Omega Quintet was a welcome addition to the PlayStation 4 library when it first came out in 2014. At the time, Japanese developers were only just warming up to the PS4, so it lacked the sort of bright, colourful JRPGs that have always found a home on Sony’s consoles. Then …
Set within a lordly mansion in the 19th-century English countryside, Ebi-hime’s kinetic novel Blackberry Honey tells a sweet, heartfelt story of unexpected romance among a pair of maids. After being unceremoniously dismissed from her previous job at Hartwell, she finds herself new work at Bly estate. A maid’s work is …
Shoot ’em ups are famous for their difficulty, but they also tend to find that sweet spot where the challenge is rewarding rather than frustrating. Most modern shmups will happily give you unlimited continues, letting the challenge from the game come from trying to keep that continue count as low …
Over the last few years, we’ve seen an explosion in support for entry-level game development tools like RPG Maker and GameMaker. Such tools were once written off as too simplistic to make “real” games, but the current indie boom has given these engines and the games made with them a …
Despite its prominent place in Japanese art history, there haven’t been too many games that channel ukiyo-e; Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines, it’s Japan-only predecessor Ore no Shikabane wo Koete Yuke, and Tokyo Tattoo Girls are the only ones that come to mind. Asakusa Studios, based in Tokyo’s historic Asakusa district, is …
In Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, many communities have no access to clean water. Travelling miles each day to find collect water and lug it back home is a task that falls overwhelmingly on women, taking away from time they could spend learning and helping their families. The UN …
Playing through Four Horsemen for the first time, I assumed that the writer was from Southeast Asia. The group of immigrant teenagers at the centre of the game had a way of talking that mirrored the slang I heard growing up in a community with a lot of Filipino and …
From the brilliant mind of Miwashiba comes 1bitHeart, an a funny, heartfelt adventure game about making friends and coping with social anxiety. A few hundred years from now, in a time when everyone and everything is connected to a central network by “BitPhones”, a boy called Nanashi lives alone in …
It’s been only a couple of months since Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood launched, but for some of us it feels like a lot longer. As good as this expansion is, some of the most anticipated content wasn’t due until the first major patch. Patch 4.1 hasn’t taken any longer than …
Moero Chronicle is a lewd game. It knows this and it owns it, and there’s something refreshing about that. This is an ecchi game through and through: it’s full of scantily-clad women and liberally employs clothing destruction and rubbing mechanics. That’s obviously not going to be for everyone, but Moero …
