Retronauts - 711: BitSummit the XIIIth

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Another year, another sizzling report (plus developer interviews) from Japan’s largest indie game festival from our senior indie game correspondent Diamond Feit. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

This week in Retronauts, lucky 13. Hello, and welcome back to Retronauts. to the ancient capital of Kyoto, Japan. I'm here recording a special introduction to this week's episode because I want to deliver to you the authentic cicada experience. Wah! I hear you screaming! Don't ask for who the cicada scream for.

They scream for the... Anyway, I'm here at Bitsummit again this year. I am the only retronaut at Bitsummit this year. So what I've done for you today is I've lined up a few interviews, developers, personalities, people who came to the show, people who maybe haven't been here before, or just wanted to check things out, people who showed games, people who knew games. And I wanted to give you an overview of what the show was like this year and what kind of things we're making, because let's be honest,

Bits Summit is nothing without the people who make the video games. All right, it's like 38 degrees out here. I'm going to go inside. Catch you inside. I have safely returned to the confines of my air-conditioned home, and I can actually feel my sweat glands shutting down one by one. Another bit summit has come and gone. As annual traditions go, it's one I look forward to with extreme enthusiasm,

but it's also a peric win as it forces me to visit Kyoto in the absolute brutal month of July. Like last year, this week's episode will combine interviews I conducted at the Miyaku Mesa Convention Center, along with sessions I record at home, recounting my favorite games of this year's show. A few of them are already out, while others look to launch later in 2025. By all means, I encourage you to seek out these projects and consider supporting any developers as they continue to innovate and drive the medium forward. We have four interviews today besides my segments of gaming highlights. I've divided the latter into three categories.

Retro-inspired video games that aren't old, but capture that energy. Rogue likes and rogue lights, which have become shockingly popular in our modern era, and the final bunch are just games I think look super cool, and I cannot wait to play them in full. Well, welcome back to Bit Summit and welcome back to the Kimono Wing. And if you could please introduce yourself. Yes, I'm Kalman, and I'm from Germany, but I live in Tokyo now, and I work on a game called Tampopo. Okay.

So how long have you lived in Tokyo? I moved here last year in September, and I'm currently doing an exchange here at Tama B, so I'm like a media art student, but that also means I get to work on my game full-time as kind of like a university project. So, Tumble, did that project start before you moved to Japan? It did start before, yeah. I mean, conceptually, it started way before. I always kind of wanted to make it, but active development is also. hard to pin on the exact moment but I think like the first

prototyping started in 2021. Okay. And that's also when I switched to the go dot engine and yeah, I started to really like learn programming because before that I have only done game design. And then I'd say if I add up

all the like full time hours that I put into it, it would be more like two years maybe of like real active development. So I guess like sometime shortly before I move to talk is when I really did the game full-time and nothing else, so to speak. So would this be your first finished game by yourself then? It's mostly yourself, right?

It's just me. It's completely a solo development, and it's my first indie game. So before that, I only worked in a games company with games I wasn't personally attached to and I didn't really want to make. But I got a lot of experience and still was worthwhile, I'd say, but I really wanted to do my own vision. and do my own games that I really want to play. And so this is like the first, what I would call, like, my game.

So were you familiar with it some of it before you came here, or how did that happen? I heard, like, about it once or twice, but I only visited Kyoto. I mean, I've always been, like, many times to Japan, like, but I only visited Kyoto like two, three days every year once in a while and mainly spend time in Tokyo. Right. But last year when I went to Tokyo Game Show, I met some other developers, and they really, really urged me to try Bit Summit. And they told me, you should definitely apply there.

And, like, it's so great for indie games. Like, this, like, selected indie section here is nice, but you should really check out Bit Summit. And that's what made me want to apply here. And then when I got invited, I felt really happy. And now I can see what they meant. Yeah, I think Tokyo Game Show has had an indie section for a long time now. But I feel like because Bits Summit puts the indies up first, I really prefer the way things are done here because most years, Tokyo Game Show, the indie section is kind of segregated.

You know, Tokyo Game Show has gotten so big over the years. Now, like, you know, there's like a main, the main hall there, which is like whatever, one through six, one through seven. And there's like the auxiliary hall with like the food and the merchandise and like it's worth going over there. But you have to, like, go over there, like, on the side. Yeah, so. But my experience was also many people who went there were really appreciative of indie games because they went out of their way to check them out.

Oh, okay. But there was, like, one or two, like, flushes every day where you could kind of tell, okay, now's the time that everyone, like, went to Square Unix already, and they kind of, like, got pushed to the next fall, and now they're kind of here. And here it's totally different. And I feel there's a different type of attention to, like, details that often get unnoticed.

And people, like, for example, people comment on the style of games. I make a pixel art game so that, like, gets noticed. But here people are really like, oh, I like this choice of color or, like, some really specific feedback that I haven't really gotten anywhere else. Well, you're right, it's very different here because there is no Square Enix at Mitz Summit. They are, they're cowards. I'll say it out loud. They're cowards. They've never been here.

As far as I remember, I can never see them here, you know. They're very not indie, so. No, no. They're, maybe you can argue Enix was indie once. Because if you look at the history of Enix, there's a lot of weird games. Enix made a lot of weird games, you know, it wasn't all Dragon Quest. And, you know, Square had their thing, too. But then as time went on, like, well, we make this big game and you make this big game.

What if we make all the biggest games together, you know? Although, okay, this is a tangent, but there are interesting stuff at Squared-Nix still. I know a couple of years ago, they released a game called Paranormacite. Okay, that's, if you're in Tokyo, I might want to check that out because it's a game about like supernatural legends in Tokyo and a neighborhood of Tokyo near the Sumida River. Okay, that's kind of where I live. Yeah, well, a lot of the locations,

in the game are real places in Tokyo so after I played that game and the next time I went to Tokyo for KGS I went around and I found these gardens that were part in the game I was like oh look I'm literally in a stage in the video game so nice yeah yeah that's that's a cool thing with many Japanese games

you can have a similar experience with the yakuza games in Kabuki Cho oh yeah always that specific area and the persona games and it's also interesting how like place names get changed and how like the obvious signs that have like some copyrights behind them get, like, change into something else.

Yes, I know in the Yakuza games, the fake Osaka area is called Sotenbordi, whereas it's actually Dothonbode. Like, they didn't change much. So you've been working on Tampable for a few years now. What kind of events have you been to, say, like, back in Germany? Did you show it off at, what? Did you go to Gamescom?

I don't know, what's the deal over there? I haven't really done conventions before the Tokyo Game Show, but I come from in Fine Arts Space. And so I started to showing it more in like a gallery space. So it was more like these exhibitions that had like paintings and sculptures and then some media art maybe. And I showed my game there once or tries just to like check it out with people who are not familiar with gaming at all. Which also forced me to make the game very approachable and like good tutorialized from the beginning. But it was definitely not the most in-depth feedback.

I feel like I get much more like surface-level reactions because people say something that maybe applies to many different games just because they have never experienced an RPG or something that's pixel art or something like this. Right. And like the deeper you're like in the trenches like here at BitSummit, the more people really like get into the specifics and like they see the references, they mention the mother games which were really influential for me

or the old Pokemon games or like things that are really near and dear to my heart and then we get to like geek out with each other and talk about these things and I feel like this is a different level of appreciation. But I have to say I also went to one kind of like art exhibition last year in Tokyo. It was called the Art Fuchu and it was like a in the area of Tokyo called Futschu, there was this local art fest. Yeah. And I got to join. And there were also very many people who have no familiarity with gaming.

There were old folks. There were very young kids. But still I felt like there's a different kind of like cultural, like, kinship or something towards the thing that I'm making, where even if it's like some 60-year-old dude, he's like, oh, the last time I played was like Dragon Quest on the Famicom or something. And still they get something out of it. They feel like they can approach it. It's not too alien to them to just, like, try to play this game.

And so I feel just in general, in Japan, there's a level of, like, I don't know, like maybe, yeah, familiarity with, like, pixel art games or, like, games from that era that when Japan really prospered, like, everyone played them. Yeah, I would say I still see a lot of pixel art in advertising, and, you know, obviously there's a big animation culture here, and so that can be, I'll probably say old-fashioned, but, you know, you still see animation that someone was done. It looks like, you know, we made in the 70s or it was in the 80s,

and then you see very modern stuff, which is obviously very modern, and they're, you know, integrating, you know, CG graphics in with the 2D art, or they do it in 3D, but they make it look like 2D. You know, I think of, like, the Guilty Gear games now. Guiltyger games, like they look like they're still 2D animated, but then if you win the match, suddenly the camera moves, you're like, oh, these are massive bundles of polygams that just look like they're 2D art.

But I think it's, you know, incredible. Yeah, totally. And then often I feel like that some of the, I mean, there's some fan bases out there that say it's kind of, they look at pixel art only as this like throwback thing, like, oh, it's like a retroesthetic, oh, you're going for this joke. And sometimes I blame this on the Mega Man revival of 9 and 10 when Capcom was kind of like,

oh, look, we go back kind of to the roots. And when 9 came out, everyone was kind of like very appreciative of this. And when 10 came out, everyone was kind of like, okay, it's getting old now. And Mega Man 11 was this like 3D thing. And for me, Mega Man 9 and 10 are so much prettier. And I think I see pixel art not as this like only retro thing or thing of the past, I think it's this very own aesthetic that deserves to live on regardless of like the technological limitations that shaped it. And I think it's very close in fine arts to the technique

of mosaic where you put every like part of the image like deliberately to form a bigger image and this like limitation that really makes an animation work in a very different way because you don't really use lines. You have these dots that are like shifting and morphing. It's It's very own look, and I'm interested in that look, and that's also why I'm going for that, because I think there's lots you can do with it without necessarily commenting on the past. Now, if you excuse me for oversetting boundaries here, you seem like a very young person. So when did you start playing video games, the roundabout? I started, I think, when I was six years old, because I was born in 94.

And around like 2000, there was, at least where I grew up in Germany, there was like the biggest type of Pokemon going on, where we had the first movie and merchandise everywhere in card game. And I really wanted to have a Game Boy. And my mom was initially against it, but then she allowed me to have a Game Boy for my birthday. And I made friends that way with the link cable, and I really got into other Nintendo games. And also, that's when I got into Japan. And also in the early 2000s, anime started to be really popular in Germany. Oh! And I have an uncle who used to do like business. trips to Japan and he would bring back like little gifts or something. So for me, even when I was

like nine years old, I already had this place that really exists that you can go to in my head and this idea of, oh, I want to go there. And so that's when I like picked a high school. I really made the choice to learn Japanese there already and did an exchange here when I was in high school. And since then I've been to Japan as many times as I can basically and always spend time here because I feel like very close to it culturally and it impacted me and shaped me and also the art that I make. That's amazing because in America it's almost a joke

about, we used to talk to each other on the playground and said, oh, I have an uncle who works at Nintendo and we would always like, they would always have these fantastic stories and like, oh yeah, there's like, there's six legends of elders you don't even know about. But you actually had an uncle who went to Japan so you had a, you could say, oh, my uncle got me some, you know, some Pokemon cards straight from Japan and people might think you're crazy, but you're real.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that's maybe one of the differentiating factors because everyone in my generation, I feel, was really in love with Pokemon and manga and everyone. But usually, like, Japan just seemed like this weird foreign concept that you don't really get to interact with. And so I think I was just really lucky that I had this, like, tiny connection that made me really want to, like, go out there and check it out. And yeah, and I think that the fact that I know some Japanese is really helpful with working on the game and making a Japanese version for these

events. And my game is very text-based, or at least, like, the writing is really important. So I really wanted to have, like, well-translated, a well-localized version and not just some auto-translated thing. Because it's not so much about, like, what's being said and more how it's being set and in that way it's also very much like games like mother and yeah I think I would really love to from the feedback I've gathered now I think like the Japanese audience really likes this game and I would love it to be perceived as this like almost game that could be from Japan you know and when people overseas get to play it maybe they think like oh like I saw this is popular in Japan or something like this is kind of like my dream scenario but yeah I'm just trying to make it the

best it possibly can. Well, we've kind of talked around it. Do you want to try to give listeners, say, the elevator pitch of, like, what Tompupo is? Because I don't really know how to describe it. Like, it sort of looks like a Pokemon game in some aspects, but then you're attacking with, like, a little ball bearing, and, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sure.

It's also hard for me to do an elevator pitch because my initially idea was very easy to pitch. I wanted to make an RPG that has, as the battle mechanic, pinball. Yeah. And the problem with pinball is it's not as involved. You cannot make that many quick strategic decisions. So it kind of morphed into this more, you move the ball actively around to dash against enemies to defeat them.

And so I would describe it as like a turn-based RPG with action-based combat that has some physics elements, while the whole scenario around it is presented quite traditionally where you level up and you gather ice. and you go through a story. It's a single player game. I aim to have it to be around like five or six hours long, so nothing too crazy unless you really want to complete everything and find every item.

Then it can be maybe double than that length, I hope. But I think for me it's like something like Mother or Earthbound is very good if you want to kind of describe what kind of tone it's going for maybe. And for the gameplay, I think you kind of kind of kind of have to experience it for yourself to see how it really feels like. Maybe you can also compare to some of the RPGs that have some action elements like Mario and Luigi RPGs or games like this, but our Undertale is also a great example, maybe.

It's also heavily inspired by Mother and it has like a very quirky, unique combat system. But in my game, you kill the monsters. There's no way around it. have you considered calling the combat system active time ball I have not considered but I will consider it thank you very much heard of your folks phone ATB active time ball and it's it's a ball I'm not being crude here it's not like a testicle it's a it's a ball it's a sphere yes so the title of the game tampoppo it translated in English it means dandelion yes and the ball is kind of like the

watage which is like the cotton fluff of the dandelion So it's kind of shaped after that. And you have this little white sphere that the main character gets psychic abilities and can kind of, with willpower, move it through the air. And this moving through the air can cause it to kind of like cut through enemies and bounce against objects and stuff like that.

And then later you get more like magic spells that you can use so you can set your tampopo on fire or strike a lightning or stuff like that. And it gets more strategically involved. same. Yes, I played the demo, you know, before the show, and it really, it struck me as, like you said, it doesn't really play like anything else. Like, there's definitely some Pokemon aspects, you know, I thought about the main character riding their bike. I was like, oh, it's like a Pokemon game. But then, like, you just, you give your bike to a bird, and then

you just like, oh, the bike's gone, and now you're just, you know, on foot. So I thought that was fun. Like, the game, I feel like the game had a nice sort of sense of humor about it. I like a tutorial, which is, you know, as, and now I understand it, you know, you said you start off by showing this game to people who didn't really play a lot of video games. So your tutorial is like, here's a controller, push up, push down, push this button. You got it, like, okay. Yes, and even then I still wanted to make it kind of like engaging enough for hardcore gamers to kind of think it's funny with like adding a little joke in the writing or something or like maybe make it feel more like an opening ceremony. or something because you already know your controller but maybe it's nice to touch it again

like in a very deliberate way once in a while or something and so I always try to kind of consider options right because I feel like game making is not linear storytelling it's not really you make a movie or something and you go from A to B

it's more like creating a possibility space and then in this possibility space many people can enter it and do things and so if you do different way, if you do it faster or slower, all these ways should feel good in some way, at least that's what I'm going for. But yes. And also, when I compare the game to Pokemon, sometimes I'm hesitant to do that because people have a very strong expectation of catching monsters or something, right? And the inspirations are more subtle, I feel. It's more some of the

vibes or some of the aesthetics of these games. And also games like Chrono Trigger were like a big inspiration, but there's no time-traveling mechanic or anything like that. So it's tough to bring up these direct comparisons because it's definitely its own thing, I'd say. I understand. And also, we're here at Bint Summit today, and there was, there's like a pal-wold booth I saw, and there's a, you know, an off-brand Pokemon-like character walking around the space. And I don't know

with that thing's called. It's kind of cute, I guess, but I'm also like, look at it, like, so which Pokemon is that based on? Because it's the, you know, I'm almost cynical when it comes to Power World, but. Yeah, yeah, I'm the same way. I'm a little, a little bit creeped out by it. But this is like, obviously, Power World is also, I haven't played it, but it's going also for some very innovative things, but the things that are referenced are referenced in such a shallow or direct way that it's not really appealing or interesting to me. And maybe it's also because of my fine arts background, but I really want to have my own, like, visual language in my game

and my own kind of style that ideally, if you're, like, familiarized with it, you can kind of recognize where a character is coming from and don't really mistake it for a Pokemon or something else. Yeah. Yes, okay. Well, thank you for joining me and talking about BitSummit. I hope, have you considered maybe coming back in the future, or do you, like, where, actually, where do you,

picture timbable on a scale towards releaseability. Is it still a long way of the way? I'm more than halfway done with making the game, not content-wise, but because all the base implementation is done, I'm confident to say I can finish it within the next year, I hope. I don't know if that means I can release it within the next year, but I'm aiming to do that. And also I have to say I cannot promise anything yet.

I will not compromise this game. I will work on it forever if it has to happen, and maybe I will die before I release it in an unhappy state. But really, realistically, like, maybe early 2027 or late 2026 could be a release timing. Okay. Well, again, thank you for joining us here on Retronauts. Is there any way people to find you on the Internet if they want to find you? I'm absolutely going to find Tompable the game, but do they want to find you?

Are you any kind of social media or a website or something? So right now I have a Tampopo underscore RPG account on Instagram and X and Blue Sky. Uh-huh. And I have a Steam page for the game. Okay. And then you can reach out to me, send me a message or follow or whatever, and I try to respond to everything. I'm not really that active all of the time, but that means I'm really active working on the game, so please don't worry. There it is.

Okay. Tompable Pledge. I didn't leave you on red because I was cynical. I was busy. Exactly. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

Kicking off the retro-inspired block is Ascending Inferno, which I would describe as a 2D soccer platformer. Okay, football for some of you, but whatever. To me, it's a soccer platformer. And I live in Japan where it's called Soccer 2. Don't get me shit about this. The developers themselves describe it as Fodian, which gives you a sense of what they're going for here. You play a lady who is kicking a soccer ball, and your character is a lady, and the soccer ball is a soccer ball.

So when you move together, you sort of dribble it a little bit, but you have to carefully kick or bounce the soccer ball while you climb this tower as a person. So you're two entities, but you're trying to move the ball with you. And, of course, if the ball bounces somewhere or rolls down a hill, then you have to go get it. There's also a spirit in the soccer ball. I think it might be the lady's brother or cousin. I don't know. I don't remember what the character was, but they have a relationship. It's a ghost or something inside the soccer ball.

It's already out. It came out last year for Steam. I really love the way this game looks. It's got a very voxal appearance. I don't know if it's actually made of voxels or not, but it looks like it's of oxles. It's a 2D. It's 2D. So you're going back and forth and you're bouncing or kicking the ball up there. And, you know, the goal is obviously to get to the top of the tower and you go through a bunch of different environments because I don't know if this tower actually exists in real life or some sort

of metaphor. I don't know about that. I mean, the ball has a ghost in it. So maybe this whole thing is a dream. I couldn't tell you this. I can tell you that a post-release patch added checkpoints, like sort of spots where if you save the game, it creates a barrier so you can't possibly kick the ball down and lower. Before that, if you messed up, the ball could fall down a very long ways and you have to just go back and do it again. So you can play it. There's a little bit of a safety net going on now, which I really appreciate because, you know, I don't have infinite time. I like this game a lot. But if I could mess up and fall all the way up to the start, I probably wouldn't want to play it anymore.

But, again, these are options. I believe when you play the game, you can option. Do you want the, do you want checkpoints or you want no checkpoints? It's up to you. So you know what? They call soccer the beautiful game. I say ascending inferno is a beautiful game because it'll choose if you want to get punished or not.

Building relationships, I love building relationships because it's a pun. The title is a pun. It's not about, it's not just. about building relationships with other people. No, no, no, you are a building. This is the world populated by buildings, and you are going to form relationships with the other buildings. You don't have limbs, so your, like, house or whatever just kind of rolls around outside, and there's, like, there's some jumping, there's some dashing. You get, like, mobility options as you play. There's some fishing. Um, the fishes are cars. I don't know why. Why not? Why not have fish for cars? It's

fine. It's got some lo-fi graphics. It's 3D platforming, but it's very simple. You meet other buildings. You chat them up. They tell you, oh, go up the top of the hill, meet the other person. I think I saw a windmill at one point. There's a demo on Steam right now. I encourage you, look it up. Try it. I found it to be utterly charming, and I hope you will too. And if it's not for you, it's not for you. Don't be a building, romancing buildings. Maybe romance is the wrong word. Don't be a building making friends with other buildings, because I don't know if it's actual, like, building sex in the game.

I don't know. Could there be two buildings? Fuck. Anyone listen to Retronauts already knows about Earthion. It is a 16-bit scrolling space shooter from Yuzokochero. Yes, he's doing the music. I believe, ancient. I think it's this company Ancient again, but they're partnering with a bunch of different

companies. It's getting physical releases. It's getting Steam releases. By the time you hear this, it might already be out on Steam, but I know there was a delay for the physical versions. So I think those are coming later this year. but I believe the digital edition on Steam is still out, is out by the time you hear this. It looks like a Genesis Mega Drive game.

It works in an actual Genesis Mega Drive. I played a version of that at TGS maybe last year or two years ago. It's been in the works for a while. The version I played for Bits Summit was a ROM, so I had opened an emulator and it absolutely worked, you know, it emulated perfectly. It's just a super cool space shooter, but it also has like concessions. It's made for people who aren't really great at space shooters. There's a shield that gives you more than one, you know, you can take more than one hit before you lose a life.

Your weapons power up. You can, you have different weapon options. You can control your sort of like options, your buddies that go around your ship and give you more firepower. There's so many things happening on the screen. There's things coming from the background into the foreground. It's kind of a technical miracle. And it's just super impressive.

Obviously, the music is awesome. so I am very excited to play this at length for real once it's out for for real. I do not have a Genesis Mega Drive, so I don't think I'm going to bother with a physical cartridge. But, you know, if it's on console, if it's on Switch or whatever, I might buy on Switch or Steam. I don't know. I haven't decided, but this is a game I want to play at length and just soak it in because it is super goddamn cool. and use the koshoa rocks and fingers crossed

I could talk to him about it someday I don't know I see him in these events I see him walking around he's so close and yet so far from me to actually speak and interview him next up Sonic Valkyria

Canon that's K-A-N-O-N Canon I guess I would put this somewhere between Space Harrier and Res Space Harrier because you're basically flying behind your character at all times like a space harrier game but Rez, because there's a lot of lock-on shooting

and there's a music element that is definitely feels reminiscent of Rez. The developer calls it an impulse shooting game with anime rock song, which perfectly describes it really. You know, there's a lot of musical elements, the music changes depending on how you're doing. I...

There's a transformation scene in the beginning where the character, like, turns into, you know, I guess the super character that's going to actually complete the mission. And that's kind of horny in a way that space harrier and res are not. In fact, if you look at the Steam page, there's even like a sort of disclaimer saying, hey, it's a person wearing a body suit. It's not actual nudity. So, yeah, it's not nudity. But the first time I saw it was like, whoa, that's, um, is that lady taking her clothes off? And I guess it's like a body suit or whatever. So anyway, the time I put something that was really fun, I'd like to play more

of it because I'm not particularly good at Space Harrier or Res, but this was a cool middle ground that I really enjoyed messing with. There is a Steam page I mentioned. It says it's coming in 26. Who knows? Fragile Hero and the Immortal Frog is also very rhythm heavy. It's a 2D action platformer, but you want to try to time your attacks to a beat that's going on in the background. And if you do that, you do more damage, and enemies will sort of fly into each other and create combos. And it's very clever in the sense that it's not a rhythm game, like most rhythm games, where if you screw up the rhythm, you're basically, you know, you take damage or you die. In this game, if you do the rhythm, you get benefits. You're not penalized. It's so it's rewarding.

It's not detracting because I'm not a person with good rhythm or maybe any rhythm at all. I really can't tell. Only my doctor knows for sure. But pixel graphics, looks great. Unfortunately, as of this moment, I can't find an official listing for it anywhere. There's no Steam page. There seems to be no dedicated dev page. The dev has a Twitter,

which is Petit Zomei, P-E-T-I-T-I-T-I-N-S-O-M-E. Obviously, it's a Japanese person, so I wouldn't expect much in the way of, you know, communication that you might understand, but hopefully we can monitor that, maybe when he gets a Steam page and this wish list, you can look it up. I played a demo. I hope there's a demo.

A public demo would be great because I feel like this game could use a lot more attention. It's just the second I started playing it and I beat someone up to the beat and suddenly all the music changed and the game got more exciting. I was like, oh man, I'm into this. And like we said, fragile hero, immortal frog. It's like you are the fragile hero and that you can take damage, but you're with a frog and the frog and the frog cannot take damage. So you use the frog in ways of advancing past enemies and obstacles. It's really neat. I want more of it.

Please. Also, frogs. Frogs are good in video games. We know this. We've known this for almost 50 years at this point. Frogs are good for video games. Goodbye soul. It's very moody.

It's got some great 2D pixel art. And I would call it a pre-apocalyptic puzzle platformer. Because the characters are living in Seoul. And basically, the world is going to end. Like, they know something's coming. There's some cataclysm coming to earth, and they know things are going to end. So the main character and everyone else in their life is sort of dealing with this disaster, and the city is in really bad shape because lots of people have just given up.

You know, it turns out the world can end before the world actually ends. And in this scenario, in this environment, you leave your house and you try and get some stuff done. And in that regard, you know, it's very, simple stuff, I would compare it to sort of, you know, another world, except you're not being killed every three seconds, but, you know, I'd have to navigate the streets, I'd push things around and climb on things, I'd avoid electrocuted water, there's some climbing, there's some jumping, looks great, again, fantastic atmosphere. Demos on Steam, try it for yourself. Would you believe I saw two VVVVVVVV likes at BitSummit? I did.

The first one is called Love Eternal. They describe it as an atmospheric, narrative-heavy horror platformer. And yeah, that checks out. It's a series of single-screen challenges. You walk into a screen. You've got some sort of, you know, moving platform, spice, whatever. You've got to get from, you know, point A to point B by reversing gravity. Now, you can also jump, and you can reverse the gravity only once before you hit the ground again,

unless you touch some floating gems or whatever. I don't know what they are. They're red. And if you do that, you get a second switch. So in some of these stages, you'll have these gems peppered around the environments, and you can sort of see, okay, I've got to fall down this way, reverse gravity, hit this gem, reverse gravity again, and it gets very complicated because you're reversing and reversing over and over again to get through the obstacles.

Some of these areas have save points in between. Some of them only give you one per screen. Those are very challenging ones. So this was a game I got kind of angry about at times. But when you get it, you get it. It feels great. There are these sort of cinematics in between the puzzles that are very intriguing. And I don't know what the story is yet.

I've only completed, I think, three chapters. But it's definitely dark. It's moody. It's a little creepy I can see the horror atmosphere even though I didn't see anything personally that conveyed horror to me There's definitely some darkness in this game

And I was really into it I don't know if it has released date yet But it definitely has a Steam page So I've been playing for a while now And I'm We'll see if I can get through it Because it's it cut pretty hard I'm definitely at the part where

Every screen I try to complete requires multiple mid-air gravity switches. And if you make a mistake, you just got to go back and try it again. So in that way, it's kind of like Celeste, except I think it's a lot more forgiving than Celeste. In my opinion, I don't know. Meanwhile, we have Reggie, his cousin, two scientists, and most likely the end of the world. Yes, that is all one title. That is a 2D cartoon platformer compared to Love Eternal.

The stages are much longer. And there's lots of collectibles. So there's lots of things you're going out of your way to pick up as you're playing. Also significant, in Reggie, you can swap gravity as much as you want. You can basically fly through the level if you want to push the button more than once. But this does sacrifice your momentum. And eventually, if you run on momentum, then you're just going to have to stop and land and try and start over, start running again.

Also impressive in this game, it has really nice 2D animation. The main character, the enemies, everything is very well animated. I believe I spoke to one of the developers, and he said that it started off with just the two of them as a core, and they were both, they both had an artistic background, and now as the game has, you know, picked up Steam and they've been working on more time of it, I think they have maybe six or seven different artists working on it now, which is really cool. They also emphasized that all the stages look different. Like, he showed me two different stages that definitely had a different look and feel to them. There were some animated cinematics with voice acting, which I thought was very funny. You can play co-op. the title, Reggie, his cousin. You can play with two characters at the same time. So, I think

this one looks really cool. I think it probably has a lot more time needed to go into it, based on the scope. Like, this story seems to be a huge story involving time travel or whatever. But again, it's on Steam. You can wish list it. You can see what I'm, you can see what I'm talking about. I think, very impressive visually, and I'm really like to see where that goes, you know, the full page. Bito Fight, part-time Devil Hunter. is made by a member of the Retronauts community, Stephen in our Discord, a.k.a. King of Shibuya,

maybe on social media. He lives here in Japan. I've met him a couple times now. This game is already out for playdate. So if you have a play date, you can get this game right now. But what he's working on now is sort of a computer version

that works with, you know, it doesn't require the dedicated playdate handheld system so you can move, you can jump. And I think you, the version I played, I was rotating the right,

analog stick to simulate the playdate crank. What's the game about? I could not possibly describe what this game was about. Stephen basically tried to explain it to me, and he was explaining to me the entire time I was playing the demo. Like, you're living in an apartment building, and there are demons in the apartment building that you might have to exercise, but you also have a job and a convenience store to shop at, and a landlord to deal with.

There was a lot happening, honestly. Obviously, the graphics are very simple. it was designed for a playdate, you know, that is not a large screen. I don't have a play date. If I had a play date, I would buy it right away. You can try an early access version on Itchio right now. We'll see what happens with the Steam version. Shout out to a member of the community, action-making video games, and showing them off a bit summit.

That's really cool to see you out there exhibiting. Good job, buddy. Majogami, also known as the Witch of Lulu Didiya, is the new IndiCreat game. So if I tell you it's a new Intecreate games, you already have an image of what it looks like. 2D action, good pixel art, very mobile characters, lots of, you know, slashing and dashing. I don't know a lot about it because this was one of those games that got announced at the show, so we're still in the early days. But the trailers that it's coming to Switch and Switch to October 30th, I don't know if Steam is going to match that or not. But I think Switch and Steam

could be expected. Most of their games are on Switch and Steam by this point. The story describes this one as the story of one girl who cuts gods like paper. And there's a bit of a pun going on here because Kami in Japanese can mean God. It can also mean paper. It can also mean hair. I don't know if it's going to factor into this game or not. But based of what I was playing, I was a 2D character running around, jumping, slashing. There was like a dash lock-on kind of move that could be chained different enemies.

And by doing that, you can move through stages very, very quickly. Fighting bosses, like if a spot of the boss lights up like they're vulnerable, you can do the dash move and slash into them. You can slash them repeatedly and do a lot of damage very quickly. This is a game, I think, that probably takes a lot of practice to get it right. But once you get it right even a little bit, it feels really cool when you start moving around rapid fire, just zip, zip, zip, zip, tearing through people. The animation is pretty good.

Everything kind of looks like it's made of paper, which I like. So, I'm not even sure which title is official, but if you look up Majogami, The Witch of Lulu Didia, or Indycreates new game, you'll probably find it. Again, the trailer set is coming out this October, so it should be out relatively soon. Take a look for it. Toghage Metro G.B. It's a Game Boy Color game, and by that I mean, it is literally made for Game Boy Color. The developer let me play it on a Game Boy Color. It was probably my first time holding it. a Game Boy Color in 20 years. Felt kind of funny.

My eyes were not used to that kind of screen. I'll be honest. But he was also showing it off on other more modern handholds. I don't have those analog pockets, whatever, but I'm pretty sure he was using one of those at one point. But what he's showing off is a literal Game Boy game, a Game Boy Color ROM. It's a Metrovania.

It's kind of a simple platformer. The name, Tokage, is because it's a lizard in Japanese. So Takage Metro, it's like you're a lizard underground. You're walking around. At first, you're jumping on things. Then I had a projectile, was shooting things. There's a Steam page for it.

You can look it up right now. I guess he's going to release the ROM on Steam via emulation, and then maybe sell the ROM later on. I don't know if he's doing physical cartridges, but he had a cartridge that he was letting, you know, that I was playing at the show. I don't know if he's going to go actually develop more cartridges.

That's probably expensive. But look for that if you want to play more Game Boy Color games in 2025 or 26. whenever it's ready. And closing up this block, Sona 2000. This is a game that started life as a demo on the haunted demo disc

way back in 2020. But it was one that got a lot of attention so they did a successful Kickstarter and now they're making the very short experience into a full game with voice acting. The developers are Finnish.

This is a game about going to the sauna which I'm told is very big in Finland. The voice acting is all in Finnish. So I don't speak that language, but based of the English subtitles, I seem pretty funny to me. Obviously, part of the haunted demo, it seems to have a horror vibe, but based of what I saw, I really didn't see anything scary at all. It was just about getting ready for the sauna, although there was some ominous imagery. Like when you look for an axe to chop the wood to get the sauna ready, it's not near the wood, it's placed up on top of a hill. You have to go get it.

So you're sort of thinking, well, why is the axe on top of the hill? Or you go inside the sauna to get things ready. You come back out to get your beers and your towel from your car. And someone took them out of your car already. And they took some beer. But there's plenty left for you. So your protagonist doesn't really worry about it. Does that mean someone's chasing you, stalking you?

I don't know. But it has a real, you know, a PS1 look to it, very low-poly. But it's physic-driven. So if you try to walk the wrong way or get screwed up, your character kind of like rag dolls, which is kind of fun. funny. Somehow, I almost broke the demo because I was carrying some tools and as I was falling down, I pressed the button to put them down. And then they disappeared. So the developer was like, hey, where'd they go? And we looked around for them. We couldn't find them. We discovered they were

on the ceiling of the sauna perfectly upside down. And we all had a good laugh about that because we don't know how they got up there. But I was able to get them down from the ceiling and proceed with the game. So they said I had one of the best demo sessions of the day because I guess I almost broke the game. But I'm looking forward to this one. I almost interviewed the developers, but we couldn't quite get our schedules lined up. But this one looks real good. TeamPage says early access is coming soon. So you might be able to play it yourself pretty soon. Sawta 2000. basement. It's the basement for meeting people. And I'm meeting someone for kind of the first time. We spoke earlier this year in the podcast. And now here we are in the same space. We've got legs and

everything. Please. Please tell the audience again who you are. Hi, I'm Casey. I was previously on the Frog podcast. But this weekend, I'm at Bits Summit at the Tokyo Indies booth, where we're showing off a bunch of indie games from our Tokyo-based event. Okay. So before we get to Bitsummit, Maybe just talk a little bit more about Tokyo Indies because I'm not a Tokyo person. What goes on there? So Tokyo Indies is a monthly event. We meet every third Wednesday at a club called Mugra. And it's just a bunch of indie devs.

We all gather. We do presentations. We show off our games. And we just kind of chill and see what's up with everyone else. Now Mogura, the club is subterranean? It is indeed subterranean, as you guess from the name. All right. Yes.

Yeah, thank you. that's great so how many games have you made for the tokyo indies presentations me personal yes me personally i presented a couple of games before but we're actually showing a bunch of other people's games one of my games that i've worked on is there out of i think we have 20 this time that you can choose from but um over the years we've had oh my god i don't even know how many games we've had shown at tokyo indies like the event itself has been going on for 10 years already and every time like at least recently we usually have about um five or six presentations from different devs so if you can add that up every month you have like five games

over 10 years minus a couple of years for covid it's a lot of games right and uh i feel like i've seen the tokyo indies banner at bit summit in the past but is this your first bit summit it's our first This summit for Tokyo Indies specifically. Oh, okay. So we actually had somebody ask the same question because there's a very similarly named event, which started up more recently called Tokyo Indie Games Summit, which is not us. So they're run by, like, I don't remember which company, but they've been a lot of indie events in Tokyo recently, which are sponsored by game companies

who want to look into investing into Indies, I believe, and publishing. Tokyo Indies is a completely used. non-sponsored run by devs for devs very low on money kind of event so we only survive off of like people coming and they pay an entrance fee so if people don't come we don't have money and we can't pay the venue and it's very sad very sad right right right okay okay so so Tokyo Indies and this is Tokyo Indie game summit yes that's the one I believe in technology they do it once a year it's like a whole like it's kind of like bit summit on a smaller scale, I believe.

And it's, like, helped, I think, I think they're sponsored by, like, the Kiki-Joshi government as well as, like, I can't remember if it was Gior Studio or Band Dynamical. It's, like, one of those. All right. So it's a people's front of Judea, Judean people's front sort of situation. There's two different organizations,

similar names, but don't mix them up. Always happen. Always happens. I understand. So, yeah, you're, so the games you're showing, I think it's very interesting because you've got sort of like a mini arcade. Yes. It's neat. I took a picture yesterday, but maybe can you tell the viewers what's going on there?

Did you build that? Our founder Alvin built it. So on the inside, it's just a computer. Okay, it's a computer, sure. It's connected to a little monitor, like a proper PC monitor, which we've stuck, I think, foam board on top. We've built an arcade-looking cabinet around it, but on the back it's like a GPD win, I believe, stuck into a USBC, stuck into the monitor, and it's running on Windows. But it's like a very compact, lightweight form so we can take the cabinet apart, bringing it around to different events. And we just have, like, 20 games being shown through a interface of some sort.

Like a little emulator thing that, like, boots up different EXC files. Yes. That's what's appealing to me. Like, you have this sort of these two little stations, really. And at each station you can choose a bunch of different games to play with. And, you know, there was one that was, like, joysticks. And there was one that was just a keyboard, and, you know, that sort of probably covers, I'm guessing, 78% of the games that are available.

Pretty much, yeah. So we wanted to be able to show everyone's games. Like, some people are like, we don't even support keyboard, and we can't, or we can't use, like, controller stuff. They're like, oh, if we have two, it'll be okay. And it's what we're doing. We're doing well enough. With a little, like, well, you know, usual event issues.

Sometimes things randomly turn off. Yes. We had this issue where, for some reason, the monitor died. and it only worked after we flipped the USBC cable around, which makes no sense because they're literally the same on both sides. But it worked, so we can't put the USBC cable around. It's only one way, I don't know. Inserting USB cables is certainly a science

and possibly an alchemy unto itself. So it makes sense to me in a strange way. I don't want to touch it anymore. It works. I don't know why it works, but it does. If I question it, it might stop working entirely. So, Well, what's sort of, you know,

this is, we're recording this on the last day of Bitsummit. What's, what's some of the reactions you've gotten from the Tokyo Indy games from the people who've been here? I think a lot of, since our conditions actually for the Tokyo Indy booth specifically, there are actually a bunch of other games that have shown up Tokyo Indies before, but just around the venue.

Our specific condition was that if you're showing at BidSumet, you can't show at our booth. You already got your own stuff. Okay. So we're only showing games that either might have applied for Bits Summit but didn't make it, or we're not considering applying for Bitsam at all, at all. Because even though it's not like a huge fee, $3,000,000 is like the application fee is like it costs money.

And the exhibiting costs even more money. Of course. So we're going more for the people who couldn't have made it all the way to Kyoto, essentially. So the scale of the games being shown, a lot of the markets. smaller and more like compact than some of the other bigger, more polished indies that people are seeing as well. Yes. And I think it's

been, um, the audience reaction has been good because people are like, oh, this is actually really fun. But like, we didn't know what we were going to get. We're going to play, getting into it. But we actually really enjoyed it. And that's been really nice. I hope it's actually going to help like people get their games to be seen by more people and maybe

broaden people's player horizons a little bit. Be more open to tiny air games as well. Mm. That's great. Yeah, you showed me a game the other day, and it was about descending a tower. Yes, tower oven. Like, the opposite of climbing, all you can do is fall, and you're a chicken, and if you don't fall, you get burnt by an oven. But that's, like, the whole gimmick. Mm-hmm. But, like, just having one gimmick is kind of enough. It's kind of just fun to play around. And I feel like it's a perfect kind of bite-sized, very good indie experience. Yeah. The long you play, the more kinds of floors appear, and some floors are hazardous, some floors are moving. I believe my record was 64.

You were the best one on Friday, absolutely. Oh, how about that? So there it is, listeners. Go to Tokyo, find the indie event, play the tower game, and see if you can be 64 floors. You will win no prizes, but you will win my respect. You win clutch. You win clutch. The best prize. So did you get a chance to see what I'm going to see anything else around the show while you get a chance to see anything else around the show while you've been here? Oh, gosh. I went around the alternative control section. Oh, excellent.

Excellent choice. Which is, like, it's the same thing. Kind of like with Tokyo Indies, you get to see games you don't, you might not normally see around. The all-control stuff is also, you really can't see most of the games unless you actually go to an event. Right. And they're so delightful. Yes. If you ever at Bid Summit, please go and check out.

There was one where you had to run on a platform and then kick a real slipper onto a board. Oh. Which is. And then you had to stream. into a microphone to make your slipper fly fly flyer. Wow, multimedia. Okay. Very, very tiring, actually, because you have to move your body.

That's a good exercise. If you've been sitting around too much, playing too many games, go to Bit Summit, get in some running. Kick a few slippers. I played a, not a similar game, but a similar theme game called Acidfoot. Is that the one way, and then it's like Koubi, and then it's suddenly... Yes. Yes, yes, yes. The controller is a plastic foot.

Yes. And it has one button on it to start the game and to accelerate. Yes. And then you steer by turning the plastic foot. It's a gyro controller inside. And you're basically zooming around this 3D space, like a cabinet is sitting in the middle 3D space. And you've got a timer and you're collecting little orbs, orbs. And then before the timer runs out, you need to ram your foot into the cabinet.

and the goal is to get like between either your toe or even better between the toes just like to score the maximum amount of pain so i did pretty good i managed to get like i got the the pinky toe the good pain and i got a lot of orb so my score was pretty high i believe i was 17th of the day that's that's pretty yeah so and the controller is very delightful yes exactly it feels it feels good when you press the button it's like a mechanical switch You can feel yourself pressing the foot, the foot controller. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So obviously Nintendo needs to make an official foot switch add-on.

Foot-Con. FootCon. Foot-con. To? They already have arms. The next Nintendo game is feet. Yes. Or legs.

Either way. Yeah, feet might be copyrighted by WikiFeed at this point, so I don't know about that. We'll see. You know, we'll workshop this. We'll workshop this. We'll talk to Nintendo. We are in Koto. Yes, exactly.

I'm sure they'll be very happy to listen to our... They have a booth. stairs. If we walk in and we demand to talk to them about feet, I'm sure the staff will be very polite when they ask us to walk away. Thank you. On our own feet. We'll be to see. When we find this out. Excellent. Yeah. Now the control area is my favorite part of the show every year. I love it. You know, ever since, okay, not the first one, but ever since the second one, there's been a section of people here with strange ideas and homemade. It's always homemade controllers. Sometimes I played one that was already, like, it was like half cardboard.

and it was door, like, door handle-based. The game was you're sliding on the door, and the controller was two, like, hinge-based door handles on a cardboard box. And you turn the controller, the handles left or right, and you steer the door left or right as you're sliding forward. If you pull them both back, you jump. And it's like, again, like, how long can you slide on this door

until you run into traffic? Because you're sliding on the door in traffic. I forgot to mention that. But it's a busy street. It's not close to the public. It's just all the ideas are so delightful, but you're never going to, they're not, you're not going to sell your foot game on Steam

because people don't have feet controllers. No. Or, well, like, door hands controllers. Yes. There was another one I played, which was a chalkboard eraser game. Oh, okay. But there aren't, like, you can't do that.

You can't sell that. Right. And these are just people who want to make this game. We're going to show at an event, and that's the only time they're going to see it. So I think there's something very nice about that, that kind of experience. Also, the chalkboard thing, that was based on putting the eraser in the eraser cleaner. Yes.

Which is a device I've only seen in Japan. Did you, I don't know where you grew up, but have you seen those before? No, so I grew up in Canada and people just let the chalk be dusty, dirty. Right. That's fine. Sometimes he has touched chalk dust, but not in Japan. Your chalk erasers have got to be clean. Yeah, it's like this big, it's like a size of a toaster, and you rub the eraser on the top and it sort of like sucks out the chalk.

so that you don't get your chalky, like, you don't get your fingers chalky, I guess, is the idea. Yes. It feels so unnecessary. But it's delightful, no, honestly, very delightful machines. Listeners, if you grew up with a truck cleaning machine, let us know right in the comments. Also, let us know what it's called, because I don't know what it's called. I really have no idea. I'm a chalkboard eraser cleaner machine.

I don't know. The eraser eraser. Oh, I like that. Maybe. I do like that. Although, again, does Schwarzenegger own that? because she started an eraser in 1996. That's got to be at least the third eraser reference

on the podcast this year. Thank you very much. Don't get sued. Well, did you get to do anything else in Kyoto while you're here? Kyoto's a pretty nice city if you can get outside. And you're not melting. Every time I go to business on it, I visit a cafe called Salon Junpei,

which is near Nijo Station. Okay. And it's run by a guy who's also actually in Indy Neve now. He released a rain. drop sprinters, I believe, last or two years ago, time, I don't know what time is. But the convey is very nice. It's every bit, like a bunch of random, like indie devs will just go around and kind of hang out. And it's always just a nice experience.

You can get a nice coffee. And I don't know. I feel like it's a little bit of like indie game history. It's been around for so long. And there's a lot of interesting events there. Like recently they've been doing RTA on any speed run events. Oh, okay. And, like, it's stuff like that.

It's very sweet, very sweet. So if you're in Kyoto and Salon Junpei is open for the weekend, do check it out as well. Talk to the owner about his game. Maybe share your own IndieGiv game and maybe meet another couple of indie devs on the way. Salon Junpei near Nijio. So is that near Nizjo, the castle? Or is it different? Wait, maybe not super close to Nijjo Station.

Maybe I'm wrong. Sorry, no, it's close to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens. Okay. Which is kind of near Nizzo? Not really, is it? My geography for Kyoto is very iffy. It's a grid, but I don't live in this grid, so I make, I'm extinct of it. Okay.

I think it's like walkable distance from Kyoto Botanical Gardens, wherever that is in Kyoto. Okay. Salon Junpei? Yes. It's like only 15 minutes bus, I think, from Miyakomese. Okay. So if you need a little bit of freight, take a bus to the west. Probably, yes.

Yes. Because we're in the east side of town. Right. If you go further east, you're just going to be in the mountains. Exactly, exactly. Okay. Well, thank you for spending some time with me here. Tell us about your BitSummit experience.

Based on this trip, do you think you'll be back for future BitSummit? Probably. Honestly, even if you... I'm saying this, I'm sure everybody here likes indie games because you're all listening. I mean, like, old games and stuff. But if you're, because for, if it's like a retro sort of thing, if you like retro music at all, they always have people also performing at BidSummit. So even if you play no games, you get your entry ticket.

It's worth just listening to the opening performances played by, like, Professor Sakamoto and then a bunch of other very cool game musicians. Yes. Nobuo Uamatsu was here yesterday, and he was signing autographs. Very cool. So, like. And I saw, I saw Hirokazu Chip Tanaka. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was watching Sakamoto this morning.

Yeah. So I was like, oh, I want them to have coffee, you know. Can they talk to each other? I'm probably sure they've talked before. I hope so. Because they did not at the same events and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, I don't actually know where Tanaka hangs out these days.

I'm assuming he's a Tokyo guy now, but I don't know. But yes. That's been so mad. You get music, you get games, what more can you want, really? Outstanding. I recommend, I've been here every year, and I recommend coming back the next year. I'll certainly be here. As long as they'll have me, I'll be here.

So, just a reminder for our listeners, if people want to find you, maybe they want to go to your website. Okay, yeah. You can find me at mcccc.com.net, or that's the website at mpcccc.com. the blue sky. And you can also just find Tokyoindies.com. If you're ever in Tokyo, every Wednesday, every Wednesday, every month, we're always in Akihapara, unless there's, like, I don't know, a natural disaster. We will be there, so come by

and say hi. Hmm, I wonder if it's close to TGS this year. Maybe. It's never close to TGS. It's never close to TGS. It's not in Tokyo. Yeah. It's a lot. I mean, time-wise. Oh, time-wise. Yeah. Probably, we usually do move out around to match TGS, because people do want to come to both events. So we'll, if it's like a week later, we usually do delay Tokyo Indies as well to get like the whole crag and let people show off their stuff. Well, we'll see. If I make it the TGS this

year and I can sync it up, I definitely want to be Tokyo Indies. Because I want to pay the fee. I want to make more indie games. I don't have a game to show, but I want there to be more. You have August, two months to make a game. Oh, okay. That's plenty of time. Two and a bit, two and a half months, actually. Yeah, I mean, what? Lots of time. That's true. I mean, it took Howard Warsaw. I mean, ET in what?

Six weeks? Yeah, yeah. I just do that. There it is. I'll show up and I've got T.E. It's a new concept. Do not steal. Terrestrial extras.

You got it. Thank you. Welcome back for the March of the Rogue Lights and Rogue Lights. There were so many of these games I saw this year. You know, whether it's Vampire Survivors or Bellatro, it's clear a lot of Indies out there or maybe publishers who are fun in the Indies are just saying, hey, make more of this, make more of this. And if that's your passion, that's your passion. But, wow.

At some point, I just have to kind of check out at some of these games. It's like, look, I don't need another deck-building strategy game. I just don't need that. And yet, these games I'm about to mention, caught my eye. I like them. Starting with pesticide not required. Remember before when I talk about frogs? Again, further evidence the frogs are good.

This is vampire survivors, but you are a frog. You're a frog on a farm. There's only one farm, which means only one screen. However, there are different seasons. So you've got spring, summer, fall, winter, that changes the complexity of the levels. There's also different difficulty levels on top of that. There are many different frogs to choose from. Each frog has their own advantages and weaknesses, which I think is kind of interesting because

for the most part in these vampire survivor games, they don't tend to have weaknesses. Like most characters I play don't tend to have to have weaknesses. Like, oh, they have one strength and then everything else is normal. But this game was like, no, no, this frog is really good at fishing. This frog is really good at running around, but they have, you know, very low health. Oh, I skipped the part there. Yeah, very important. Besides vampire survivor stuff where the bugs are crawling over your farm, there's also a farm with, like, crops you can plant.

And growing the crops gets you, you know, bonuses. There's fish. You can catch fish that gives you more experience points that lets you level up. There are chunks of ore that you can mine that gets you more money. And so while you're running around and dealing with all the things, bugs and stuff, you're also doing these other activities, and there's a shop where you're buying stuff that aids certain aspects. Of course, the upgrades are all, again, like I was saying, the upgrades are very much like,

do you want this to go up and this to go down? Like, when I play vampire survivors, it's like, oh, damage goes up, or attack frequency goes up, and pesticide not required is more like, okay, this number goes up, but this number goes down. This goes up, but this one stays the same forever. It's locked in place. So it really makes you think while you're playing it. I thought that was really cool.

It's already out. You can play it on Steam right now. Or if you want, there's an alpha, quote-un-un-quote demo on Itchio for free to try it. But I played it and got hooked on it right away. I think I put at least 10 hours this month into vampire serfroggers. That doesn't work. Frog Pire Survivors. Vampire frog viver.

Whatever. It's called Pesticide Not Required. Look it up. I really like it. Really fun. I enjoyed a lot. Steel Knights Armis. That's possessive.

Knight apostrophe S. Armis. And this is of another vampire survivors, but now it's a Mecca anime with voice acting. So you're playing as a Mecca. You're flying around the cityscape. Lots of attackers come in. You're destroying the attackers.

You're collecting experience. You're leveling up. But the whole time, there's dialogue going on. between, I guess, your pilot and other pilots. It looks pretty expensive. The website says it's made by Inazumi Game Lab, but I don't know who that is, and I couldn't find anything more about them.

Are they a new studio? Are they a subsidiary of a large company? I don't know. The fact that this voice acting, to me, suggests that someone big is bankrolling this, because I feel like pro-voice actors, which this game has in Japanese, don't come cheap.

But, again, it's a mysterious entity at this point. It's not out yet. There's a Steam page, but it just says 2025. So, if you want more vampire survivors with mecks and lasers, look up Steel Knights, Armis. SuperTax City. SuperTax City is not vampire survivors, but it does have roguelike elements because what you're doing is you're running a city, or you're working in a city. And the city is a big grid. and every couple turns

you put down a new building and depending on the buildings you choose you start making money because there's people in the city and the people walk around and they go to businesses and they make money and there's a countdown and at certain checkpoints the countdown reaches zero and the mayor of the city

appears says all right please pay your taxes and at first of course the taxes are very small I think the first stage the taxes are 10 coins or whatever which you make very easily but of course as the rounds go by, the taxes increase exponentially. They get very large. But if you play your cards right, because of course the upgrades are card-based, you can make a lot of money very

quickly, especially if you get things combo. This is very much a game that I think, you know, as a former magic player, I really appreciate because if you play things right, then you start to get these crazy combos where you've got a power plant that generates electricity and then a battery shop that consumes electricity but gives you lots of money. or video game stores that all complement each other and the more you have of them the more they all make money little things like that you know this randomness which of course is frustrating

but I had a lot of fun with this game I didn't finish it quote unquote but I unlocked all the stages and I kind of had to take a break from it same with the pesticides I not required like at a certain point with these games I reach a point where I say look if I don't stop playing this game and uninstalling it

I will never stop playing it for the rest of my life life, and it's going to take a break. But SuperTack City. Very good. It is out now on Steam. It came out in January. There's a demo. You can play the demo if you want to try it. I think it might be made by a Taiwanese studio or possibly Japanese because at bit some of the title was written in Kanji. But if you look up SuperTac City, you'll find it. And the game is fully in English. You don't have to worry about it. Don't worry about the language. It's got English. Don't worry about that. I was super into it. I loved it very much for math types like me who wants to do math combos.

Hit the sweet spot. Enter the Kronosphere. A game I never heard of before BitSummit. It was actually nominated for an award, which was cool. I don't know how to describe it quite so well. If you look at it, you get it. It's like kind of a top-down bullet hell game, but it's tactical in that even though it's all 3D,

it's not a shir-in, you know, style dungeon crawler with, there's no grid. You have free movement. but everything only moves when you move. It's turn-based in a free movement sort of way. Like, let's say your character shoots a gun. There's an enemy up ahead. You shoot a gun.

The bullet flies at your gun and stops. Once you start running, the bullet continues on its trajectory and the enemy might move or it might try to shoot you. It's very strategic. I got really in it really quickly. I don't know how much randomness occurs. I played it once and died right away because I didn't get it.

When I played it a second time, almost everything was different, including my starting weapons and the levels I could pick from. So I don't understand how random it is at this point, but there's clearly a lot of random elements to it. But once I figured it out, I really wanted to spend more time with it

and find more weapons and figure out different ways to abuse stuff. Like, I got a thing that could shoot through walls. I had a weapon that was very slow and had to be reloaded, but one bullet created a giant explosion. So I was just sniping guys, like crazy, because I'd launch it in their general vicinity

and then run behind a wall, and the bomb would just blow them up. I love that. So look that up. It's on Steam. Enter the Chronosphere. No release date. No demo as of this recording.

But hopefully something soon. Looked real good. Nominated for Awards. Epit Summit. Very impressive. Dun Jungle. Dun jungle is definitely playing on the fact that in Japanese, dungeon and jungle are perfectly... Those are the same sound, so it's a mashup.

Dun jungle. It looks a little weird in English, but... Yeah, I should spell it. D-U-N-J-U-N-G-L-E in English. It's already out on Steam Early Access, and there's a demo, so you can play it right now and try it. The short version, it's dead cells, but you're a monkey. Honestly, that's it. Like, 2D pixel art

looks really good. You enter a zone, you run around, you have some weapons, you get more weapons as you play. The enemies can overwhelm you. If they do, you go back to the start and you try again. But over time, you do unlock new things and you get access to more places. But every time you go into the ruins or whatever,

it's the levels, you never know what you're going to get. But I find it very appealing. The animation and 2D art were very good. The, your monkey, like, has an idle stance where it's sort of, it's huffing and puffing. And it's like, wow, this is a good, it's a good looking monkey. The controls felt good, too, a lot of, you know, jumping and rolling and things like that. So try that demo. I think you'll be impressed by it.

I don't generally buy into early access as a rule, but I don't know, I'm tempted by this one. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Dun jungle. And last one of this block, Star of Providence. And this is a very strange example. example. So Star of Providence, it was released on Steam in 2017. That's eight years ago. Also on Itchio. There's a demo. You can still go on there and find it right now. However, when it first came out, it was called monolith. Now, I don't know why they called a video game monolith. I feel like you got to do your homework when you release a video game. Monolith video game, that's already a thing. Indeed, I mean, the Warner Brothers shut it down not that long ago. But still, long history of monolith games. So at some point, maybe even this year, they relaunched.

They rebranded the new game. The new title is Star Providence, not monolith. Now, under this new name, you can find it on Steam, and you can find it on Switch, that on Switch 2. I think the new version is being published by Dunkie, the guy, the YouTuber guy who helped fund Animal Well. What's this thing called? Big games. Big mode games. yet. I'm sorry. But Donkey who makes

YouTube videos about video games was really into monolith when it first came out. So I think he helped them rebrand or whatever. I really said what it is. It's a twin stick shooter, but it's a procedural dungeon crawler. So like you're flying from room to room as a little spaceship

and you never know what you're going to find in each room, but there's weapons to pick up and enemies to shoot down and puzzles and keys to unlock. Like, really cool. All 2D graphics, really impressed. I was taken by it right away. I would say, if you want to look, look up the demo.

Look at the demo on Itchio. I think the demo is still called Monolith. That would get a taste for it. And if you like it, buy it on Switch or Steam, because I get the feeling this is a game you could play a lot if you enjoy shooters. Seriously, how do you name a video game monolith?

Even in 2017, you had Google. You could Google Monolith video game and see, oh, this name is taken. Whatever. It's called Star of Providence now. That's much better for SEO purposes. Hello, welcome back to the Miyako Messe basement, where the real business of BitSummit gets done. There's lots of people in here, lots of celebrity developers I can see, and executives, people showing their games, people who want to be famous.

Who knows? Who knows what dreams are taking place in this kind of poorly lit room? But I'm here with the developer, and why don't you please? Introduce yourself to the audience. Hi, my name is Pedro, Pedro Medeiros. I'm the developer of Neverway, artist and designer. Previously, I worked on Celeste and Tower Fall as a pixel artist. All right.

Those are some pretty big titles. Congratulations. Thank you. So you're showing this game Neverway, which certainly caught my attention. You've got a very big banner and you've got a character standee. Really, you know, if I may say so, to you personally, it's a very exceptional pixel art. So, my challenge to you, although you probably know this question is coming, how can you explain it every way? Because I played it and I don't know if I got to explain it myself.

But you're making it, so you've got an advantage. It's very hard to explain. It's okay. I have this problem multiple times trying to explain to people. But we're describing it as a life-seeing horror RPG. Okay. It's a, or I think someone said an anti-farming scene. Okay.

Which is basically, say, like, it's a mix of a bunch of things, right? The game has a strong, it's a narrative game first, and a lot of systems trying to carry this narrative forward. That's how we're saying. It takes the story, it's the story of Fiona, which is my protagonist. She loses her job, goes through a messy breakup, and she's probably like depressed, and she moves into an island, to run away from her problems and everything, where she starts her life again. But then something terrible happened, and then she becomes the immortal herald of a dead god. Okay, see, I didn't get that far in the demo.

I got as far as the island. I was like, oh, this is a new place. All right, I didn't see it at gods That's exciting The demo stopped We did like a very short Not very short It's still like 15, 20 minutes long

Yeah Quite a long demo But we did the demo Until you reach the island And that's where we stop it Yeah It's like on Harvest Moon Or Sado Valley's the intro of the game

Which is like Oh your Your grandfather Your father left you a farm But we have this part it's more like a playable. Right. Yeah.

So for me as a player, it was very much mysterious. I'm like, wait, how did I get here? You know, I didn't know. There's no mention of any uncles or grandfathers in the game up to that point. It's like, you know, no one says, oh, here's your farm. But, oh, wait, I'm on an island now? Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, later you'll see that you, she actually buys, like the place. She has a mortgage to pay, and the mortgage has horrible rates. Oh, okay, okay. So we're doing an Animal Crossing, Tom. There's a Tom Nook? There's a Tom Nook elementary, yeah. Yeah, you have a lot of games that's references, I would say. Mainly, like, yeah, Animal Crossing is a big one.

Harvest Moons, a big one. Of course, Stardue, but also, like, on the complete other side of the spectrum, we have, like, a bunch of horror games, like, Silent Hill, and even, like, Fear and Hunger, really, like, clock tower. Okay, okay, those are some frightening games. Yeah. I am frightened by those games. Excellent.

So if I may ask, where are you from originally? Originally, I'm from Brazil. Okay. We live in Canada. All right, live in Canada. Who is writing the script? Are you writing it in Portuguese? What's the creative process as far as the script goes?

Oh, the Isadora, she's the programmer and writer. Okay. She's writing in English. Okay. But she's also Brazilian. Okay. But we have an editor, check things up, everything. It is a hard process, but we're writing in another language,

so it's a little more, like I say, bureaucratic, but I think it's working. I really like, I love her writing, her style and everything. I usually do a little bit of the world building because this game has a lot of lore. Yeah, okay. So, like, she focused on the game story, everything, characters and everything and I do a little bit on the

piece I'm also drawing and I like to come up with the world that the game takes place to me. Hmm. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And so you're showing here at Bitsamut, I assume someone helped you with Japanese or do you already have a Japanese person on staff or? We have 8.4 is localizing the game. Oh, 8.4. Well, they're friends

of the podcast. Oh, nice. Maybe they're my friends too. I don't know. I don't know how they feel about me these days, but I feel like they're my friends. I've been on their podcast. Oh, nice. Yeah, they're great. We only, I mean, I cannot read Japanese, but I only heard compliments about the localization so far,

so I'm happy with it. All right. Well, always happy to hype 84, because they do good work over there. So what's, yeah, so what has been the reaction? Because whenever I've gone to your booth, you know, you have, I think, four different computers set up. Yeah.

And there's always been, like, every, the computers are always busy. They're always packed with people. So what kind of response have you been getting from people here at the show? So far, I think it's being very positive. I'm trying, like, honestly, one of the main reasons for us to be here, of course, to show the game I'd ever seen. But I also, it's almost like a test drive. I want to see how people react.

Yeah? And so far, I've seen a lot of positive reactions. People seem to like Fiona, the main character, and how things are going. And, yeah, I'm happy to, that our booth is constantly. The demo is quite long, too. That's another thing that kind of packs. So, yeah, but, yeah, being positive so far. Is this the first time you're showing the game publicly?

Yes. Oh, okay. So in any country? Yes. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, last time I showed the game was powerful, I think, 10 years ago or more. Oh, okay.

Yeah. But, yeah, it's been the first time, this is the only place so far that you can play the demo. But we will eventually have a public neighborhood. Oh, okay, okay. But we will still, like, see what we learn here, how we adjust and everything. So you were telling me off mic, this is your first trip to Japan ever? Yes. Wow, okay, because those other two games, I think, did pretty well here.

I thought maybe you might have come here promoting those games, but you're here with your game and you're here in Japan. Yeah, yeah, the first time here, I love the place. I'm, uh, it is, um, people hype Japan a lot. I tell the place is really, and you're always careful, but I'm always careful when I go to a place, but this place is amazing. It's, you know, the hype is true. Yeah. I live here. I'm, I'm a big fan. Yeah. Yeah, I love the place. I, yeah, I just arrived, um, but I can't wait to see more.

Hmm. Yeah, so how long are you in the country? Uh, just 10 days, 10 days, sure. But I really want to, already want to come back. Okay. Okay. Okay, okay. Well, if you can get down to Osaka, I personally recommend Osaka. It's a very nice place to visit, even though Kyoto has more historical landmarks of note. Osaka is just a nice big city, and I don't know.

I'm a city person, so I recommend Osaka name. Oh, right there. I have also big cities of persons. Yeah. Just get on the train. Kyoto to Osaka train is not long. No long ride. You can get down there.

Did you see anything else at the show that you got a kick out of? I was stuck on my booth a whole time. My feet hurt so much. But I didn't have any chance to walk around. I know there are some other games that I want to see that are cool here. There's the people from Sacrifier.

Keep driving. It's also here in a lot of the game. Yeah, but I haven't had the chance to walk around yet. Okay. Because I actually spoke to developer yesterday who said they were a fan of yours and they met you and they were very excited to meet you.

I was like, oh, wow. So people are here, bits of them at meeting their idols in the indie space. I was so happy to hear those news. Thank you. But yeah, I think there's a lot of really cool developers here. I met a lot of cool people, too. Like I mentioned, like the Gaffron, keep driving

to the game that I really enjoy. And I'm like, oh, it's here, like, let's meet. It's very rich meeting of people. And even after Bitswamit, there's like, by the river, there's a big congregation of people. Yes, yes. Apparently they were kicked out after at some point. I don't think me kicked out. The river is a public place.

I don't know. Unless they were inside the river itself. I don't see how you can get kicked out. I don't know. But I went there, people were having fun. It was great. I think it's a good community. It seems to be a really good community of indie developers here.

Yeah. Okay. Great. So, obviously, the game is Never, Never Way? Yes. Never Way, sorry. Title-wise, I'm confusing with at least three other games in my head. Yes, I notice there is never hollow, never wait, and never end the thing here.

Yeah. So obviously, people can look at the game Never Way. Is there anything you want to promote personally? Do people want to find your studio or social media or something? I think, yeah, the studio name is called Blood Ain. Cold Blunt, cold blood ink. Yes. And the game is never, I think the easiest way is just to look online in every way.

There's a theme page by now, right? Yes, okay. Please wish list. Yeah? Yeah, we just announced. We have a new trailer there. There's a community. We have a Discord.

Okay. Yeah. So I know it's always hard to say this, but do you think next year maybe or this year? We don't have any announcement of this yet. I would not, I don't want to promise anything. But it won't take that much, I think. I think I would say, yeah, I cannot promise it. Okay, I understand, I understand.

It's always impossible to say this. Yeah. But it's coming along, what I'm saying. It's coming along. It's coming along, you are. How long, actually, I didn't have asked that question earlier. About how long have you been working on Neveraway at this point? It's been two years or so, but full time is one year.

Okay. Wow. It started like as a side project, both for me and in the Dara, the programmer. And it slowly grew into something way bigger than we expected. And now it's a completely full-time thing. Mm-hmm. It was supposed to be an example game for the game engine that is Adora Mates. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Grew out of proportion really fast. My goodness. Well, if I'm making it myself, I think it's looking very nice. So I'm eager to find out what happens when it's finished. I think it's so much. All right. joining me.

And now let's keep things cool. I know what's hot outside. Let's keep it cool. Talking about some cool games that don't fit in any of the category I've mentioned so far. Starting with Dreams of Another. And this comes to us from Q Games. Q games, of course, long history. We all know Q games.

I hope we all know Q games at this point. But this is unlike most other Q games's games. because the third-person shooter is what you think when you look at it, but it's not actually, I mean, you are a character holding a gun and you shoot that gun, and shooting the gun feels good, but as the title implies, you're in some kind of dream world, your character is literally wearing pajamas, and you start off in this sort of haze, like nothing really makes sense, it's all kind of blurry, so as you shoot your gun, the world kind of falls into place. This, again, it's really hard to explain, but if you look at it, it makes much more sense. And it's a dream world, so as you're playing it, you will talk to people, but also objects, like things on the ground, animals, doors. I was talking to a bunch of doors, and the doors, the doors are stuff to say, man. They've seen some shit. So, yeah, surreal exploration is what I'd call it.

But the shooting, with grenades, there's probably even more representative. that I didn't find. The demo only had really those two weapons. Bayon? B-A-I-O-N. I think it's called, I think he calls himself Bion, the musician slash artist who's been working with them for many, many years. He's doing the music. He's involved in this project. Again, looks cool. Plays well. I'm very interested in it. When it comes out, this October, I was playing on a PS5, but I believe it's coming to Steam as well. So look that up. Dreams of another. games going a little more action, but not the kind of action you would expect.

Even cooler, if you can imagine this, Node, the last favor of the Antari. Antari is A-N-T-A-R-I-I. This is a game, it's very hard to explain, but again, once you play it, you get it. I'd call it a 2.5D puzzle programming platformer. You start off, this robot, going into an old nuclear, plant that's got some kind of problem. It's radioactive. So people can't go in. So they're sending you, the robot,

you go in there. And as robots go, you're not like an Android. You're a little guy on wheels. Not quite Wally, but you're closer to Wally than you are data from Star Trek. What happens in Node is that once you get inside the plant,

the little robot has to be autonomous. You can't issue one-to-one commands. So what you start doing is the robot will stop, you'll give it a sequence to follow, and then it will do that sequence until it reaches the next safe spot. Or it breaks and falls down, and you have to start over. So it's a really interesting, kind of a programming challenge. You have to think things out.

Obviously, you experiment, you know? Like, do you want to move the robot forward for eight seconds or ten seconds? One of those numbers is safe. One of those numbers, it falls down. So obviously it doesn't penalize you for screwing things up. you just keep trying. But all this is while it's telling a story, because as you explore this nuclear power plant,

things start happening. There's no people there, of course, but there are still entities that can interact with you. Interesting stuff. Looks really cool. Like I said, you're playing on mostly a 2D plane, but you do some lane shifting later on. But it's all done up in 3D graphics with lighting.

Looks very good. The big mystery is, Who is making this game? The credits cite Laspus Games, L-A-S-P-U-S, Las P-U-S. Their website just says, two technical artists who have been working in animation industry for the past 20 years.

Okay, who are you, though? What are your names? Can you give us something? The website gives us nothing. So it's very mysterious in that regard. Give the little polish. I cannot but wonder if this is something that's being quietly funded by a lot of,

larger company and they've just two employees got a deal. I don't know what that is. I don't know what it means. All I know is the demo I played, which is on Steam right now, you can play it too, immediately got my attention, immediately wishlisted. Right now it says Q3, 2025. So that's coming up soon. Hopefully, when it gets close to release, we can find out who actually made this game, because it looks really great, especially, you know, for the two artists, like, there's got to be more. There's got to be more than two people who made this game. Unless these two people We've been working on this for like seven years because, again, looks phenomenal. They talk about animation.

The little robot has so many animations. It's so well animated. Really? Check it out. Node. N-O-D-E. Node. Pizza Bandit.

You cannot call a game Pizza Bandit without getting my immediate full undivided attention. So first of all, I'm very happy to say, this is not a game about stealing pizza. What monster would make such a game? No, you do not make that. That's not what this game is about. out. In this game, which is a third person action game, of course it is. You are a mercenary chef and you get these orders, the orders come in for food, you have to run around a kitchen or some similar environment, get the ingredients you need, and ship them out to fulfill the orders.

But while you're doing this, your kitchen or factory or base or farm or whatever it is is under siege by enemies or monsters or aliens. I don't know what they are. So you'd fight them off with guns and explosives and giant pizza cutters, which are melee weapons. It is cooperative. You have four players. The version I played at Bits of it was indeed four player co-op. We were all just sitting there on four laptops. Now, the developers told me they have balanced it so you don't have to play at co-op.

If you play it by yourself, you can still get the job done. It's obviously more frantic, but you can still get the job done. You can still complete your orders and kill off them on. that are trying to kill you. But I've got a strong hunch. This is very much a game that's about co-op. So I hope when it comes to early access, this month, when I saw it in July, they said it's coming to early access in August.

So by the time you hear this, it might be out yet. Or maybe they delayed it. I don't know. But looking for Pizza Bandit. It played really well. You know, I've played a fair number of third-person shooters by now. The movement was pretty good. And the shooting was good.

I enjoyed the melee stuff. The cooking stuff is actually pretty complicated because the tasks are very specific. So you really want to communicate with your teammates like, oh, we need mushrooms. Who's getting the mushrooms? Because if both of you go out and get the mushrooms and one of you comes back and put the mushrooms in, then the mushrooms are done. You don't want to put in double mushrooms. That'll ruin the order. That's not what they ordered.

So you really got to coordinate with your teammates as far as who needs what ingredients and who's on, you know, killing monster duty or whatever. And also, since there was a long line to play it, I saw other people play through the game a couple times. Very different stages. You know, I played it. We were in some sort of farm, and we were, like, there were chickens. You had to kill the chickens and roast them as part of the ingredients. Other people were, like, in some kind of, like, space kitchen with giant rockets. And the rockets, you had to put the pizza ingredients into the rocket and ship the pizzas off to whoever wanted the pizza.

So, again, totally different experiences, totally different stages. It's all players versus enemies, by the way. It is not a versus game. Like, you have to worry about fighting off your teammates. Your teammates or your teammates, work with them to make the best possible pizza or roast chicken or whatever it is you're making.

I liked it. Because I like pizza. And my last game recommendation for this episode, Horses. Listen carefully, okay? Open a web browser. Go to Horses. Dot, W-T-F-H-O-R.

S-E-S-D-W-2-F. Don't read the website. Don't watch the trailer. Don't educate yourself at all. Just scroll down as fast you can. Find the mailing list. Sign up for the mailing list. That way you'll know when something comes out.

Because right now, there's no Steam page. It's just this website. I don't know who the developer is. I think they're Italian. I don't know what's going to happen in this game, because honestly, given the recent kerfuffle over adult content,

on Steam and Itchio and stuff of this nature. I don't know if horses are going to have to do some kind of transformation to make it to release, because the demo I played was all kind of WTF stuff. Like, what the fuck is going on here? I would, I would call it Lynchian. I would call it Lynchian, honestly. I don't want to tell you more about it. All I want to say is, of all the demos I played in the last, geez, six weeks, I think,

of doing BitSummit prep, this is the one I think about the most. It's the one I never forget. It's the one that's easy to remember because the name is Horses. I'm super excited to play this game. I really want to play this game. I don't want to learn anything else about it. And I suggest you do the same. Horses.

Dot W-T-F. Last but certainly not least, I wanted to share this extra special conversation I had at a coffee shop, which will remain nameless, across the street from Miyako Mesa. Yoshiro Kimura is a veteran game developer with work dating back to the 90s who will return to the limelight in the internet age, thanks to his early appearances, at Bittes. Summit. I've always sought out to speak to Mr. Camura whenever I attend any Japanese event, because I view his earnest and frank nature to be wonderfully refreshing. This guy loves video games as an art form, and he's doing his best to imbue his work at Onion Games with said love. Please keep in mind that Mr. Camura is not a native English speaker, so during our interview, he oscillates between English and Japanese.

At times, I try to summarize what he said and respond with my opinions. You may also hear the voice of James Ragg, that's W-R-A-G-G-by-the-way, interpreting Mr. Kimura's answers into English. Also keep in mind that of all the interviews I conducted over the weekend, this one was outdoors, and thus has the most interference from insects, automobiles, and random pedestrians. I think there's at least one siren as well, just for fun. Still, I hold Mr. Kimura in such regard that I hope you forgive all these issues and enjoy his thoughts on game development, politics, muscle mess, mental health, and his upcoming English release of Stray Children.

Enjoy the interview. So, yeah, as we were talking before we started, yeah, so you and I met at the very first BitSummit in 2013 so very much to me you were like Mr. Bitsummit. I know that James Milky and other people have been very

involved in making Bitsummit but from my perspective you are Mr. Bitsummit because I met you that first time and you told me your story and it was very moving. I was very honored to meet you you. I, honest, I didn't know your games from the past

but I met you that day I was like, oh my goodness, I want to play this man's games and whatever comes next. And now you have onion games. It's very exciting. I'm not sure. I'm not used to being praised. Yeah, you're not used to being praised. Okay.

Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. It's really hard. Okay. Okay? Um, but it's really long. Bit Summit is in 2013, right?

Yes. So, uh, there's, 20, 12, yes? Yeah, 13?

That's right. Right now, it's 2025, so 12 years ago. Yes. Miraculous that you've made games for so long. Okay. So, like, so,

so, Yeah, Bits Summit. It's both floors now. It's huge. That's Taekugan in a meeting, you know, that's a big time. It was like a little box. Yeah, yeah. We were in, it was over on the east side somewhere. I forget where, I forget the name.

Yeah, it was like a meeting hall, and there was a stage, and there was this one big room, and everyone at the tables, and we sort of... The press were up on that. Yeah, there was some space up top, but most of us were down there, Everyone at the tables, and we're like, okay, let's go this way, let's go this way. And some people have video games to show, and some people just had, you know, sketches.

You know, you showed me your sketches of the naked policeman. I remember the naked policeman very well. Yeah. Which I think he became the naked game designer, right? Ah, so, so Yamada. Yeah, Yamada. Yamada. Yeah, so I guess what you saw was just naked policeman.

Yeah. And it's not that that became Yamada in so much as, you know, I've always found, like, this image of the half-naked, middle-aged guy, funny. Yes. There used to be a guy who lived around my neighbour would like that. Oh, okay. I've seen a guy like that in my name, but I'm sorry. Yeah. So it's not that that game became Yamada, as much as that image has always been loved up there.

It's like comedy. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And, yeah, the naked policeman, I borrowed the engine, the size of one engine. I'm supposed to say. That's game, I know. Yeah, pixel. We built a game out of that, or at least part way.

Okay. To use his engine, okay. I try to speak English. Okay, I appreciate it. I remember it was, I was 42 years old. Oh. And that moment, I was not working well. Mm-hmm.

And I didn't have a proper job in video game industry. Yes. And I was almost giving up a life. And before I make the onion games, I remember I need to find out my job. And I want to work without a video game. Oh, okay. I really write the, you know, introducing the text,

and I send the letter to the some convenience. to some convenience store's pastime job. Oh, but no one answered back to me. Oh, yeah. So, oh, I am the age who cannot work in convenience store already. I noticed like this. And after that, I went to the IGF of San Francisco. Mm-hmm.

And I was shocked. This is a moment. I decided again I should make game again and I was crying in front of a Brandon Boyer. Brandon Boyer, okay. Brandon Boyer was speaking in front of a big screen of video game and... Indie Jesus. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. He's a muster like this.

Everybody, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, video game is like this in the U.S.? Really, I know something different between Japanese and the American video game industry and all of the American culture. Yes. You know, culture is okay. Okay. Politics is question mark, right?

Yeah. Maybe they're okay. But from TV news, when I see the TV news, I'm not happy to see the... American or something. No, no, no. I'm the same way, believe me. Every morning, I hope that there's no news from America

because I don't want to see it. I don't want to see it on my Japanese news. But once I remember the memory of the IGL what the good place U.S. was. So still, I have a hope about video game.

The whole of the world. Not only U.S. but also Japan and Spain. A lot of indie video game friends all of the world, they are very good people. Yes. So this is something, the hope of the future. So now, I think,

then I came back to the BitS Summit again here. I see the Bid Summit, and Bid Summit become a huge event like this. Yeah, massive. Maybe same level as PGS or something. So, yeah. something very good to be good to feel. Yeah, it must be. Shabbata, shabbata.

Yes, thank you. So, um, at that point, Onion Games was just you, right? Just by yourself? So at this point, how many people are in Onion Games? How many people? Now, seven. Seven.

Yeah. Okay. Seven. Only seven. That's more than one. Yeah. I think I remember, sometimes it's become 15 or 20, but becoming smaller and smaller recently. But smaller is okay also.

Yeah. I like a compact feel. Yeah. Then we made a stray children. The street children was made by only seven thousand. Okay. It was very hard. And still, still, it is very hard now.

Right, you're still going. Yeah, because now we are making an English version of the storage of Duran. Yes. And maybe already we spent three years. Three years? Three years. And the last moment, the December of Japanese release day, we were almost dead

almost dead if I start to speak about how it was hard then I will vomit again oh no don't vomit please okay

most important things is forget something very hard and then I can try to work for next hard work Oh, okay. I think so.

Like this. Yeah, still I'm working for three children because for the English version I'm a political system a little bit. Battle system, okay. I want to make it better than now.

Yeah. So I want to show to the English-Urish people much better straight children. Ah, okay. And also to the Japanese people also. Hmm.

Right, because the game came out last December in Japanese, only on Switch, right? Right. So right now, the English version that you're working on, that will be on Switch and Steam. So because you're translating it, you're also making improvements, changing things. So this will be like 2.0, maybe, version 2.0? I don't know, I don't know. Strachield like that, it's not.

Difficult game? Okay. Yeah, it's not, user-friendly not, I don't want it to be user-friendly really user-friendly to want it to be user-friend-friendly. Okay. So, pretty much any game you play now at this, especially Nintendo stuff,

is going to be user-friendly. if you used to play with all the ruff edges, moved off, you just have a smooth experience, you know, we're not walking dark souls, and most of you. Yes. And I understand that you've played smash water or something like that. Right.

Like, you know, smooth as silk. Mm-hmm. And I understand that, and I understand it's probably a good idea to do that, but I don't want to deliver that kind of experience. I want to deliver something different. Yes. Almost as if I'm, you know, going,

intentionally going against the trends. Yeah. I want to deliver something that's you know it's going to challenge the player not just go you know feed it to a month late yeah no that's been in the news a lot lately

because death straining too came out last month and there was a quote from Hideo Kojima who said that the game was playtesting and people he said people liked it too much the playtesters were too excited

Oh, you know, you saw the story, yeah. Yeah, I understand. But, so, I'm sorry, but, I'm sorry, but, I'm sorry, but you're not quite quite that's cool, yeah. So he, he can say it, he can say it, he's a big star. And everybody goes, wow, that's so cool. Right. But I say the same thing, it's like, you can't make it used a friendly game anyway, you're just, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you know. important factor. Yes. Muscle is very important for making video game. Muscles are important, really? Yeah, okay. For making video game, I need to keep help, right? Yes.

But not only body for mind, I should my mind keep quiet, calm. Even if someone would do something wrong, I should not say, Oh wow. Yeah? Yeah. I should say, can you do that?

Please do something like this, yeah? With my smile. Uh-huh. What keeps my smile is muscle, maybe? Your muscles, okay. When I, you know, I'm not training like him, but I train often recently. Yes. Train my body like this, like this, right?

Yeah. Push-ups, yeah. Yes, yes. Me too. If I do like this every day, I feel something like, what's going to be better and better. Yeah, really, like, mental health becoming better and better. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and I walk every day alone, then my mental health becomes better and better.

And then I can concentrate to the making video game every day, every night, like when I was young. Mm-hmm. So, this helps my working for the straight children very much. Yeah. Like, like, like, if I was not, like, like, push up open. Yeah, couldn't do push-ups? No. You could not have finished the game without those push-ups.

You needed the push-ups. Yeah. I don't know what I do, but... They're related. Okay. ...can have the same way. Over the last five years, I've been... I've gone through a lot of different shapes.

Like, I was very heavy, and then I was exercising a lot, and I actually got very skinny. And in recent years, I've kind of put some weight back on because I work from home now. But, you know, I was, I went from very fat to skinny to sort of middle now, yeah. So you're going to, like, becoming small. Yes. But I understand, because my, over that time, my mental state has changed.

Yes. I'm kind of, like, I thought, like, so, but, actually, um, but, actually, um, but, just, a little, a little, kind of, kind of, you know, I noticed, uh, I noticed, uh, how mental keeps well, I don't. But still I'm feeling the last moment of my making video game life. Oh, I was still, you know, I'm now 50-something, right? Yeah, 50-something. Sure, yeah. But still, I'm in front of unity and I'm making game scripting a little bit. Mm-hmm, every day. Yeah, every day, every day. And writing a message. a lot and commanding to the people you do like this like this like this

like this like this every day I feel my old old something 80 yeah for example your eyes yes morning is okay meeting is okay but after 18 o'clock six p.m. Mm-hmm. Like, my eye, become a very strong. So, sitting on it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not. Yeah. So, yeah. I wonder, can I continue to work game like this? Yes, or no. Mm.

Next year, yes, no. These are the jackets. Yeah. Limit of my life. my knife Yeah It's

Yeah, it's real It's real, yeah Yeah, Well, maybe that's a good segue, because I wanted to ask, because before this, the Onion Games games have been kind of small, you know, like Yamada Sam was a phone game and a very one-screen phone game, and the shooters, yeah, Blackbird, you should be flying around, and you had the Lamour, which was a,

You know, only for the Onion Club members. But three children seems to be very big in scope compared to other projects. And I want to know, like, what motivated you to go from small projects to big project? From the first error of Onion Games, I was speaking to the people, I want to make RPG. You wanted RPG, okay. But that moment I was talking about it, I cannot do that. because this is not my character and I don't think my fame is not important for kicker, not enough for Kickstarter.

So I was wanting to make RPG very much but it was not possible for me. After Mignon Hotel, after Yamada Kun and Bradford, we become stronger and stronger, better and better every year. Yes. And also my limit come. Your limit. My life limit will come.

So, so... I decided to that. This is the timing to change, challenge to make RPG. Yeah. So that is three years ago or four years ago. Hmm. So, really I say this is a... first and the last RPG of Orion Games.

Maybe I cannot do the same volume, the same amount of game, like Strait Little. Right. I don't know. Maybe I want to try to make something different type, but Strait Children is really so big, too big for indie game. Mm-hmm. It's big. Okay. RPGs?

So. Um, Indie and that's like, it's like, that's

that's Yeah, that kind of this is uh, what he was speaking to me is

the, uh, attitude about the localized localization, yes. Um, for example, moon,

uh, When we were translating Moon, I was reading all of the text. Yes. And I checked and everything. Okay. Yeah. You know, I'm not good at speaking English to do like this, but when I read the speaking English script, yes.

I maybe somehow I understand what's a different speech. between what is what right okay this is something strange this is something wrong then I comment something then I asked you James and James say oh I don't know I'm not I can't be the translator but only I am the person who can understand the the story. Yes. So, who care? I do. Yeah, of course, it's your game. Yeah. So, so, and I, um, after the rule of laws, I noticed it, um, low price is very important. Yes. So, after that, I studied, continue to, uh, continue to, uh, continue studying English a lot. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, uh, working for no more heroes and other things yeah of course there is a super special translator and they were wonderful yes but I must read I read okay okay like this like this and the moon I give the same and the next challenge is story children's localization yes we are working very hard. Yeah. Still, this is the first step of English translation. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. What about that? So even, like, in Moon, the character names... Yes. Same as strange children. The character names and the world building in the middle wall. There's all of a play-on words that has... Like, I consider myself reasonably good of Japanese. But when Smurtham was explaining the, not just a double-meet,

or sometimes quadruple meaning behind some of the character names and the names of the, you know, places and things in the end. Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. And then trying to get that into English. Yeah. There's some special wordsmith, Regal. Mm. Are you localizing straight children?

Nope. No, okay. Okay. Okay. Well, um, can I ask who is localizing? Is that, can you say that yet? Or is it the secret? Uh, uh,

... ... ... Okay. Can't say it, but... Okay. Can't say yet. Alright.

Okay. Okay. You see, like, localize, culturalize, not. Oh, culturalized. Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of localized guys are calisarizing more than you do you know,

I'm not anything anything do you know, like, oh hagi, yeah. O'Hagi? Yeah, there's no

English for O'Hagie, yeah, it's a little snack, I don't know, I don't know how to describe it, it's a hockey, it's a lot of it. It's, it's, it's,

they're made, so, I don't want to gohiji or other item to make not. So I'm not a big fan of that, well, personally anyway, I'm not looking with straight children to go the full culturalisation route.

I think, you know, some local position companies will say that, you know, you need to culturalise this, you need to change this so it works in the US or the Europe or whatever. Yeah. But like you're saying,

you know, Ohagi is an O'Hagi is a Japanese suite. Yeah. Can't really change it to a handbook or something. Yeah. I want to, the proper nouns, the character names, the items, the places, etc. I'm trying to leave those as is as much as possible. Yeah. So it's more, for me at the moment, it's not about who's localizing it,

so much as how localizing it. Yeah. What are directions, and that's the direction we're taking. Well, yeah, I noticed in the portion I played, right, there was a Tanupin and Tanutan, like, those are very Japanese. character names but then when the animals

talked of course they were using you know English animal sounds like oink right Japan and Japanese

pigs don't say oink but in American English they say oink so yeah it makes sense I get it so you look at this yeah

I understand I understand and yeah also in the in the hut you know there was a rice ball I know

you've spoken about you know like rice balls on the guinea many times in the past. Like, so, yeah, oh, so-huh, rice bowl, also, like, omni-giri, it's a good example, Yamada, in the English version, it was set in Japan.

Yes. So, onigiri was left, that's onigiri. Okay. English version. But with straight children, we've got O'Hagi, and O'Hagi can't really be explained outside of saying, it's like a sweet rice ball. Right.

But if rice ball isn't rice ball, it's onigee, then you're saying to people who don't understand what the onigiri is, it's like a sweet onigili is, it's like a sweet Onigiri, and they're like, well. Yeah. Okay. And in that context, the strange children isn't set in Japan.

It's like an imaginary world somewhere. Sure. So, and rice ball works as an ex, it works outside of Japan thought. Right. Sometimes in Japan, people call it rice old for it. Yeah. So we've got that in place.

That means that Ohagi can be, if you understand what this is, you know what in the Hague needs. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So that? Yeah. No, I've, I'm seeing it. Just the other day, at 7-11,

I saw an origiri that actually said rice ball in English. And I think maybe even Karaka too, I think rice bowl. So I think they're, they understand that, you know, as they grow in popularity, more people are seeing these foods and wanting to eat them, you know. I think even American now, I think, is having, they're trying to introduce more Japanese foods into 7-Eleven in America. because 7-Eleven in America is just, you know, very cheap, not really good reputation food whereas here in Japan, 7-Eleven is pretty good, I think. Yeah, like last year, years ago, when tourism started coming back,

there was some really big viral posts about people going to convenience stores and buying an egg sandwich. Or like a rice bowl and say, look at Japanese convenience stores. Do it, oh, wait a bit? Yeah, no. Inbound of, you're going to be there may, right? American convenience store like that's

super-humane store and compared to super-humane and there's a whole and also also, also protein's yeah,

there's many of the back to muscle again. Yeah, I'm I'm basically muscle man not really,

but I don't well, I guess as you said like straight children might be the first and last RPG at Onion Games and you've already

you've already, you released and you're localizing it, but, you know, so it's not done, but you're sort of, are you already thinking about what might be next, you know, if RPG is too big again, are you going to try, you know, you've done shooting, you've done these puzzles, you've done RPG, is it, is it time for Onion Games fighting game, or? No, no idea. No, no, too soon, yeah.

Hintrae. Some, yeah. I'm going to, like, my image is already, now my only game team is becoming very strong. Yes.

You know, the three children was so hard. Yeah. Everybody worked till the limit. Yeah. So I believe them very much.

And now I cannot I cannot say I should sometimes I want to give up making games. I, you know,

I can release the Onion Game. But for my team, for me, we should make one more something. But I cannot answer back very good. If you like this, I want to make this game like this. Sure, sure. If I can say it like this, it's good. But only what I can say is I should make one more. make one more yeah or die yeah I understand I understand I know so that's it

yeah really I want to make one more game but it depends on my health yeah it depends on my working style while I'm making the three children in English version I must concentrate to make game but also I must concentrate to my health yeah so then I can I can think what I should make I understand I can't. Okay. Yastah!

Shabbata. Yeah, well, though. Thank you for having me and speaking with me, you know. I, uh, hopefully we can, you know, share your words and your message with the, with the people out there because I know you have more fans than ever now, you know?

So, excited. Thank you. That'll do it for this weekeracketit, Mickey, Rickerac, Dick, and Cattlemon, Catamom, Peter, Rang, Kagamon, Avicatimov, Ketamon. That'll do it for this week's episode of Retronauts. I want to thank all of my guests,

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