As has been the case for the last couple of years of the Tokyo Game Show, a lot of the coolest games could be found bundled off in Hall 9, where the Indie Corner area was set up. This year, the Indie Corner was sharing the hall with the always-popular Merchandise Corner and the newly-added Virtual Reality Corner, something that certainly brought more traffic if nothing else. I’ve gone over some of the games that could be found in the Indie Corner already, such as Glyph Quest Chronicles from We Heart Dragons, and Gesuido from Ryosuke Mihara, but there were a few other interesting games that bear mentioning.
Certain types of games work better on busy show floors than others. Point and click adventures are a little tough to get into in a noisy atmosphere, so I couldn’t really get as much into the few cool-looking games of that genre as I wanted to. The excellent Bertram Fiddle was there with a demo of Episode 2, which seems to be coming along quite well. It’s due to release this November. If you like adventure games and haven’t checked out Episode 1 ($1.99) yet, you should really get on that. We didn’t officially review it, but if we did, it would get a keen thumbs-up, friends.
Coming at the adventure genre from the other side of the coin was Strange Telephone from Yuta Yamamoto. It’s a Yume Nikki-like game where you control a girl who travels to strange worlds by answering incoming telephone calls. It’s an odd sort of scenario, but after you adjust to the bizarre setting, you’ll find an intriguing point and click mystery. This game is due out soon in Japan, with an English release set to follow next year. The retro-style pixel art on this one is as gorgeous as it is abstract, and it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on if you’re looking for something a little different.
MagicalRod was showing off a few of their already-released titles, including Figure Skating Animals (Free), Name in the Mirror (Free), and Panda no Tap-Tap: Sora no Tabi (Free). The first game is a fairly simple sim game with some weird-looking animal designs. Name in the Mirror is a challenging puzzle game that has you trying to move Chinese characters together to form a name. Panda no Tap-Tap is a cute spin on Doodle Jump, more or less. These games are all in the English App Store right now, though Panda no Tap-Tap is entirely in Japanese.
Compared to previous years, there were a lot more PC games in the Indie Corner, but there were still plenty of mobile games to go around. There weren’t as many RPGs this year as there were at the last couple of shows, but these things tend to go in cycles. It’s hard to complain too much when we’re seeing so many different games from around the world, though. It was once again a pleasure to check out the Indie Corner at the Tokyo Game Show, and I’m already looking forward to what might be there next year.
