, and it’s even better – after all, it has “pro” in…
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Shogi is an excellent, if under-appreciated game in the west. Real Time Battle Shogi makes Shogi an action e-sports thing, and while it might sound beyond strange on paper, in action this thing is remarkably compelling… even if it’s difficult to get a game going online. Even if you can’t…
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I have a sneaking suspicion that Monark will be one of my favourite games of 2022. It is, of course, very early to be calling that, but the talent behind it is sublime: you’ve got the deep-thinking creator Hayashi Fuyuki, who turned a silly concept (“power-up by crying”) into a…
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This happens every year. As the Christmas season arrives, and I finally knock out all the major game release reviews that I need to, I look forward to things easing back a bit and that I can spend a bit of time doing other things (this year in partar I…
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As part of the celebration of 20 years of Xbox, Microsoft has today announced that some 70+ new Xbox and Xbox 360 games have been added to its backwards compatibility list, allowing you to continue playing those games on the newer generation devices. This list has some real hits in…
Read More“Frivolity” and “humour” are not usually things that you associate with Otomate’s otome visual novels. Whether it’s classics like Hakuouki and Amnesia, or more modern games like Piofiore: Fated Memories and Olympia Soiree, with Otomate, you expect some pretty powerful romances with some very dark edges (especially if you wind…
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Project Zero is the most Japanese of horror properties. Capcom’s Resident Evil series is developed by Japanese artists and is great fun but closely intertwined with western B-grade horror traditions. Konami’s Silent Hill is (for the most part) intelligent and artful, but it was heavily inspired by western psychological horror…
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I’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,…
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