Friday, September 8, 2017

Twitter Roundup 9/9

Recently these roundups have focused heavily on mobile games, so this time I'm going to throw in a couple for the keyboard-and-mouse crowd.



PC / Mac


[VN] Sangoku Rensenki Sakigake (Love and War of the Three Kingdoms: Foreunner) (Demo)

You're a high school student chatting with your friends during history class, to the annoyance of your teacher. While wondering about plans with your friends after school- pancakes or studying?- you suddenly find yourself... in the middle of a battle?! And in your hands is... your history book?! Come to think of it, this scene is awfully familiar...!

Even if you're not into otome games (visual novels, or "romance simulator games", generally made for young women), you've got to admit, they're great for language practice: you have a long story with recurring characters, meaning much of the same vocabulary will come up frequently, so even without a dictionary you can figure out at least a few from context. Furthermore, you can read along while listening to the characters, giving you both reading and listening practice. Sure, the same goes for anime, but the nature of a visual novel lets you go at your own pace and gives you a motivating goal. Plus, the demo is free to download!

If you want a taste of the first few minutes of gameplay, you're in luck: Daisy2 uploaded the following on its official Youtube channel!


... if that piqued your interest, the full game went on sale on August 25th! It's available for...¥8964 (about $80)! Sure, it costs more than a textbook, but let's be honest, if you're like me you'd be far more likely to finish a game than go past the first lesson of "Japanese for So-and-So!"

Since it mostly takes place in the past you're going to run into some old-fashioned Japanese, earning this game a 3/3 on the Japanese difficulty scale.



Mobile (iOS / Android)


[Sim] To the Temple
From the App Store description (translated):



It's a simple idle game.Swipe to collect "virtue" (徳) and build up your temple!
This game is a step up from the sample game "The Temple" as it appears in MdN Corp's "[Unity Temple School: Introduction to Basic Smartphone Game Development]" (aka "[Master's Text 2]"), with system and production improvements and the addition of ads.
By comparing this with the sample in the book, you may find out what areas need adjustments to release the product as an app.
Additionally, it may serve as a sample of ad placement in apps.

Made by the author of the Unity textbook, "Unity Terakoya" (now on sale!), this is an upgraded version of the sample from the book. If you're interested in developing mobile games, you could buy the textbook and kill two birds with one stone!
Of course, you'll be in for some quite difficult language. Based on screenshots, the game itself gets a 2/3. Recognizing "徳" is probably easy enough; it's figuring out the feedback that you'll need some knowledge for!

[Sim] GlowHunter

This is the kind of game you don't need to micromanage: just wait for resources to pile up and decide how to use them. Gain companions, upgrade your armor, and try to accumulate as many Glow Stones as you can! And... there's a chicken in there?

0/3 language difficulty for the English version.


[Shooting] Time Locker

As the description says, the game only moves when your finger does. Sure, you're shooting at things, but you're an adorable pixellated, pastel-colored animal accompanied by sound effects fit for a carnival game.

But don't take my word for it!


Funnily enough, someone commented on Twitter that they didn't believe the developer was Japanese because the site is written completely in English. As you can probably guess, the language difficulty is 0/3.



Browser


[VN] Jami to Yobareta Yokai (A Spirit Called Jami)

This visual novel made in Tyrano Builder Pro should only take 30 minutes to an hour to complete. There's not much in terms of gameplay, but according to its website it's received a couple of awards. Here's the description on Freem Games (translated):


Walking home from middle school one day at the end of autumn, with winter approaching, a girl meets "something not human".
This is a story between something not human and a girl, a story that anyone could have.

The not-human (spirit?) doesn't speak much and the girl has the vocabulary of a middle schooler. That, along with the length, causes me to give it a 2/3. I haven't played it through yet, though, so if you've having trouble, I'll adjust the score.



That's all for this week! I believe I started out with 10 games per week, but 5 is much more manageable. I usually try to test out the games first, make sure they're available outside of Japan, cut those without at least a free demo, etc., but I share much more through Twitter! That's also where you can chew me out for problems with the site.
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