Virtual SEA News Update #2
This week there is more exciting news from the world of Southeast Asian gaming! This time we will tell you which representations from our favourite regions were at the A MAZE Festival in Berlin and introduce you to new announcements and publications from Myanmar and the Philippines.
Exciting contributions from Southeast Asia at the A MAZE Festival in Berlin
Let’s start with a supplement from last week, in which we would like to tell you about what happened at the A MAZE festival 2021. The Berlin-based event for games and playful media celebrates its tenth anniversary and once again features creative participants from Southeast Asia. Part of the program were two online talks from our region, namely by Saqina Latif, co-founder of KL-based narrative indie games studio Persona Theory Games, and Jedidiah Siah and Jewell Koh, who represent The Sagakaya Collective from Singapore.
Under the title “Romancing the Myths and Legends of Southeast Asia”, Latif reports on the artistic and playful influences from the region of Southeast Asia, which she incorporates into her upcoming narrative game Kabaret. Siah and Koh’s contribution is a post-mortem of how Singapore’s Sagakaya Collective organized the Heritage Game Jam and a virtual games exhibition. Both talks are available as video-on-demand on YouTube and are highly recommended!
Awards for particularly creative games were also given at the A MAZE. The competition was intense, which is unfortunately shown because the two promising SEAsian games, Fires at Midnight from Malaysia and Birds Don’t Cry at Sunrise from Thailand, did not make it into the final selection.
Iron Warfare: Theatre Assault announced
For once, there is good news from Myanmar. A newcomer studio with the catchy name Armor Piercing Indie Games Production recently announced their debut title. Iron Warfare: Theater Assault will be a tank simulation for Android devices that relies on semi-realistic controls and gripping battles in World War II. There is no release date yet, but the developers have already planned a PC port.
New games from the Philippines
Finally, there are two more games from the Philippines: At the beginning of July, the horror game Nyctophobia: Devil Unleashed was released on Steam. We explore an eerie asylum from the first-person perspective, and since it is the Solitary Games’ debut title, the game looks particularly good from a graphics point of view.
More of the most delicate Filipino game art awaits us next month. We haven’t heard about it for a long time, but now it’s almost there: Mithos, a top-down action RPG where we discover the world of pre-colonial Philippines. The images and videos shown give the impression that developer Taishoo combines the gaming experience inherent in retro RPGs of the SNES era with local Filipino history and mythology – exciting! Mithos will be released on August 7th for PC on Steam.
New Releases
You can look up which games from Southeast Asia were released this month in our handy release overview.
