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War of the Human Tanks… a best seller

/ Ozhan Sen / Leave a comment

While I’m writing this post, our first release War of the Human Tanks is the best selling indie game and the third best selling game on http://www.gamersgate.com.

Can’t tell you how uplifting this news is for our team.

Currently we are resting a little, recovering from the hectic period of releasing our second title 99 Spirits and its highly successful IndieGoGo campaign while also working on a couple of projects we are getting ready to announce soon. That is why our blog has been unusually silent lately, be ready to receive some announcements soon.

In the meanwhile, take advantage of the summer sales all digital distributors are running these days and stock up on games. I know I did…

99 Spirits Pre-orders Open

/ Fruitbat Factory / Leave a comment

Fruitbat Factory is proud to announce our new project, ‘99 Spirits’ is now available for pre-order! You can read the full press release after the trailer:

99 Spirits revolves around the popular Japanese folklore of Tsukumogami, everyday objects coming alive on their 100th birthday, and features an original battle system where players puzzle out the true identity of the enemy before defeating them.

Features:

  • Work out the true identity of your enemies in a unique battle system
  • Capture enemies, master their skills for battle and use them to solve puzzles on the field
  • Interact with over 40 unique characters and battle over 100 monsters
  • Beautifully detailed art and an atmospheric original soundtrack bring feudal Japan alive
  • Discover multiple unique endings that change based on the player’s actions
  • Dual audio: Toggle between English and Japanese voice

“We’ve tried to make the release the best it can be and listened to feedback from all channels, including Steam Greenlight and IndieGoGo. This has resulted in a number of fine additions such as the option to toggle freely between English and Japanese combat voices.” says Project Lead Jakke Elonen.

99 Spirits will be priced at $14.99.
Its soundtrack will be released simultaneously for $6.99.

Additionally, a Deluxe edition will be available that contains the game’s soundtrack and the original Japanese version bundled in, priced at $19.99.

As a special pre-order bonus, everyone who pre-orders the game will receive the Deluxe edition for the price of the regular edition.

“The Deluxe edition of our previous release War of the Human Tanks turned out far more popular than we anticipated, and we’ve had many people asking whether 99 Spirits will have one available as well, so there was never a question about it. We’ve tried to make the Deluxe edition even more appealing to collectors this time around while providing great value to all players”, explains Ozhan Sen, Marketing Lead.

99 Spirits is now available for pre-order from our homepage, and will soon be following on most major distributors including GamersGate, Desura, Amazon and Green Man Gaming.

99 Spirits is planned to be released on PC (Windows) on May 31st. An official trailer has been released to celebrate this (above). For more information visit the game’s website: http://fruitbatfactory.com/99spirits/ or visit our Twitter, Youtube or Facebook Page.

About us

Fruitbat Factory is an independent localization company focusing on bringing interesting Japanese indie games to English-speaking audiences. We previously released Yakiniku Banzai’s critically acclaimed strategy game War of the Human Tanks in Fall 2012. For more information, visit our homepage at http://www.fruitbatfactory.com/

TORaIKI is an independent Japanese game circle that aims to produce Windows PC titles suitable for gamers of all ages. 99 Spirits is TORaIKI’s first release, published in Japan in August 2012. For more information, visit the developers’ homepage at http://www.toraiki.com/

2012 Reflections

/ 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.

99 Spirits of X-Mas

/ Ozhan Sen / Leave a comment

Good news everyone! Yesterday Bundle in a Box that our first release War of the Human Tanks partook ended with great success and our next release 99 Spirits won the Eclectic Indie Dev Grant.

6322 people who bought Bundle in a Box – Eclectic Delights were given the chance to vote for the game they liked the most amongst the 22 candidates. After two weeks of voting, our 99 Spirits won the Eclectic Indie Dev Grant. We take this as a sign that we are doing something right and can hope for a favorable reception for 99 Spirits once it is released, so it is a tremendous vote of confidence.

Thank you!

To celebrate, we decided to publish the opening sequence of 99 Spirits, which we recently edited to English. This video will show up when you start a new game. It’s very brief and not a trailer, so it won’t show you any gameplay, you have to wait a little more for that. But this is not all! While we still have a couple of months until 99 Spirits‘ release, we have something big planned for next month already, so keep your eyes peeled!

For the duration of the next six days, our War of the Human Tanks is being featured in the GamersGate’s IndieFort Bundle alongside Will Fight for Food, Zafehouse: Diaries and Zombie Shooter 2. Don’t miss this chance to grab all of them at the incredible price of $4 and save $36!

Last but not least, Merry X-Mas everyone! We prettied our sites in the spirit of X-Mas if you noticed, hopefully they’ll be easier and more fun to navigate now. We also have some nice discounts coming for the holiday period, to give you a chance to buy our products at very affordable prices to gift them to your loved ones. We hope you’ll enjoy our Christmas presents, and share in our excitement for the coming year.

Eclectic Delights Bundle

/ Ozhan Sen / 2 Comments

The Bundle in a Box press release started to roll out, for those that haven’t received it yet, I’ll paste it below. At the time of my posting this it is not on yet, so don’t panic. We submitted our upcoming game 99 Spirits to the Indie Dev Grant contest and I received this press release telling me to “feel free to promote your Indie Dev Grant submission“, so please vote for 99 Spirits on Indie Dev Grant when you buy the this bundle.

99 Spirits - screenshot 04

A screenshot from the intro of 99 Spirits

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Eclectic Delights Bundle: Pay What You Want for 9 Great Indie Games

 

Having obsessively researched the wild and wonderful world of indie gaming, Bundle In A Box returns and is proud to present the Eclectic Delights bundle. It’s a fine assortment of 9 delightful, truly indie offerings everyone can enjoy for the most reasonable price of “pay-what-you-want” over at http://www.bundle-in-a-box.com/.

The bundle, a Kyttaro Games (http://www.kyttarogames.com/) effort to promote indie developers and quality games, is launching this Tuesday the 4th of December 2012, will last for 14 days and offer all games as DRM-free downloads (but not exclusively so; most games are also available on Desura and/or Steam ).

 

The Eclectic Delights bundle is all about …

 

… selecting the best and most intriguing games across all genres . 

 

Gamers will get to enjoy a rich compilation of both successful and less known games, that have all made it through the painful, slightly silly, but always thorough Bundle In A Box selection process.

 

…  fantastic indie games.

 

 Paying anything above $0.99 will get you:

-elegant RTS War of the Human Tanks (Windows/Desura)

-Lovecraftian yet cute platformer Eversion (Windows/Mac/Steam)

-gloriously pixelated adventure/strategy Delve Deeper (Windows/Steam)

-Russian horror offering Fibrillation (Windows /Desura)

-point-and-click mystery Shadows of the Vatican, Act: I (Windows/Desura)

 

…  even more games.

 

Beating the average price will allow gamers to enjoy four more excellent games:

-award winning platformer Adventures of Shuggy (Windows/Steam/Desura)

-surreal horror game The 4th Wall (Windows)

-FMV rhythm-action-fighter Stay Dead (Windows/Mac/Desura)

-retro-tastique, hilarious maze-‘em-up Flibble (Windows)

 

…  directly supporting upcoming game developers.

 

For every 100 bundles sold $10 will be added to our Indie Dev Grant and the whole sum will be awarded to a developer selected by vote; no strings will be attached as to how the grant will be used.

 

… charity. 

 

5% of all revenues will be shared with the Hellenic Centre for Mental Health and Treatment of Child and Family.

 

… all sorts of extras.

 

What’s more, for every 1000 bundles sold new extras will be unlocked for everyone who grabbed the Eclectic Delights offer. Unlockable extras include:

-The complete and formerly unreleased soundtrack of forthcoming mobile game Droidscape: Basilica

-The Adventures of Shuggy soundtrack

-Sound of the Human Tanks: the War of the Human Tanks OST

-The Adventures of Shuggy digital comic-book

-The Shadows of the Cathedral soundtrack

As an added bonus, all who purchase the bundle will get access to exclusive content for Droidcape: Basilica (http://www.kyttarogames.com/?page_id=384); KyttaroGames’ own upcoming game for iOS and Android.

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And now for a selection of handy links:

Bundle In A Box site: http://bundle-in-a-box.com/

Eclectic Delights Presskit:  http://kyttarogames.com/press/sheet.php?p=bundle_in_a_box_eclectic_delights

The BIAB Blog: http://blog.bundle-in-a-box.com/

Contact email:  info@bundle-in-a-box.com

Spirit Hunt Progress #1

/ 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)

Countdown Bundle

/ Ozhan Sen / 3 Comments

While we’re working on 99 Spirits, we most certainly haven’t forgotten War of the Human Tanks. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to give as many people as we can reach the opportunity to enjoy the game.

IndieFort Countdown Logo

On that note, we’re happy to announce that War of the Human Tanks will be featured in the IndieFort Countdown Bundle!

WotHT will be included in the final week’s bundle from 12/21/2012 to 12/27/2012, but do check out the great lineup below – if you buy all of the previous weeks’ bundles, you will get the bundle with War of the Human Tanks innit for absolutely FREE.

How is that possible, you ask? Read on after the trailer.

Countdown Bundle is made of five separate bundles, a new bundle every week for five weeks. Each bundle is made of four games and priced at $4. For each bundle you buy, the next one will be $1 cheaper. So if you buy the first one, the second bundle is only $3; buy that and the next one is $2, going that way next one is $1 and the final bundle (that is to say, the one War of the Human Tanks is in) will be completely free.

That’s $10 for a total of 20 games at the end of five weeks. We also have bonuses that will unlock upon reaching set sales goals that include 7 more games, 6 OSTs and an add-on. Making the full price of everything you are getting for just $10 into a grand total of $250. A 96% discount is a deal you should not to miss.

We have also teamed up with the kind folks at the charity organization Help-Daniel. We are dedicating part of the proceeds from the full five weeks of sales to him, and want to reach out to the community for help in the hopes he makes a full recovery soon.

Since this bundle is hosted by GamersGate, you will get a key for everything there. Also the games on this bundle that have Steam versions already present will give Steam keys to add to your account. (Marked those with (STEAM) below) And the rest are all on Greenlight (except 2, here is a link to the Greenlight Collection) and you will get a Steam key for those when they are greenlit with your votes. So don’t forget to vote YES for them. (Marked those with (Greenlight) below)

IndieFort Countdown Bundle:

Week 1:
Aeon Command (Greenlight)
Genetrive 2
Space Pirates and Zombies (STEAM)
Waveform (STEAM)

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

Week 3:
Alien Hallway (STEAM)
Bridge It (Greenlight)
Eryi’s Action (Greenlight)
Terrorhedron (Greenlight)

Week 4:
Achron (STEAM)
Alien Shooter 2 Conscription (STEAM)
Orczz (Greenlight)
Syder Arcade (Greenlight)

Week 5:
War of the Human Tanks (Greenlight)
Will Fight for Food (Greenlight)
Zafehouse: Diaries (Greenlight)
Zombie Shooter 2 (STEAM)

Also we are having a Black Friday special sale! Everything at half the price.
Go grab some copies of War of the Human Tanks as presents for your friends, it’s only $4.99!

Human Tanks Fight On

/ Jakke Elonen / Leave a comment

You’re walking down Steam Greenlight, clicking “YES” on War of the Human Tanks as you pass, and then, suddenly… WHAM-O! FREE STEAM KEYS FOR EVERYONE!

That’s right, once War of the Human Tanks gets on Steam, everyone who’s purchased the game from any of our distributors will receive a free Steam Key for it as well!

WotHT Greenlight Promo 3

Human Tanks, Charge!
Your target: Steam!

How can you support us?
-Purchase a copy of War of the Human Tanks from the distributor of your choice. Your choices are: Indievania, Desura, GamersGate and Green Man Gaming.
-Vote for War of the Human Tanks on Steam Greenlight.
-Tell your friends, family and everyone you hold at gunpoint.
-Once War of the Human Tanks is on Steam, you will receive a key at no additional cost.

In other news, Chapter 3 of the “Let’s Play” Guide for War of the Human Tanks has gone live. Share the miserable struggle at Chapter 3: ‘The Aoba Troop Did Their Best’!

Human Tanks, Charge!

/ Jakke Elonen / 1 Comment

The day has come. The troops stand prepared. Are you ready?

War of the Human Tanks is now officially out.

The first pre-orderers have probably begun playing the game already, and we’re hoping they’ll have a jolly good time of it.

Release

To celebrate the launch of our first title, we’re having a 10% launch week discount campaign. Go grab yours at the nearest (hah!) digital retailer!

In additional news, Green Man Gaming came through today, and you can now find War of the Human Tanks listed there as well, in addition to Desura, GamersGate and Indievania!

The reviews are still coming in. Clark A. at Digitally Downloaded gave War of the Human Tanks 3.5/5:

“It’s absolutely a worthy title in its own right. The character banter is thoroughly entertaining, augmented by solid combat.”

But don’t just take his word for it when you can check out the free demo featuring first 5 full episodes of the game.

Incoming!

/ Ozhan Sen / Leave a comment

With the release of War of the Human Tanks so close by, I can’t help posting again. Lets start with the new artwork from Angie (@9aia), presenting Choko from War of the Human Tanks.

Choko is always full of energy!

Since we’ve been getting some questions about what we will be selling and where, here’s a recap of our release schedule on 14th.

War of the Human Tanks, the game itself, will be sold for $9.99. Sound of the Human Tanks I, the first soundtrack compilation, will be sold for $3.99. And War of the Human Tanks Deluxe, containing both the game and soundtrack, will be sold for $11.99.

Of course, we are selling the Deluxe bundle for $9.99 for as long as the pre-orders last.

War of the Human Tanks and War of the Human Tanks Deluxe will be available from Desura. War of the Human Tanks, Sound of the Human Tanks I and War of the Human Tanks Deluxe will be available from Gamersgate. War of the Human Tanks will also be available from Indievania, and Sound of the Human Tanks I will be available separately from Bandcamp.

Green Man Gaming will feature War of the Human Tanks soon after.

And with your support on Steam Greenlight, War of the Human Tanks, Sound of the Human Tanks I and War of the Human Tanks Deluxe will be available on Steam one day as well.

Note: The prices may vary slightly depending on your region.