Games and Gaming from Southeast Asia
Did you think this was one of those games that would be stuck forever in the Early Access nimbus and then be silently released at some point? Well, you were dead wrong! Instead, developer Toge Productions and publisher Modern Wolf have followed a stringent plan and now officially released their game Necronator: Dead Wrong after only 5 months of Early Access. Is this version any good now and is the project really finished? Let’s find out!
Imagine living in a world where people who have sex without loving each other go up in flames. What will happen to our relationships? The narrative adventure Fires At Midnight gets to the bottom of this question and sends us through a thrilling fever dream in the life of a young couple against the backdrop of the turn of the millennium in Malaysia.
Flickering neon lights. Skyscrapers wherever you look. This city is sinking into a swamp of crime and violence. Right in the middle stands a young woman with colored hair. Pumping electro beat. Slash! Before you know it, a room full of corpses. Welcome to Lithium City. This game feels like a fever dream: confusing, sweat inducing, overwhelming with stimuli and yet somehow gripping. Lithium City manages to combine fun and frustration like no other game without forcing you to put that gamepad down for good if you take the challenge.
A young girl wakes up in her bed. Is she in a hospital? She leaves the room and we quickly notice that something is wrong here. Clinically clean environments, strange machines and dangerous robots on patrol. What is going on here? Let’s leave this unpleasant environment as soon as possible! In Timelie, the first game by Thai studio Urnique, we are looking for a way out and how to get there is the puzzle we have to solve. Fortunately, time is on our side!
Rocky Rampage: Wreck ’em Up is an arcade game for mobile devices (Android and iOS) in which we try to launch our “hero” Mr. Boulder boulder through a level at the most dizzying speed possible. He doesn’t run himself, but is rather catapulted through the air like a wrecking ball. He constantly loses speed and ultimately just comes to a stop like a rock. However, the goal is to get particularly far, or to defeat the final boss of each level by bumping into it.
Ciel Fledge, the latest game by the Indonesian developer Studio Namaapa, offers the unique opportunity to raise a daughter without having to ruin a real person’s life. As a cross between visual novel, match-3 mini-games and simulation, the game allows you to extensively manage your new kid’s activities and influence the career path she will take. Let’s take a deeper dive into the game and see how this mix plays out.
What do you get when you combine the tactical mechanics of XCOM with the card-based gameplay from Slay the Spire? If it is up to Drix Studios from the Philippines, the result is called Grand Guilds. This concept was also able to find enough fans on Kickstarter and the finished game has now finally been released. You can find out in this review whether Grand Guilds successfully linked the popular mechanics of its role models and how we liked the rest of the game.
Gordian Quest by Mixed Realms is a deck builder meets DnD game where you control a fantasy hero, grow to a party of three, and set out to kill an evil wizard. You know, as you do with these fantasy games. Now what makes Gordian Quest different from a regular turn-based RPG is that nearly all actions are based on cards, with different characters having separate decks that are further customized via equipment and upgrades from skill trees.
Is a good thing worth waiting for? When the Kickstarter campaign for Graywalkers: Purgatory started in September 2014, no one expected the ambitious project would have to face such an odyssey. The first release was announced for 2017, but the game never came out. A good six years after the crowdfunding campaign, the first official version of the post-apocalyptic turn-based role-playing game was finally released in Steam’s Early Access program. We have taken a closer look at Graywalkers: Purgatory and will tell you whether the project has arrived where it was supposed to go.
What are we afraid of? This is a question every game developer has to ask himself if he wants to make a horror game. For everyone, fear and creep means something different. Popular horror games usually include the elements of terror, psychological horror, and the body horror of blood and intestines. DreadOut2 from Indonesian studio Digital Happiness serves us a splendid horror cocktail that contains all of these elements. However, one thing is decidedly different: it is a thoroughly Indonesian horror game.
The big challenge with most management games is the difficulty that comes with the act of making busywork, fulfilling orders, and organizing tasks engaging gameplay. Some games push your micromanagement skills to the limit, placing you on crazy strict timers. Others allow for some wacky setups, using the comedic power of a roller coaster that launches people into space to keep its players invested.
Regular customer Freya has a writer’s block. Succubus Lua and the Elf Baileys are unhappily in love. Mermaid Aqua struggles with her self-esteem. These are just a few examples of the characters and stories that play an important role in Coffee Talk. As the owner of a small café that only opens at night, we listen to the stories of our guests, brew the right hot drink and take part in their fate. Coffee Talk is a spectacle of the mundane, a refuge from everyday life – and enchanted us with its warmth.
One could write a lot about Aeterno Blade II. That it is a hack’n slash played from a side perspective and sometimes changes back to a third person perspective. That the fights run smoothly, developing a good feeling of flow. That the time manipulation skills are a nice gimmick. That the graphics are pretty, but technically never exceed a functional quality. That the whole UI is way too small. That the story is confusing and, but the speakers do a solid job. That Aeterno Blade II is really difficult and is aimed at genre professionals. This is how Aeterno Blade II could be described.
Lately, our wordsmith Andreas has been commuting by subway frequently and therefore has more time to play on his mobile phones.This short mobile game mash-up features three gems from Southeast Asia that entertain him every day on the way to work!
Nintendo’s Switch console continues to be very successful, not least because many popular games are subsequently ported. So, it’s not surprising that developers Witching Hour and publisher Ysbryd Games from Singapore have also decided to re-release their tactical role-playing game Masquerada: Songs and Shadows for Nintendo’s Little Wonderbox. The game appeared already in May 2019.
It’s clear that inspiration for this game was the popular platform adventure Limbo. But unlike its role model, Incubo fails to achieve its brilliance. Too immature are the mechanics, too dirty the programming and too simple the style. Nevertheless, Incubo is perfect for those who are not afraid of any challenge and are interested in scary stories outside the mainstream.
