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…
I am absolutely terrible at SHMUPs, bullet hells, and other such action game experiences. For this reason, I don’t generally play them. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, it’s just that my progress through them is so slow – on account of my own lack of skills – that…
Read MoreAce Attorney Investigations is the last compilation of the extended Phoenix Wright universe that we needed to have the full set on modern consoles. That in itself is a good reason to pick it up for completionists, but I would imagine that many people will also be interested in this…
Read MoreWho doesn’t love their Switch? It is arguably the finest console of all time (though the arguments you can make in favour of it are very compelling), and this week we dig into some of our most-played games of all time. Given that it’s the 2024 Olympic Games, we also…
Read MoreThe basic concept of Tokyo Xanadu is “Nihon Falcom make an action version of Persona. Oh, and it looks like the Trials of Cold Steel games.” None of this is a bad idea by any means, and Tokyo Xanadu has been around for quite some time now. We published our…
Read MoreI’ve been puttering around with Big Ant’s Rugby 25 for a little over a week now, after it was released to Early Access earlier in the month. It has been a very long time since there has been a Rugby game that has really held my attention for more than…
Read MoreVoyeurism, exploitation, and a dash of bubblegum: An interview with the developer of The Crush House
“It’s time to start taking reality TV more seriously,” a headline in Columbia University’s magazine proclaimed. It’s true, too. As the article goes on to note: “Studies reveal that more people in the US are watching reality TV than not, and nearly half of all TV series are unscripted. Media…
Read MoreEvery time Starship Troopers pops up as a topic, we get to “enjoy” the most surreal arguments on the Internet as a bunch of people argue that the film is not a satire of fascism, and that the book is not an argument for fascism. These are some of the…
Read MoreIt feels like it’s been a while since I’ve had the excuse to write about the supreme Goddess, Hatsune Miku. SEGA’s gone quiet on video games, and I’ve just not been able to line up a trip to Japan at the same time as the annual concerts over there. Related…
Read MoreShinto is one of those things that most people who know anything about Japan have some vague concept of, but don’t really know anything about. From experience, they’re also rarely interested and that’s depressing. Tourists in Japan do cheerfully visit Shinto shrines, before mistaking them for Buddhist temples (and vice…
Read MoreI’m about to really age myself, but when I was young, the idea of (legitimately) free video games was very different to what it is today. There were no microtransactions, and no Fortnites, Genshin Impacts, or MMOs. If you were playing free, you were either playing shareware demos or very…
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