Virtual SEA
Games and Gaming from Southeast Asia
Fans of classic horror movies and geek culture should listen up: Streets of Red: Devil’s Dare Deluxe (DDD) is a multiplayer beat’em up full of parodic references to horror classics and arcade style gaming. With its retro style presentation and unforgiving permadeath gameplay, Singaporean developer Secret Base wants to revive memories of old school arcade brawler sessions.
Here at Virtual SEA, we are working hard to represent the vast diversity of Southeast Asian video game development. While we give our best at covering as many games as possible through in-deep reviewing, there are still a lot more games that just fall under the table due to simple lack of time and resources (not to mention each of our own piles of shame). Now we want to give credit to all those little gems we played only for too little time to craft a proper review but which still deserve your attention. This time, we present to you indie games from Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Go and give these games a chance!
With the rise of indie games in the last years came a wave of new storytelling perspectives to the gaming world. Instead of telling fantastic stories about heroes and villains, game developers started to cope with their personal often traumatic experiences through the medium of video games. Some of the better-known examples here were That Dragon, Cancer or Nina Freeman’s debut masterpiece Cibele. Both of them take the players very closely into the personal memories and emotions of the game developers themselves and deliver intense experiences. Now, solo developer Amanda Lim (known as Sanud Games) from Singapore shares her own story in her debut work For Emery, a story about loss and grief.
Cat Quest could easily be mistaken as a standard casual game at first. Its game mechanics are simple, and the story isn’t very deep. Yet, it achieves to bridge the gap between casual and hardcore RPGs in a very satisfying way through challenging fights, a motivating leveling system and charming characters. Drawing inspiration from older Zelda titles and the aforementioned Skyrim, it delivers an entertaining little adventure that will keep you busy for a few hours and make you laugh a lot along the way.
When you think you have seen it all in tycoon games, an indie developer from Singapore releases a game with a new setting: winemaking! With Terroir, developer General Interactive Co. wants to deliver a simulation of what it means to own a wine estate and get into the fine arts of winemaking business. Let’s take a look at how that works out in this very Early Access version of the game.
Sairento VR by indie developers Mixed Realms and Swag Soft from Singapore tries to challenge the market with its own take on first-person action in virtual reality.
Five years after Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken, independent developer studio Ratloop Asia from Singapore returns with their sequel Rocketbirds 2: Evolution. Like its predecessor, Rocketbirds 2 is a 2d shooter spiced up with over-the-top action and cheesy humour.
Stellar Stars is a multiplayer rogue-lite set in a 2d sci-fi world. It offers various game modes and challenging gameplay.
Preview of Neo Impossible Bosses, a one-man indie game from Singapore with focus on WoW-style boss fights.
Singaporean game studio Springloaded is the winner of 2017 Indie Pitch Arena at GMGC Manila.
A preview of “Stifled” an innovative horror video game from Singapore with an echo-locating system.
Lunar Eclipse is a virtual reality horror game for mobile devices looking for support on Kickstarter.
Review of Masquerada: Songs and Shadows for PC / Steam.
