Spirit Hunt Progress #2

26/02/2013 / Jakke Elonen / Leave a comment

The 99 Spirits IndieGoGo project just hit 40% of target funding – big thanks everyone!

To commemorate that, we’re launching a 4-day 40% discount for our previous release, War of the Human Tanks – you can head over to Desura to grab your copy.

Shizuru expresses her gratitude like only she knows how.

Also, here’s an update on the current status of the localization:

We just finished working on chapter 7 out of of 12 of the story.
The game mechanics are starting to be in playable condition – as illustrated by this gameplay preview we put together last week.

We’ll still need to perform a lot of play testing before the release, and there may yet be large changes ahead. However, the first compiled versions are starting to look pretty good.

We are working on a trial version and aim to have it complete by the time the IndieGoGo project closes – note that one of the pledge rewards features an early access to the trial a week ahead of others!

99 Spirits – Playing the Game

19/02/2013 / Jakke Elonen / Leave a comment

Our IndieGoGo project for 99 Spirits is running well – in the first week we have raised 31% of the total goal, which is cause enough for celebration. Big thanks to everyone who has already helped us there!

One theme has come up repeatedly in comments since our entry to Steam Greenlight and IndieGoGo – many players would like to see detailed gameplay footage from the English version.

After many revisions and 4 days of recording, here it is: the first English gameplay footage from 99 Spirits.

Do note that the video above is from a pre-alpha version of the game, and all content is subject to change.

We found that trying to explain the gameplay in a compact video isn’t an easy task due the puzzle mechanics mixed in. I tried to shoot different aspects of the gameplay, and we added overlay explanations (top-right) to clarify what’s happening on screen.

We hope you’ll enjoy the footage and don’t hesitate to drop any comments, questions or improvement suggestions.

99 Spirits and a New Font

16/01/2013 / Jakke Elonen / Leave a comment

And now for some development news.

As I began editing the 99 Spirits scripts, I found I wasn’t very happy with the font the game used; in English it looked rather clunky for the theme and feel of the game.

After discussing it with the developer, TORaIKI, we found it’s possible to redeem this, and after careful evaluation the font used in the game’s story segments has been changed into one which I believe captures the spirit of the game much, much better, making the text more colorful while retaining full readability.

You can see the outcome in the shots below.

Our whole team is extremely happy with the new looks, but more importantly, what do you think?

4th in “Best Indie Strategy of 2012”

07/01/201322/01/2013 / Jakke Elonen / 2 Comments

This morning we woke up to an unexpected nomination.

The good folks at indiegames.com have put together their ranking of Best Indie Strategy Games of 2012. You can find it here.

We found War of the Human Tanks in the 4th place.

“War of the Human Tanks would definitely head our top named games list of 2012, but, alas, we have prepared no such thing for you dear readers. We will though suggest you give this strategy/visual novel hybrid a go and see what you can do with its cast of armored humanoid weapons and simple yet deep RTS mechanics. The game includes over 30 maps of tactical challenges and even allows players to use resources earned from combat to purchase new abilities and upgrades between battles in what can only be described as its strategy mode.”

This definitely makes for a nice start for the new year, as we begin to gear up for the work ahead. Big thanks @ the Indie Games weblog.

What was your favorite indie strategy of 2012?

2012 Reflections

26/12/2012 / Jakke Elonen / Leave a comment

With the year 2012 drawing to a close, we’re looking back at the year that has passed and evaluating what we have accomplished.

Fruitbat Factory came to be in early 2012. The missive we set to ourselves when we started was to bring unique and interesting Japanese games to English-speaking audiences worldwide.

Our first localization – strategy game War of the Human Tanks developed by Yakiniku Banzai, was announced in May and released September 14th 2012. It was met with a by and large positive reception, though it’s obviously not a game for everyone. War of the Human Tanks is still struggling on fiercely in Steam Greenlight.

Our second localization, the Puzzle RPG 99 Spirits by TORaIKI was announced in October, shortly after the game’s release in Japan in August. Just last week we wrote about winning the Eclectic Indie Dev Grant competition with it. 99 Spirits is planned for an early 2013 release.

Following the release of War of the Human Tanks, we have taken advantage of two bundles – Bundle in a Box and IndieFort (which right now is still running) to spread awareness of our work. It’s been great to see new people commenting on the game and taking an interest.

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Now let’s review some stats (everyone loves stats, right?):

War of the Human Tanks and its soundtrack, Sound of the Human Tanks;

available from 8 digital distributors,
over 7600 copies distributed,
made it to top10 sellers on Green Man Gaming, and rank 6 on GamersGate,
29,255 unique visitors on Desura,
21,316 unique visitors on Steam Greenlight.C

And our company Fruitbat Factory;

40,089 video views on YouTube,
25,548 unique visitors visiting our homepages 34,560 times,
5,611 visitors on this blog.

It’s hard to say how they compare, but those are some nice numbers overall. We hope things will only get better from here.

Those Who Hunt Tsukumogami

11/12/201211/12/2012 / Jakke Elonen / 3 Comments

In answer to a popular request, today we’ll walk you over the basic gameplay in 99 Spirits. We’re calling it a Puzzle RPG, but what does that mean exactly?

Read on to find out! (Note: all images are still very much a work in progress.)

The combat in 99 Spirits revolves around a puzzle mechanic wherein you work out the true identity of the enemy Tsukumogami, ordinary objects that, as per the Japanese legend, have come alive on their 100th birthday.

At the beginning of each battle, you face an enemy shrouded in an impenetrable mist which signifies the concealment of their true nature, and no attacks performed on them can cause lasting damage. All you can do is simply exchange blows with them until they run away. The battle itself is kind of turn based, you have a set number of strikes every ‘turn’ – or ‘clash’ as we call them, and you either defend or attack as long as they last – but the enemy can interrupt you with their own attack, and with good reflexes you can parry that and counterattack.

Now, when you obtain the Gokon sword, you gain two new abilities in the form of the gems you can see at the bottom:

You fill the two gems by attacking and defending, respectively. Once the first gem’s gauge fills up from your attacks, it allows you to read a part of the essence of the enemy Tsukumogami.
These hints come in the form of either a keyword related to the item in question, or part of the name of the actual artifact:

Once you have gathered enough hints for that ’eureka’ moment when it all clicks, you can use the sword’s second gem to make a guess at the item that is the essence of the Tsukumogami you are fighting.

Activating the gem brings up a new menu, where you enter your guess:

And if it’s correct…

The enemy’s true form is revealed!

Each Tsukumogami is unique from their hand-drawn artwork to their fingerprint-like combat hints, so an experienced spirit-hunter might be able to identify a familiar prey from a single hint. Based on early testing sessions with family, I can already tell this part can also be great fun with friends trying to outdo each other to puzzle out the correct answer as fast as possible.

From this point you can unleash all of your skills to vanquish the enemy.

If all goes well, you’ll defeat the Tsukumogami and continue your journey.

A keen reader might’ve picked up on there being more than two gems in the sword, but that’s a story for another day.

The game has nearly 100 different Tsukumogami with dozens of different skills to conquer, and you can eventually capture them to learn their skills, making the battles increasingly more complex and tons of fun.

In closing, don’t forget to support 99 Spirits in the Indie Dev Grant voting at http://bundle-in-a-box.com/!

Spirit Hunt Progress #1

29/11/2012 / Jakke Elonen / Leave a comment

Here’s a status update for those wondering just how the 99 Spirits localization is progressing.

Our current status is as follows:

The game’s graphics are edited.
System scripts are edited. I’d say their contents equal about 10% of the game’s total script, and were infinitely more work to translate.
Work on tutorials has begun.

Well, that was a short post. But it just means all is well in the world of 99 Spirits – at least, if you can overlook the rampant monsters laying waste to the capital.

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Meanwhile, we’ve added a new character – or in this case, characters – in the 99 Spirits character gallery again! This time it’s Tony’s favorite character. In case you haven’t checked the character pages yet, we also prepared a little slideshow to show what you’re missing out on.

In other news, http://www.gamersgate.com/indiefort-bundle” is still going strong. There is still three weeks to go until our appearance in the bundle, but since the first week’s bundle is closing up soon, here is a list of the titles in the second bundle. Don’t miss the chance to grab the games so cheap.

Week 2:
Caster (STEAM)
Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece (STEAM)
Strategic War in Europe (Greenlight)
Zombies (Greenlight)

Interview with a Walrus

17/11/201217/11/2012 / Jakke Elonen / 2 Comments

As we’ve been busy working on 99 Spirits and suddenly realized we haven’t posted anything on the blog this week, today we decided to bring you an interview with one of our own: Tony Blomqvist, the coder, proofreader, infamous walrus lover.

Jakke: Can you tell us a little about yourself, Tony?

Tony: I code stuff and it either works or doesn’t, I like music and anything Jakke doesn’t like.

Jakke: That’s a good start, what about…

Tony: and I believe all monkeys should be set free.

Jakke: Quite so, quite so. Now for the thousand dollar question: what is it you actually do around here, Tony?

Tony: Well, dearest Jakke McFlammy Flemington, a lot of different incoherent things. My main participation is in creating scripts and programs that help Fruitbat Factory’s localization projects, as well as proofreading the text. With War of the Human Tanks, I made the installer and launcher, developed scripts for managing the project’s text files, and edited the game’s source code to improve some text positions and gameplay mechanics.

Jakke: Oh, yeah, I think that rings a bell. What would you say was the hardest aspect in working on War of the Human Tanks?

Tony: Studying the game’s code with no prior C/C++ experience! As someone who has only recently started programming (mainly with Python), there was a lot to learn. The engine War of the Human Tanks runs on, System 4.0, allows games to be coded with C-like abstraction, but it was all new to everyone on the team, and all the documentation, of course, was in Japanese. Though frustratingly difficult at times, it was also a very educational process, and taught me a lot about C and code structuring. When I eventually could comfortably alter the code of bigger segments such as changing pre-battle tank repositioning to work on-the-fly, it felt very rewarding.

Jakke: What about your strange, unnatural love for walruses?

Tony: My love for walruses. Now that’s a tough one. I have no idea. I guess the Finnish word for a walrus sounds cute? Yeah.

Oh, there’s that Beatles song about walruses. That’s pretty trippy. Maybe that has affected me too. Its name is, unsurprisingly, “I am the walrus”. John Lennon wrote the song after he had heard that there’s a study group that likes to analyze the meaning of his lyrics. He made the lyrics totally nonsensical and thought “let the fuckers figure that out”. At least so Wikipedia or some other documentary claimed. That’s my most trusted source, I have to admit I wasn’t there.

Jakke: Thank you very much for the insightful commentary on the state of modern localization work.

Raising Spirits

06/11/2012 / Jakke Elonen / Leave a comment

Alright, so the word is out. Our next project is 99 Spirits.

There are several points of interest that make this game a very special release for us.

1. The game was just released in Japan.

99 Spirits was released on Comiket 82 in August 2012. That is to say, less than 3 months ago now. We’re looking to release it in early 2013, which means our English version should hit the shelves around half a year after the game’s original release. Given also that this is an RPG, which are among the more difficult genres to localize, a release this fast would be almost unprecedented. Of course, we haven’t decided on a release date yet and won’t release the game before we’re confident we got everything just right, so it might end up taking a bit longer than that, but this ETA is based on our current projections.
Though we don’t necessarily target the newest games (as seen in our previous release), this rare opportunity is one we want to take full advantage of.

2. The game is challenging (localization-wise).

We like a good challenge, and as we’ve stated on many an occasion, our main criteria in choosing projects is that they are interesting and actually require translation to be playable by English speakers. Still, we were almost stumped ourselves by the challenges localizing 99 Spirits promised. At the core of this difficulty lie its puzzle mechanics, which we’ll go more into later. Anyone who has played the game or its trial in Japanese will know what we’re talking about. But hey, this is what we do best!
Actually, at War of the Human Tanks’ release party, Yakiniku Banzai, the developer duo of the game, commented on 99 Spirits: “If you guys can translate this game, there’s no game you can’t translate.” We feel the same, and this is another reason why we’re having a lot of fun with this project. Even the initial work on the game’s infrastructure we’ve already completed was a real test of imagination.

3. The game has some damned pretty art.

Uh, well, just had to say that! I love all the charming little details in the artwork, like the way Hanabusa’s portrait starts to nod off when you don’t touch the game for a while.

Also, a new character has been unlocked in the character section of 99 Spirits homepage’s: Soujun the wandering monk. We’re planning on adding a new character each week.

So with all that said, look forward to 99 Spirits when it’s done. Also, if you have something specific you’d want us to talk about on the blog, feel free to drop a comment.

Fruitbat Factory’s Halloween Week Begins

29/10/201229/10/2012 / Jakke Elonen / Leave a comment

The Guess the Game Contest is now over, big thanks to all who participated.

The winners will be notified via e-mail this week, and even if you didn’t win you should keep an eye on your e-mail as we decided to throw in a free copy of Sound of the Human Tanks I OST from GamersGate to reward the efforts of all who ventured a guess.

As we look forward to announcing the game this week, we’re having a big sale on GamersGate, Desura and Indievania: you can purchase all versions of War of the Human Tanks at a 25% discount from them for the duration of this week.

We hope a lot of people will take advantage of this offer – and don’t forget to vote for War of the Human Tanks on Steam Greenlight, where the battle never ceases.

Lastly and most importantly, stay tuned for a major announcement as we’re going to be announcing our next title very shortly. Can’t wait to let this one out of the bag!