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.
It’s such a tough gig to be an indie VN developer. It’s a niche genre at the best of times, and the resources that you have to dedicate to it are going to be limited. It’s a question of what you throw money into to try to make your project stand out. In the case of The Devil’s Whisper, the…
Planet Coaster 2 is good. But then Planet Coaster was good, and this is really just an iteration of that. Frontier Developments has found its niche and is now focused on driving that nail home over and over again. With Planet Coaster 2 you get lots of new toys to…
I’ve not seen the controversial Goblin Slayer anime or read the light…
SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky is a spin-off of an incredibly…
I guess was inevitable that at some point someone would look at bringing the Slay The Spire-style roguelike formula to Puzzle Quest. In fact, I’m surprised that it hasn’t happened yet (or, at least, I haven’t heard of one before now). But that’s okay. Good Shepherd’s Demon’s Mirror has come…
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Yeo, the one-man-band indie developer from Russia, is going to be remembered as a far better artist than the relatively muted popularity of his games deserves. Fading Afternoon is his new one, and while it’s a retread of a lot of what makes his first, The Friends Of Ringo Ishikawa,…
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Now that I have a ROG Ally, my need for the kind of little emulator consoles that Anbernic, Powkiddy, and others put out is minimal. The ROG Ally is a more powerful device than any of these (effortlessly handles most PS2 games and everything), and manufactured to the standard that…
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I am genuinely surprised by the launch of the two Quintessential Quintuplets games in this “double pack” (Memories of a Quintessential Summer and Five Memories Spent With You). They’ve been published by MAGES, one of the legends of visual novel development. They’ve also been published by Spike Chunsoft, one of…
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Infinity Nikki looks like the kind of open-world game that I actually want to play. It’s setting itself to be an adorable, whimsical game about playing dress-ups rather than murder, and it has every chance to dominate its space (mostly because it’s the only game in it, as far as…
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It feels like a long time since Koei Tecmo announced its last Dynasty Warriors game. They’re usually so prolific, but the last one (Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires) was an early 2022 release. So it’s actually quite big news that the next Dynasty Warriors has finally been announced, and it is…
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Welcome to the latest episode of the Digitally Uploaded Podcast! This month we talk about the sorry state of game development, in light of everything that has been going on with Microsoft shuttering studios (and then immediately looking for more acquisitions) Then we discuss the controversy surrounding Ubisoft’s upcoming Assassin’s…
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Here’s a note for all developers out there: If you’re going to locate your game in a period of history or legend, and especially if it’s one where there isn’t an abundance of choices, then make sure that you actually do something about that period of history or legend. Earlier…
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Aksys has a habit of finding the most wonderful visual novels to localise… and Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch looks like it continues that form. This is a coming-of-age story mixed in with a “mystery stretching back hundreds of years.” It also looks like it has some light…
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I have a particularly strong attachment to the original Cupid Parasite… indeed I think that it is that game, above and beyond any of the others that I’ve played, that convinced me that “hey, I have to make my own one of these visual novel things.” The result may not…
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