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?

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.

99 Spirits of X-Mas

22/12/201222/12/2012 / 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.

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/!

Eclectic Delights Bundle

04/12/201204/12/2012 / 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.

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 4^th 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 4^th 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

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)

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.

99 Spirits

29/10/2012 / Ozhan Sen / 8 Comments

Fruitbat Factory is proud to present:

Featuring an original battle system where players will have to puzzle out the true identity of the enemy before defeating them, 99 Spirits is first published in Japan on Comiket 82 in August 2012 as the first release of TORaIKI. The story revolves around the real Japanese legends of “Tsukumogami”, where everyday objects come alive on their 100th birthday.

Story

Hanabusa is a young headstrong girl living in the Heian capital within medieval Japan. But when her mother is slain by evil spirits, her life turns into one of vengeance as she sets out to hunt and destroy the spirits.

During Hanabusa’s travels, she meets a white fox who turns out to be a servant of the mountain god. Hanabusa receives a special sword passed down from her mother, which gives her the ability to see the true forms of spirits to help slay them. Shortly after, a spirit claiming to be Hanabusa’s long-lost father, Hidetada, breaks her sword and leaves Hanabusa powerless and confused.

Now to mend her broken sword and learn the truth about her father, Hanabusa embarks on a journey to annihilate every last one of the evil spirits.

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The full game will feature:

– Over 10 hours of playtime in an RPG that mixes intense puzzles with fast paced action

– Work out the true identity of your enemies in a unique battle system

– Capture enemy spirits and turn them into allies

– Interact with over 40 unique characters that impact your journey

– Battle over 100 monsters and master a vast variety of skills

– Maintain your equipment and combat hunger as you traverse different regions

– Beautifully detailed art and an atmospheric original soundtrack bring feudal Japan alive

99 Spirits is planned to be released on PC (Windows) in early 2013. Its homepage is open for visitors with the first few pages ready for viewing. We’ll be gradually adding more pages, keep your eyes peeled.