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.
Hello everyone, and Happy Holidays! What a year it has been, too. An impossible number of great games were released. It has been totally impossible to keep up with the release schedule. We also made significant inroads in our own visual novel project, formally announcing it and getting it so close to being ready to release. It’s going to be…
It’s that time of year again! We’re counting down the days to Christmas with our own little “advent calendar” – one new game to play over the holiday season each and every day. As the year winds down, things get really busy. We’ve got Christmas parties to attend, the end…
It’s that time of year again! We’re counting down the days to…
It’s that time of year again! We’re counting down the days to…
“I’ve been writing a bunch of really awful short stories lately. I mean it. They’re absolutely ghastly… “I’ve been working on this stuff pretty much nonstop for over two years now, adding one unpalatable tale to another, making an entire collection of difficult, dangerous and really horrible fiction. Why can’t…
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Illusion Software is one of the genuine trailblazers in video games. The studio has been around for 22 years, having been founded in 2001, but it’s all over now. The company has announced its imminent closure, and in its shutdown notice, also said that it would also be taking all…
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Valve’s inconsistencies around what is and isn’t too offensive for its platform are at the point where it is so blatant that there are ulterior motives at play that it is incredibly offensive. Here’s a story of two different sets of games to illustrate. The first involves Hitler. Steam is…
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Developer, Sting, has announced a remaster of Riviera: The Promised Land. This is genuinely exciting because Riviera is a true cult classic, and a remake is long overdue. One of the more interesting qualities of this game is that you don’t really have free movement around the world. Rather, it…
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In recent years (thanks largely to the success of the Ryza trilogy), Gust and Koei Tecmo’s Atelier series has grown from being a very niche and micro-budget JRPG property to become something that, while not exactly mainstream, holds itself well in the market and can find an audience beyond genre…
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Silent Hope will be released on October 3, and it is an intriguing little game. It is being billed as a return to the classic isometric action JRPGs of yesteryear (think Secret of Mana), with a quirk: this is a world without words. From the press release: “In a world…
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It has been 13 years since the last The Settlers title. The Settlers: New Allies is also the first time the series has ever made its way to a home console. Until now, this venerable, hugely respected and beloved simulation/strategy series had been exclusive to PC (with a couple of…
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I’ve run out of patience with the Richman series. I want to love them, but the feeling is clearly not reciprocal. This is the third game that developer/publisher, Softstar, has released on the Nintendo Switch, and not only does it demonstrate that there is little interest in improving the series,…
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Of all the major sporting events, the Tour de France must be one of the most challenging concepts to adapt to a video game. After all, you’re looking at courses that are hundreds of kilometres long, and take hours to cycle across, with the scenery changing up and down mountains,…
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What happens when you blend the otome visual novel sub-genre with death games like Danganronpa or Squid Games? Essentially, you get Charade Maniacs. This is Idea Factory’s latest to make its way out west and it’s an intriguing and eclectic thing. I don’t know if this particular fusion of ideas…
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