gaming

4th in “Best Indie Strategy of 2012”

/ 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.”

IGTW 4th best strategy game

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

/ 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.