At the Tokyo Game Show’s indie game corner, creative titles are exhibited every year from not only Japan but from all over the world, but in recent years Taiwan has been increasing its presence in terms of both the number and quality of exhibitors.
Up until now, exhibitors outside of Japan had been dominated by American and Korean developers, but now there are as many titles from Taiwan on display as there are from both countries, and there is no overlap in style or genre, and there is a rich variety. This is the lineup. From among them, I would like to introduce some of the titles that particularly caught my attention.
Expressing serious incidents and problems with Moe pictures
Erotes Studio, founded in 2014, is a studio that specializes in developing adventure games using so-called “Moe pictures” that are familiar to Japanese people. The level of graphics was extremely high, and the booth stood out in the venue.
However, a feature of the company’s titles is that their content is more serious and realistic than you can imagine from their cute graphics.
First of all, the background of the story of his debut work “Rain Port Keelung” is the long-term oppression and oppression of Taiwanese people (Taiwanese who had Japanese nationality since the Japanese colonial period) by the Chinese Kuomintang government in 1947. Massacre incident “2.28 Incident”. The title “Rain Port Keelung” is a port town in northern Taiwan where the Chinese Nationalist Party landed after the end of the war, and when making it into a game, they actually researched the local cityscape and recreated the cityscape at that time.
The following year, in 2015, the company released “Satatsu Mari”, which was themed on the 1998 Chinese exclusion riots in which Chinese residents (Chinese) were systematically assaulted and massacred throughout Indonesia. In 2007, he released “She, Him, and Her Penghu Bay”, which was based on the military false accusation incident that occurred in Penghu Bay, Taiwan.
Not only the development speed of releasing original titles one after another, but also the style of sharply cutting into the negative history of Taiwan and Greater China through Moe pictures is amazing! All three titles were highly acclaimed in Taiwan’s game and content industry and received numerous awards.
The company’s latest work is “Miaoli’s Stone Tiger Girl,” which has a motif of anthropomorphic animals, in contrast to its previous works, which have been based on historical events.
The story depicts a love story in which the main character, a pharmacist working at a pharmacy in Taipei City, is transferred to a store in his hometown of Miaoli County, and on his way home he picks up a girl with cat ears and they live together from then on. The girl’s true identity is an endangered Bengal wildcat (Chinese name: Shihu).
In other words, the film pretends to be about living together with a beautiful girl, but it is actually about the rarity of endangered species and the importance of protecting them.
In addition, as the story progresses, other endangered species (beautiful girls) that live in Taiwan will also appear, allowing you to deepen your understanding of their ecology. In a sense, the company’s titles can be said to be serious games that use Moe pictures.
It seems that the company is currently working on making each title multi-platform and translating it, so the day may come when you can play the company’s titles in Japan as well.
Erotes Studio official website
https://www.erotes-studio.com/
A puzzle game with a reversal of ideas
Studio is an indie game developer based in Taipei since 2017. So far, they have created Battle Galaxy, a fighting game for smartphones using Unity, Battle Airship, a fighting game for PC in which you control a flying steam battleship, We have been actively releasing new games every year since our establishment, including our first character-based action battle game for smartphones, “Funk Battle.”
Artwork and demos of past works are displayed on the company’s official website, and the styles are all disparate and varied, showing the company’s wide range of possibilities.
At this year’s Tokyo Game Show, the company was exhibiting a demo version of its first non-competitive smartphone puzzle game, CUUUBE.
As you can see, this game features Minecraft-style voxel art-style graphics, and at first glance it looks like a falling object puzzle, but it’s actually the opposite. It is true that cubes are falling from the sky to the ground, but we fire a beam from the ground to break them up and prevent the cubes from colliding with the ground.
Instead of erasing the cubes by dropping them downwards, the behavior of erasing them by shooting a beam from the bottom to the top was innovative, and it was a title that required a different perspective than previous puzzles.
It is currently in the development stage and the release date has not been determined, but the goal is to release it within 2020. The latest information on development progress and titles is published not only on the company’s official website but also on its Facebook page, so if you are interested, please check it out.
Miso Studio official website
Miso Studio Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/MisoStudio/
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