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…
Every time I see “Wuthering Waves” I think to myself “wow, they’ve gone and made a game of Wuthering Heights, my favourite novel of all time.” That is unfortunately not the case, but Wuthering Waves does still look decent, as a free-to-play open-world RPG that has clearly been inspired by…
Read More
An hour isn’t anywhere near enough to get a feel for what any kind of RPG will offer, let alone a Soulslike. Imagine trying to predict what Elden Ring is if you’re only able to reach the limits of that first, lush forest before the demo taps out? You can’t.…
Read More
The best thing about Flintlock is the setting. It’s a hodgepodge of historical influences – the opening sequence focuses on trench warfare and sappers that could be straight out of a World War 1 drama, before the game settles back to a more colonial era affair, set against a horde…
Read More
It’s hard for us in the West to fully appreciate just how core idol companies and groups are in Japan. It’s not just about the music and performance, though that is certainly a big part of it. Idol groups act as talent feeder pools for just about every other part…
Read More
Esports has become a ridiculously big business, sucking up so many dollars that could have gone into interesting, artful games instead. They’re holding an Olympic Esports Games now… and stupidly the IOC chose the authoritarian, puritanical hellnation, Saudi Arabia, for it. Hey, IOC, put Dead or Alive on the competition…
Read More
One of the things that I find continually surprising about video games is the idea that, on the one hand, we consider them to be inherently an art form, but on the other, we just never talk about games in the same frameworks that we talk about every other art…
Read More
I don’t want to spend too long mulling over its flaws, but Princess Maker 2 Regeneration is a good example of a remake handled poorly. I’m not commenting on the quality of the game itself, which is genuinely good and entertaining, and I’ll get to that as soon as I…
Read More
That’s what I get for taking my time with The Last Waltz. Another indie developer is going to waltz in (hah) and have the first dance-themed visual novel. I’m not jealous though, because Light de Deux looks lovely and I hope it’s a big success. Related reading: It’s not specifically…
Read More
Microsoft has announced a substantial suite of changes to its Game Pass subscription system. Basically, you’ll be paying more, and now, depending on which service you use, you may or may not be able to access “day one games” – games that are released on Game Pass on the same…
Read More
There are conventional visual novels, and then there are the kinds of visual novels that Type-Moon produces. Tsukihime is a game that has a fearsome reputation, being one of the very first works of the company (it came before Fate/Stay Night, which has become the Type-Moon behemoth), and was essentially…
Read More